Our plane being loaded for the 11 hour flight. Lufthansa puts their First Class in the upper deck on their 747’s, but Thai air uses the nose. We are in the very first seats, 1A and 1K—so the first four windows on each side belong to our “pods”. It is really, really quiet up there—with the engines so far behind us.

We took off to the west over the water.

And I just have to write about Thai Air First Class. We (of course) use frequent flyer points, but I have to say if you’ve got the $20,000 + for a RT ticket, it’s gotta be almost worth it. We first flew them in 2006 for our Southeast Asia trip and were blown away then—now they have upgraded their 747’s with individual pods with what looks like 32” flat screen TV’s, and seats/ hassocks that make into lie-flat beds and also provide an extra seat for chatting with a travel pal. Pajamas, slippers.  Wow.

The bathrooms (2 large ones for the 6 of us in the cabin) are just as I remembered.  Fresh flowers, full-length mirror, Bulgari amenities, linen hand towels.

One of the 4 flight attendants likes taking pictures, and posed us around the cabin so we’ll have proof years from now that this wasn’t all a dream. 

Before you take off they go over menu and drink choices.

You can pre-order your meals on line, so Bud got steak and I got lobster. It was great—and they even came around beforehand with caviar set-ups and vodka.

The flight itself was very smooth.until our Rome-Bangkok flight path took us over the area in between Baghdad and Islamabad. Then it seemed like all hell broke loose—I can’t remember turbulence being that bad since we hit the edges of a cyclone over the Pacific on the way to New Zealand in 2003.

The flight attendants have it all figured, though.  They serve dinner and gets the beds all made up so people are sleeping (at least as much they can) when the worst hits.  I woke up when we got to smooth air and one of the flight attendants told me this always happens…and that it would be smooth until we get to the Indian Ocean—then very bumpy again. At least we know what to expect on the return flight to Frankfurt!

Time for breakfast!

The screens at our seats show our flight path from Rome to Bangkok.  The section in between Baghdad and Islamabad was really, really turbulent.  We are up in the nose, and I don’t even want to think how the tail of the plane was being whipped around.  From Bangkok we’ll take the short flight back to the west to Rangoon, or Yangon, as it is now known.