V-Flyer

I meant to do this TR as soon as I got back but time got away from me. Anyway here we go...


Our flight was at 21.35 from Heathrow T3 so planned to leave about 3pm, to avoid M25 Friday evening traffic. After some faffing around and an extra pickup we left about 3.30. On a good day the trip is just under an hour. Arriving at the M25 we could see it was virtually at a standstill so our taxi driver took us on the scenic route, to bypass a fare amount of the M25. We eventually got to LHR just after 5.30. Straight up to the EVA Air desks. Elite desks weren't open yet but only a couple of people in front of us. Our bags were checked through to Koh Samui, check-in done, and we were off to departures.

After some shopping, food & drinks the gate came up on the board so we made our way down. Once there we all filed into the gate holding area, which seemed rather small for the number of people . It did have a good view of our 777, which my friends kids got excited about. Boarding started with priority boarding in place. Premium Laurel (Business) were called first, shortly followed by us in Elite (PE). Seats found and hand luggage stowed in the over head compartments (There was plenty of room for all). Then we sat and waited for economy to board. No pre-flight drinks unfortunately, boo . We seemed to taxi for quite a while before take-off.

The seats were memory foam and not the most comfortable, but bearable. I was able to spread out as window seat was empty. The seat pitch was 40” and there was noticeably more room than I’ve ever had in PE . When reclining the seat base moved forward which allowed for more recline without the person behind getting squashed. There was a leg rest that had a separate control, but wasn’t really long enough so dug in to my legs. Pillows and blankets were provided. The blankets were needed as the air con was pretty chilly. I did manage to get about 4 hours of sleep though, which was great as I don’t normally sleep onboard .

The IFE was AVOD with decent size screen and plenty of movies, tv shows & games . If I remember correctly it was active before take-off. One annoying thing was that every time there was an announcement the IFE paused, which you would expect, but the announcements went on for ages in numerous languages.

The food was ok. I’m not too fussy with airline food. I don’t remember the full menu but I had Chicken & noodles for dinner, which was ok. Wine was offered with dinner, glasses were extremely small. I did manage to get one refill. They only seemed to have wine & beer, no spirits in sight. I also had chicken & noodles for breakfast!! Mainly because I couldn’t understand what I was being offered, lol. My friend had an omelette which looked much nicer.
Throughout the flight the CC brought round water and juices.

Landing was pretty good and we were off the aircraft fairly quick.
We then started our hike from international arrivals to domestic departures. It took a while as some of our group needed to stop at the smoking rooms. A few hours in LHR departures & 11.5 hours on a plane left them twitching!! Lol.
After an extremely long walk we arrived at passport control & security. Once through there was more walking to our gate, for our short flight down to Koh Samui (Bangkok Airways Flight PG173). We were delayed for a bit due to torrential rain! The flight was shorter than expected as we had an Airbus A319 instead of the Aeritalia ATR stated on our itinery.
On arrival to Koh Samui there was no rain, yay. Bags collected and we were off to our villas for 2 weeks of sun and relaxation.

Thanks for the TR! I've done this route once in Y and one in PE and enjoyed BR both times - a really classy act. A clear memory of mine was how clean and dry the toilets are kept with flowers on the wall and cream bottles for body and hands, even one of those volcanic water spray mist things that girls love.

Thank you for the TR.