Marriott Summer Vacation to Hong Kong and Bangkok

We awoke quite early as we had a 8.30am Garuda flight to Singapore. Harry our driver came in at 5.45am and helped load all the bags. We set off soon after and reached the airport at about 6.35am. It was a reasonably smoothy process as in Jakarta you can hire a porter for a miniscule amount of money (approximately $2 Australian) and he takes all your bags through to the check in counter from the curb and does everything. It was a quick trip to Starbucks after going through customs, but they weren't open till 7.30am so we had to wait a little longer. We had our daily early morning coffee shot and were set. We then got to our pod area after a quick shop at the Rip Curl surf shop, Geoff seeing a dual time watch he was dying to have!!!. The flight to Singapore on Garuda was smooth and uneventful. The breakfast on the plane was excellent. The served an omelette, grilled tomato and pork sausage, with coffee and orange juice. Certainly puts QANTAS to shame! We arrived at terminal one at Changi Airport. It is a wonderful airport. It is so well organized and you have access to everything. We had a coffee at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and then did some shopping. Our plane to Bangkok was delayed by 45 minutes so we had extra time to shop. We then went to our departure gate and caught our Cathay Pacific flight CX 712 to Bangkok. Again a very smooth flight. The service on Cathay Pacific was wonderful. We have flown with them before to London and it is certainly worth the effort to get a Cathay Flight. We arrived at the new Bangkok Airport at about 3.20pm. We were only 20 mins late in and the then we went through all the customs, immigration process. First impressions of the new airport were that it was a very under-whelming airport. It was all bare concrete and it seemed that it was in many places 'unfinished' We didn't see any shops and it was rather grubby in places. Anyway we went through immigration, collected our bags and then met our transit guide. The agent in Jakarta had arranged this for us. We  were taken to a waiting van and then we loaded our luggage. We left the airport precinct and then were pulled over by the cops!! We saw lot of other vans caught by the cops as well. Our driver was taken acrosss the road and we were sitting in our van for 30 mins while the police were haggling with our van driver - a really great introduction to Bangkok!. Finally a second van came and collected us. We then had to battle the notorious Bangkok traffic. We took 2 and a half hours to get to our hotel -Holiday Inn Silom. We finally got to the hotel after what seemed an eternity. The traffic in Bangkok is much more intense and choked than Jakarta! We checked in and were upgraded to an executive room on the 19th floor. The whole hotel has undergone an extensive renovation and the room was exceptional, all minimalistic with big plasma TV and everything first class. We were going to go into the local area to find a restaurant for dinner but as it was later than expected we decided to go to the hotel brasserie for dinner. The international buffet was exceptional. We  had an eclectic range of foods from traditional Thai curries through to classic English carveries. It was a wonderful dining experience. By the end of our evening meal we were so tired as we were up at 5.00am in the morning. We retired to our room and went to bed.