Didn't think booking a flight could be so difficult,
Just spent 4 hours searching for a flight. Didn't think it could be so hard. Virtually all the bucket shops were mainly showing only flights that were transiting through BKK so these were non starters. Those that were not, had either the outward or inward flights in the 30+ hour range, with long layovers. I'm too old for that game.
Eventually plumped for Qatar Airways with stops at LHR and Doha. It took 5 attempts to pay for the ticket. One failed because of CC probs. The wife who is currently at home in Japan, made two online purchases one for €700 and one for €10. The CC company thought the 10 was suspicious so they phoned her. However, she will not pick up the phone if someone calls her from Ireland unless she recognises the number. She doesn't want to pay the €2 per minute charge for receiving the call, so the bank blocked the card. By the time I got the prob sorted, the price had gone up from €670 to €744. So much for my wife saving 2.
I made another three attempts, and each one timed out. That meant restarting and by the time I got to the 4th attempt, it had risen to €805. Eventually, I retarded my start / finish dates by one day each, and got a flight for €654.
At the end, there was the customary survey to rate the booking experience. I gave it one star. They then offered a drop-down menu to list the possible complaints. First option was "speed of site / page loading times". That leads me to believe that they must be aware of the prob, but haven't bothered to fix. If there'd been another convenient option, I would have booked elsewhere. I will say to QA's credit though, that the refund policy is very good. You can cancel up to 3 hrs before take-off and get a full refund. My lucks been cursed recently and I am just waiting for something to go wrong.
I've been reading that they intend to fully reopen TH on July 15th, I was just thinking that of the sandbox scheme works out in Phuket and Samui, it might be a good idea to keep the restrictions in those two places. If they need to shut down again, at least those two places should then be able to stay open.