Mekong Avalon in August

[aquidneck1]

Hoyaheel,  I hope that all is well with you.  I am just wondering if you could answer one question.  What airlines were used for the plane rides during the tour.   Avalon will not give me that information so I am seeking it elsewhere.  Thanks for any help.  

[gnome12]

I didn't do this trip with Avalon, but I did the Irrawaddy with them in 2018. I'm not sure that this information will help you, but here it is.

 

Avalon chartered a plane to fly us from Yangon to Bhamo as there was no scheduled service. Bagan to Heho (for Inle Lake) and Heho to Yangon were on small regional airlines.

 

1 hour ago, aquidneck1 said:

Hoyaheel,  I hope that all is well with you.  I am just wondering if you could answer one question.  What airlines were used for the plane rides during the tour.   Avalon will not give me that information so I am seeking it elsewhere.  Thanks for any help.  

 

[aquidneck1]

Thank you for your response.  I am just trying to figure out the weight limits for carry on.  I will have a purse and a small backpack.  One airline -Bangkok Airways says 5kg and the others are 7kg.  That makes a difference when you are travelling with a couple of electronic devices and other things that you do not want to check with the airline.  

[gnome12]

1 hour ago, aquidneck1 said:

Thank you for your response.  I am just trying to figure out the weight limits for carry on.  I will have a purse and a small backpack.  One airline -Bangkok Airways says 5kg and the others are 7kg.  That makes a difference when you are travelling with a couple of electronic devices and other things that you do not want to check with the airline.  

I don't remember them weighing carryons either in Myanmar, or when we flew from Hanoi to Siem Reap on my Ama Mekong cruise.

 

What flights are you looking at? Since you are talking Bangkok Airways are you doing an extension to Thailand? I flew from Yangon to Bangkok on Bangkok Airlines at the end of my trip and again, I don't remember them weighing carryon. However, my carryon gets lighter as I go, since much of it is medication that gets used up, and this was on my way back to Canada. I carried a camera and a phone as my only electronics. Good luck with the packing!

Edited January 2, 2020 by gnome12

[aquidneck1]

42 minutes ago, gnome12 said:

What flights are you looking at?

We start our trip in Bangkok and fly from there to Siem Reap.  Bangkok Airlines is the one with the least weight allowance.  Hopefully, they will not weigh the hand luggage.  My purse would also add weight and they say that all items will be weighed.  If they are weighing,  I will just take out my raincoat and stuff the pockets.  😉  Just don't like worrying about it.  I spent a week in Africa without my luggage.  Thank goodness I had packed a decent amount in my carry on.  The only thing that I did not have extra's of were pants.  Mine could walk on their own after a week.  

[Hoyaheel]

Sorry - I was on a holiday Caribbean cruise 😉 Let me check my paperwork at home and I can tell you who we flew from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. I know we were quite limited in what we could carry - it annoyed us. But Avalon states it up front when they give the baggage limits (you know those limits no one believes can be real? They are 😉 ) It was definitely a local airline, but it's a 30 or 40 minute flight.....

 

That said, our hand baggage was not weighed- only the checked bag.

[aquidneck1]

Thanks. Hope you had a great time on Oceania. We were on the Riviera in early December. Glad too hear that no one checked weight. We are in compliance for checked bags. I just have a backpack and purse for carry-on. 

[Hoyaheel]

OK, from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap we flew Cambodia Angkor Air according to my boarding pass. I can't find the info on packing we were told on the ship, so it might have been just verbal in the daily meeting? I know I was frustrated - not by the baggage limits really; I was underweight - but by the scheduling and not being able to pack bags in the way I wanted. (husband just reminded me of this when I was asking him about the flights) We had to get on the plane, deplane and go straight to see temples. Our bags went to the hotel to wait for us. Which meant we either had to bring laptops & other sensitive issues with us to the Angkor complex or leave things "unattended" at the hotel. I'm not sure there's an ideal way to handle this - they can only do so much with the timing - but it was frustrating nonetheless...

[aquidneck1]

14 hours ago, Hoyaheel said:

OK, from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap we flew Cambodia Angkor Air according to my boarding pass. I can't find the info on packing we were told on the ship, so it might have been just verbal in the daily meeting? I know I was frustrated - not by the baggage limits really; I was underweight - but by the scheduling and not being able to pack bags in the way I wanted. (husband just reminded me of this when I was asking him about the flights) We had to get on the plane, deplane and go straight to see temples. Our bags went to the hotel to wait for us. Which meant we either had to bring laptops & other sensitive issues with us to the Angkor complex or leave things "unattended" at the hotel. I'm not sure there's an ideal way to handle this - they can only do so much with the timing - but it was frustrating nonetheless...

Thanks so much for this information.  We will be flying from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh so hopefully we will have less of an issue with that but thanks for the heads up.  We might have that issue when we disembark on Ho Chi Minh City as that is the only place that we have a tour following a transfer.