SEVEN busloads of stranded Australians, some of them distressed, left Bangkok for a 14-hour road journey to the southern resort island of Phuket yesterday where a Qantas plane was waiting to fly them to Singapore.
But Australian diplomats in Bangkok say hundreds, possibly thousands, more Australians are still trapped in Thailand as anti-government protestors continue to occupy the capital's two airports and the country's political crisis deepens.
"It's difficult to know exactly how many are stranded but it's in the hundreds at the very least," Paul Grigson, Australia's ambassador in Bangkok, told the Herald .
"More and more people are in trouble as they come off their holidays and find the flights they were booked on are not flying," Mr Grigson said.
Thai officials estimate 30,000 passengers a day have missed their flights since staff were chased from the airports last week, crippling Thailand's economy and standing as many as 160,000 people.
Australians arriving at U-tapao, a Thai military base 190 kilometres south-east of Bangkok, are facing chaos as Thai officials struggle to cope with huge queues of angry foreigners desperate to get home.
Some tourists have had to sleep in the open outside the small terminal for days.
Dozens of Australians who have arrived there hoping to board a scheduled daily Thai Airways flight to Sydney have been turned away because there are no facilities to issue tickets.
On Sunday night, 62 Australians were left on the tarmac as the plane departed.
Australian embassy officials have been deployed to help Australians who arrive at Phuket, Chiang Mai and U-tapao, the only international airports in the country that remain open.
An 18-person 24-hour crisis centre set-up at the Australian embassy has already received 3,000 calls.
One hundred Australians who are in exceptional difficulty are being assisted by embassy staff, including people with disabilities and medical problems.
Thai officials have no idea who remains in the country and who has left because immigration officials cannot reach compter records at the airports under siege.
The 279 people who boarded the buses were relieved to be leaving Bangkok even though they faced a long bus trip and overnight flight to Singapore where they would have to arrange flights to Australia.
They burst into applause when a Qantas official told them a medical team would travel with them to Phuket.
"It's being so bad - unbearable really. You wouldn't 'believe it," said Luke Kennedy, a Sydney barman, who broke his leg in two places and dislocated his hip in a motor bike accident in the Thai resort city of Pattaya last week.
Three operations on his leg and the refusal of his travel insurance company send the $19,000 he needed to leave a Thai hospital, which his father had to borrow and send to him, was only the start of his week long nightmare.
"The waiting and not knowing what was happening was the worst thing," Mr Kennedy said.
"I sat in a hotel room and watched repeat Thai television shows," he said.
Sydney nurse Grigory Averburn said he was glad to be going home after a nightmare trip.
First he was beaten up outside a nightclub, how a row with his insurance company which refused to cover his medical expenses and then struggled for days to find a way home.
"I was running out of money. It was deperate stuff," he said.
Leisa Chaisty, 25, from Brisbane said she and three friends are furious with their travel agent, which failed to provide them any assistance when they became stranded in Bangkok for five nights.
"I urgently needed to get home because my five year-old son needs to go into hospital," Ms Chaisty said.
A friend travelling with her, Gemmah Carr, 21, suffers from cerebral palsy and also needs urgent medical treatment in Australia.
"No-one would help us until my father rang and told us to contact the embassy," Ms Chaisty said.
"They were terrific, giving us hourly up-dates, and then told us to come here to catch the bus to Phuket....we are just so relieved to be leaving all the chaos behind us."
Protesters at Bangkok's main Suvarnabhumi airport agreed yesterday allowed airline crews on to the tarmac to fly 80 planes that had sat there for a week to fly away.
Email a friend
Favourites
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Digg
StumbleUpon
MySpace
Reddit
Newsvine
LinkedIn
Kwoff