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Honeymoon couple: Our Thailand ordeal
Rebecca Lowe08.12.08
A HONEYMOON couple told the Foreign Office to "step up its game" after claiming it did nothing to help them leave troubled Thailand last week.
Rayna Malde and Neil Chandarana, of Barnet, spent £1,500 on flights, accommodation and phone calls after Bangkok's airports were overrun by anti-government protesters.
They managed to board a flight to Germany from a military airbase early last Monday, four days after they were due to return home.
Ms Malde, 28, said: "If you own a British passport you like to think you can rely on our country to help you get back home in a situation like that.
"When I called the British Embassy they just told me to try phoning the airlines. It needs to step up its game."
The couple were among thousands of tourists stranded after the People's Alliance for Democracy shut the international Suvarnabhumi and domestic Don Mueang airports. They were due to fly home the previous Thursday but heard from a taxi driver on the morning that the airport was closed.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We had 50 to 60 staff but there were 6,000 British people out there. There was a limited amount we could do for any one individual."
Reader views (6)
Impossible demands made on a British government that has no say in what is going on in that country?
About the only story I see here is that of stupidly demanding individuals who want someone else to pull their chestnuts out of the fire for them.
Life happens, folks, and it doesn't ask our permission to do what it is going to do.
- Rogan, Irving
I am not sure exactly they expected the Government to do for them?
- Liberal Thinker, UK
There is that word British again. Why did they not use their other passports they hold through dual nationality?
- Frank, Home Counties, England
Anyone remember the concept of personal responsibility? You chose to go abroad on a holiday, not a diplomatic mission. You meet your own responsibilities -- and the costs.
- Elspeth, London
Why should the foreign office help them to leave Thailand, they were not in any danger. The British tax payer does not cover "inconvenience abroad". Ms Malde's comments worry me; one does not "own" a British passport, one "holds" a British passport, that is, of course, unless one has purchased the passport!
- Jane Bewick, London
surely it is the airlines responsability not the goverments .
- Alan Baker, essex .uk
