MANILA, Philippines? (UPDATE 5) Stranded for days due to the shutdown of two Bangkok airports occupied by antigovernment protesters, about 430 Filipinos are finally coming home Monday night. But it will be a long trip home.

The stranded Filipinos will be taking more than the usual three-hour plane ride from Thailand to Manila, according to a Philippine government evacuation plan.

The plan calls for the Filipinos to be taken out of Bangkok by bus and travel to the northern city of Chiang Mai where they will be fetched on Monday by a special Philippine Airlines flight, Foreign Undersecretary Rafael Seguis said Sunday. (The PAL flight, however, cannot accommodate the 509 stranded Filipinos as of last count.)

The bus ride from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, where there is an international airport, would take from eight hours to 10 hours, according to Seguis.

The PAL special flight will leave Chiang Mai at 5 p.m. and land in Manila at 9:30 p.m. Monday, according to PAL officials.

Other countries have sent special flights to pick up their citizens at airports outside Bangkok. Some 100,000 people have been stranded by the closure of the two airports in the riot-hit Thai capital.

Quoting Philippine Ambassador to Bangkok Antonio Rodriguez, Press Secretary Jesus Dureza said the number of stranded Filipinos could hit around 1,000 within the next few days. Among the stranded are 89 overseas Filipino workers who came from Kuwait.

Dureza said the government was also in touch with Cebu Pacific on the possibility of picking up the stranded from Chiang Mai.

Largest in PAL fleet

Flight PR 732 is set to depart Manila at 12:30 p.m. Monday. It is scheduled to arrive at Chiang Mai at 3 p.m. PAL at first said it would be a utility flight without passengers but later decided to make it a commercial flight.

It was PAL chair Lucio C. Tan who ordered a special PAL Boeing 747-400 flight to Chiang Mai. The B747-400 is the largest aircraft in the PAL fleet with a capacity of 433 seats and 24 tons of cargo.

PAL canceled its regular, twice-daily service to Bangkok on Nov. 26 when antigovernment protesters took over Suvarnabhumi international airport in Bangkok, Thailand?s main gateway, and later, the secondary gateway of Don Muang airport.

The protesters are calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, whom they accuse of being a corrupt proxy for former Thai Premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup in 2006. Somchai is Thaksin?s brother-in-law.

Negrense couple

A prominent Negrense couple are among the Filipinos stranded in Thailand.

Jose Ma. Villanueva, president of First Farmers Holding Corp. in Talisay City, went to Thailand to attend a conference on Tuesday, accompanied by his wife Edith, president of the Sugar Industry Foundation Inc.

Villanueva had gone to Bangkok to attend an international seminar on co-generation and ethanol conducted by FO Lichts, a German organization.

About two hours after he and his wife left Suvarnabhumi airport for their Bangkok hotel, protesters took over the facility and shut it down on Tuesday night.

Desperate

Edith Villanueva said Sunday morning that she and her husband were getting desperate. She later said that she and her husband were already checking in at the PAL office in Bangkok for their land trip to Chiang Mai for a PAL flight to Manila on Monday.

As of press time, about 200 passengers had confirmed seats on the flight to Manila, according to PAL.

The number of Filipinos flying to Manila is expected to increase as the Philippine Embassy in Thailand steps up the travel arrangements of Filipinos stuck in hotels in Bangkok and elsewhere.

Goodwill

In a statement, Tan said the repatriation was out of goodwill and solidarity with fellow countrymen caught in a crisis away from home.

He said PAL was ready to operate additional emergency flights to Thailand should the situation warrant.

Seguis said the Department of Foreign Affairs was still mapping out the evacuation plan.

He said the stranded Filipinos had been given accommodations by airlines, many of them ticket holders of Cebu Pacific.

A couple, who was scheduled to fly back home past midnight Saturday, told INQUIRER.net on Sunday that they have not received the necessary assistance from Cebu Pacific. The couple also said they have met more than 10 passengers of the airline who were under similar circumstances.

Some stranded Filipinos are not feeling well because they were anxious to come home, according to the foreign undersecretary.

A report by the Philippine Embassy in Bangkok given to Seguis said embassy officials ?hope to finish (by Sunday) all the required papers? for the stranded Filipinos.

Initial funding

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo Sunday ordered the release of an initial $15,000 to cover the emergency repatriation of Filipinos.

The amount, which will be released through to Department of Foreign Affairs, will pay for the Filipinos? trip from the Suvarnabhumi airport to Chiang Mai where they will catch a Manila-bound PAL flight.

?There?s a critical problem now and the President has taken immediate measures,? Dureza said in an interview with dzRB radio.

?The embassy is taking all efforts to provide assistance to stranded passengers,? he said, while assuring that ?the protesters were not harming at all foreigners or tourists.?

Dureza said the Philippine government dropped the idea of moving Filipino passengers out from Thailand through Phuket because of the ?very strong antigovernment sector there.?

?(Thai officials) cannot assure the safety of passengers (there),? he said. With a report from Veronica Uy, INQUIRER.net