A honeymoon couple from Colindale have told the Foreign Office to “step up its game”, claiming it did nothing to help them escape troubled Thailand.

Newlyweds Rayna Malde and Neil Chandarana, from Swan Drive, spent £1,500 on flights, accommodation and phone calls trying to get home from Bangkok after its airport was over-run by anti-Government protesters.

They finally managed to board a flight to Germany from a military airbase early on Monday morning — four days after they were due to return home.

Ms Malde, 28, said: "The whole thing made me really angry. We didn’t get any help from our Government whatsoever.

"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, but when I called the British Embassy the people there just told me to try phoning the airlines.

"It wasn’t good enough. It needs to step up its game.”

The honeymooners were among thousands of stranded tourists whose flights were cancelled after the People’s Alliance for Democracy escalated its efforts to depose the prime minister.

They were due to fly home last Thursday, but heard from a taxi driver on the morning that the airport was closed.

“We didn’t think things were too serious at that point,” said Ms Malde.

“But then it got to Saturday and we heard the police had been overpowered and taken hostage at the airport. People started telling us to just get out in any way we could before a civil war broke out.

“That’s when I called the embassy for help and it hit home that we were really alone.”

Ms Malde and her husband, a 30-year-old actuary, relied on the English news for information, but this dried up after the Mumbai attacks stole the headlines.

Unable to speak any Thai, and with few staff able to speak English, the couple found themselves starting to panic.

After spending up to five hours a day calling the airlines, they were finally offered a flight to Frankfurt from a military airport in U-Tapao, near Bangkok.

But on arrival at the makeshift check-in at a nearby hotel, they discovered thousands more people queuing for flights.

“Everyone had been given the same confirmation and all it meant was that we were on a list of people who could apply to get a flight,” she said.

“It was awful. We were packed in like sardines and moved three metres in three hours.”

The couple eventually managed to board a coach to the airport — where they came face-to-face with thousands more frustrated travellers.

Here they waited a further few hours in the dark, unable to sit down or get a drink.

The most frustrating part of the experience, said Ms Malde, was seeing officials from Australia and New Zealand taking people’s details and handing out factsheets.

“Other countries seemed to be getting help, but there was no-one from the UK to be seen,” she said.

The couple finally made it home at 2.30pm on Monday — £1,500 out of pocket.

They have been told by their insurer they cannot reclaim the money because their policy excluded terrorism-related delays.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the couple’s frustration was understandable but insisted the Bangkok embassy staff had done all they could to help.

He said: “We had 50 to 60 staff at airports and touring hotels, but there were 6,000 British people out there and there was a limited amount we could do for any one individual.

"It was a question of time and resources and we felt these were best spent getting a co-ordinated response from airlines and lobbying them to lay on extra flights."