Suvarnabhumi Feedback

Having passed through this continuously beleaguered airport I would like to offer some comments of positivity to counter the negative media reports. On my international arrival and departure last month (January 2007) I found there to be no delays, no baggage disappearance, plenty of toilets and tremendous amounts of shops.

I saw no cracks in the runways, no planes crashed or collided and the place looked as new and shiny as it did six months before when I first passed through.

My complaints about the place are fairly minimal. The shops are pretty expensive – the people I was traveling with managed to spend one hundred US dollars on a couple of boxes of chocolate! Also the terminals are too damn big and it can take a lot of walking to make it to your gate on time.

No doubt there are some problems with the runways and some other areas (I suspect shoddy contract work will no doubt to be the reason) but from what I understand the political situation in the country means that there is significant capital to be gained by the current administration blaming Thaksin Shinawatra for this and many other things.

Air Travel Annoyances

Following on from a recent spate of travel around Asia I have been moved to compile a list of grievances, annoyances and irritations. In no particular order they are:

1) People that do not fill out their immigration and customs forms and cause queues because of their forgetfulness/neglect.
2) Loud children.
3) Loud adults.
4) Queue jumpers.
5) Loud, queue jumping Koreans.
6) Airlines that do nothing about loud children, adults and queue jumping Koreans.