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Published: October 31st 2006
The last week in Bangkok had been kind of hectic. With the military coup plot interfering with the planned opening ceremony of the new gigantic Suvaranbhumi (pronounced suvanapoom) International Airport, I am sure there were a few of us onboard the plane wondering if we'd be leaving the airport bags in hand or not. The shift had taken place just two days earlier, a reported 800 truckloads of luggage and equipment had been sent from Don Muang Airport as the last plane had landed up north. There were a number of disheartening reports in the local press, hundreds of passengers stranded without their luggage, malfunctioning computer systems and things like that. Then there is the fact that the entire airport is built on marshland and there were concerns raised about the quality of the surfacing of the runways. I paid extra attention to the lifejacket ritual before we took off. I had also found a document that detailed the anatomy of the new megalithic airport, mainly to find out if there was any truth to the rumours that taxis would not be allowed to operate from the main terminal, but from a bus station located a few blocks away. Construction has
apparently begun for an extension of the skytrain (or similar) to the airport, but the project is heavily delayed, and when/if it will complete is anbody's guess. A number of supporting concrete pillars had to be dismantled and redone due to poor craftmanship. How reassuring...
Anyway, the new terminal building is quite a sight, the funky looking gates are suitably organic enough, and driving up the road to the main terminal building in the evening you'd be forgiven to wonder if the Galactic Empire is building its latest Death Star here. However, on the inside things were less impressive. Construction was said to be around 75%!f(MISSING)inished, I dont know about that, but the arrival halls were quite gloomy and unpolished, grey concrete and metal as far as the eye can see. The complaints about confusing signs proved to be true; the stream of travellers pouring out of the gate and then suddenly stopping and fanning out in different directions. You will come across big signs and virtually next to each other. Although there seemed to be a reasonable amount of desks open the queues moved along at snails pace, frustrated travellers
jumping queues desperately looking for a break. As I came closer to the desk the main reason appeared to be that pretty much most of the arriving visitors hadn't bothered to fill out the immigration forms completely.
Having cleared immigration I was pleased to see that the new taxi scheme had either been abandonded or simply not put in place yet, as taxis were allowed to pick up passengers at the ground floor of the terminal building. Perhaps this will be replaced by the shuttle buses that will ferry passengers to the planned bus terminal from where public taxis were supposed to operate, let's just hope that this will not happen. The airport is far away from the city as it is, and queueing for a bus transfer to go stand in another queue isn't exactly the kind of progress we'd like to see. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the responsible ministry had declared that they will clamp down on any taxi mob wanting to do business at Suvarnabhumi. Why they had let them stay in business at Don Muang for so long was not explained... I soon found that the taxi drivers don't
seem to be very happy about going here, I was immediately asked if I'd prefer to go off the meter, and the guy worried a lot about the afternoon traffic. Fortunately we didn't get stuck in any jams, traffic on the southbound tollway was nicely corked up though.
After I had checked in and taken a longed for shower I remembered that I was supposed to pick up my air tickets at the hotel reception and headed down to sort it out. Naturally they were not aware of any such letter, and they could not find any messages for me either. Great, either the tickets and visa had not been sent, either they were delayed in the post or maybe they've been sent to the wrong place. Lovely. Fortunately I reached my guide Tshering in Bhutan and he confirmed to me that the documents were kept at the Druk Airways office... over at the airport, on the other side of town. Great! I decided to head out there on Sunday morning, and spent the rest of the day meeting my old friend Kay and generally enjoying my stay in town. The next day I tried to give the airline
office a call. Nobody picked up. I called both of their numbers a few times and it struck me that maybe, just maybe there is no one at the office today. After fumbling around a bit we found the number to the airport information desk, but either they didn't speak English or they really had no clue about where the airline offices were located in the building and if they were open.
Not really looking forward to a long trip to the airport to return empty-handed and with another event that would only lead to frustration I decided that I'd simply turn up at the airline counter a bit early on Monday morning to sort out any hassles. Seeing as the flight departs at 6.50 this meant being at the airport preferably sometime around four in the morning. This in turn meant that I had to check out from the hotel at three in the morning. On Sunday evening I again faced that dreadful decision; taking the risk to catch a few hours of sleep and risk oversleeping, or staying up all night and arriving on my busy trip feeling tired from scratch. In the end nature decided for
me, as I simply fell asleep on top of the bed.
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