Maybe I've been late in this encounter for I've always tried to avoid travels to Thailand in thes e last two years due to the political situation there. But landing at Thailand's Suvarnabhumi airport for the first time since it opened wasn't an unpleasant experience at all. Despite all the negative news about how rushed the project was and all the problems that were supposed to have plagued this airport which the previous Thaksin government bull-dozed its way into launching wasn't apparent to me somehow. Perhaps I didn't spend that much time at the airport or perhaps those stories had more than a tinge of political salt and pepper added.
There was a lot more space than the old Don Muang International, and we didn't have to fly over a golf course worrying that an errant golf ball hit by an airforce general might choke up the engine on landing. Unfortunately all the space led to the bottleneck at the immigration counters.
The long immigration queues speak a lot about this country and, for that matter, any other I've visited, especially so after flying through Singapore where 20 minutes was all it took for me to get off the plane and onto a taxi after clearing immigration, collecting my bags and clearing customs.
A new feature at the immigration counter is a small, digital "web-cam-like" camera sitting up on a stand at the counter. A bit early I thought as there was still some months before the USA insists on biometric passports for all their visitors. Mine isn't biometric so there really wasn't any point in taking my photo and that of others. Surely Interpol will not have biometric info on their database yet for checking to. Maybe their officers don't trust their own eyes and prefer to compare our passport photos to the one they take with that little camera. Or perhaps that was one sure way they can print a "current" mug shot in the papers should one get onto the "wanted list". I can't help but wonder what happens to photos of those ladies who wear such heavy makeup that they themselves get a shock when they look at the mirror in the morning?
40 minutes later, I was out of the airport, having spent 30 minutes at immigration and another 10 minutes waiting for the bags. But that's a lot better than Kuala Lumpur where one has to spend anything from 20 to 40 minutes at immigration depending on your time of arrival, and another 20 to 30 minutes (regardless of how long you've spent at the immigration queues) waiting for your bags. I can only conclude that the KL International Airport must either have a complex and unique security screening system for all arriving bags, OR they're just not in the mood to get visitors out of their airport within a reasonably short time. But then again, Asian airports may already be the darlings for those who are used to long delays (whatever the reasons) at European and American airports.
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