josephbloggs

Glad I came in today, no lines at all. Just like when I came in last month, and also a couple of weeks before that. These monster lines are not normal at all and tend to happen only when there are flight schedule delays meaning a bunch of arriving aircraft get bunched up and dock at the same time. Even so that snake line in the picture is not horrendous and should move fairly well.

I just came through the airport. The "horrendous queues" are freaks and are not the norm at all (I travel a lot and have never had one). Plane from Singapore was full, had a long walk from gate C2, lots of other people on the walk from other flights. Got to the first arrival hall, there's an electronic sign showing the waiting time at that one and the waiting time at the next one (in this case it said five minutes and two minutes). I carried on to the Fast Track and can report the dedicated Fast Track area is now open again after refurbishment. Straight to a counter (all manned), a cute female IO was very friendly and smiley, I was through in less than a minute. As I was walking to the baggage carousel and passed the "normal" immigration the guy who was in front of me on the plane came through just ahead of me, so it was faster than walking to Fast Track. I peeked through, seemed all desks were open and each had maybe two people waiting. It sure beat the throng that greeted me at Changi T1 on arrival on Monday. So yeah, if you have access to Fast Track use it, but don't be scared about the stories of monster queues, they happen once in a blue moon when there are exceptional circumstances.

Sigh. You must be an incredibly irritating person to live with (that's if anyone lives with you). This is my last reply to you because you keep labouring the same thing picking on semantics and it is incredibly dull. I am clearly not their target market because I don't live anywhere near the ferry and I don't want to go to Samui. No, of course not. Not sure why I thought that at all. Silly me.

Don't get him started. "Because they don't know if it is transport or an onboard experience" etc etc yawn yawn.

Oh dear. A little butt hurt that someone would renounce US citizenship in favour of Thailand? You do realise that the naturalisation process takes several years? I know he got it in 1991, I don't know when he started the process (it took my friend 16 years). But I do know that pretty much immediately after he received it he renounced his US citizenship. He didn't hang on to it and dump it later in life. So how exactly could he have renounced it 50 years ago? He is 62 now I think. Do they let children declare themselves stateless? You Americans are funny.

Sounds like Trump supporting over patriotic "USA!! USA!!" nonsense! And a sly dig at Thais to dig inferring that they never "do the right thing". "Happy to live under the umbrella of protection the USA offers". Again, more nonsense. He moved to Thailand as a child (14 years old), having lived in other parts os Asia prior to that. He has no ties to the US, he grew up here, started his businesses here and has been here ever since he was a child. If I was in his position I would have done the same, no doubt. But of course if you had grown up in Thailand, become successful here, made your life here and never planned to live in the US you would "do the right thing" and keep your useless US citizenship just to pay taxes there on all the money earned here, in Thailand. Right? Help to fund their wars. Or are you a hypocrite?

There are money exchange booths but as far as I am aware only foreign currency ATMs that need a foreign currency account with a Thai bank exist airside. Happy to be corrected though.

I used to go several times a year (1996 was my first trip) and loved it. Went there last about 10 years ago (?) with my parents and it was filthy and I was shocked. We checked out after one night and left. I never went back in those ten years until a few weeks ago and it was beautiful. Clean sand, clean sea, my kids (and me) were in the sea every day, it was fab. So seems like they have (literally) cleaned up their act. The resorts are much nicer now too.

No. That was the Central Group.

Yes, you just need to keep hold of your boarding pass. And generally there are no horrendous queues.

There are no ATM machines before immigration.

If you are coming from Samut Prakan then Suvarnabhumi is much closer - it is actually in Samut Prakan. Thai Smile, Bangkok Airways, Thai Vietjet, Thai AirAsia all go from Suvarnabhumi. I tend to find Thai Vietjet just fine for short hops.

Considering I have not done any market research, I have no idea of operating costs, I have no idea of demand, I am not party to their business plan - I have absolutely no idea. I live in Bangkok and might visit Samui once every 2-3 years at best so it is not of interest to me. Considering these guys have invested a heck of a lot of money in to this I assume they have some business credentials. Short answer, I don't know and really I don't care as the service is not for me. But I wish them well and hope it is successful. My question to you: why are so negative? Why are you picking apart every little word they use? Why does it bother you? Seems you are itching for it to fail which is a pretty sad position to hold in life.

Bang Saen is disgusting, Jomtien marginally better. Koh Samet is miles closer than Koh Chang, half the journey time.

There are. There is. https://www.plugshare.com/

Agree, Supply and demand. There is absolutely nothing stopping him from putting up his prices by 300 baht a night. If others chose not to it is up to them - you can't force that on the entire industry. He just lost a lot of my respect with this request.

Wow, just wow. Don't you think all the facts and evidence and testimony was possibly gone through during the trial before he was convicted? Or do you expect every single news report on his whereabouts to reprint the entire transcript of the trial just for you? What a nasty little post.

Bangkok has 50 districts. They were no styrophone krathongs in seven of them.

I would stay away from mainland beaches around Bangkok. In fact anywhere in the country the islands are much nicer. I would say Koh Samet. 2.5 hour drive from Bangkok, short boat trip. Fine white sand, clean water.

What are you talking about? They are hardly giving away any national secrets. Did you read the article? It talks of security cameras, road traffic measures, and that they've been rehearsing emergency response plans. It's is obvious that you engaged "negative response mode" based on the headline and you didn't read it. Unfortunately that seems to be the norm here. Way more detailed information in this release from "the real world". https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9201045/donald-trump-uk-state-visit-2019-protests/

Government agencies, schools. Who did you expect?

So do that then.

Jeez, you really do have a bee in your bonnet don't you. It is now very tiresome, give it a rest and get on with your life.

Do you get flowers too? I always get a smile and a courteous interchange with Thai immigration. Not so in the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, and definitely not in the UK which is just appalling. Where are your fabled ports?

Of course they plan by airline schedules. I am at the airport now and was through immigration in two minutes. And I have been in and out several times in the last few weeks and never more than a small queue. Why does everyone on here think Thai people are so moronic they don't have flight schedules? A schedule is a schedule but all it takes is for a few flight delays here and there to screw that right up and give you a situation you had't planned for. It's not good that it happens but it is really occasional (and I fly regularly for work) and is pretty much beyond control. Even at the busiest times I have never waited more than an hour, but usually it is 10-15 minutes. My last visit to Singapore - that bastion of efficiency - took me 45 minutes. And I spent over 90 minutes in a horrible throng at Heathrow recently. Give me Suvarnabhumi any day. And my bet is that most of the posters whinging and putting down the Thais don't actually fly and so don't know what they are talking about - they just see a photo posted on Tik Tok and assume that is the norm - it isn't.