Officials silent on Phuket Airport immigration mess

[eisfeld]

Went through immigration in the new terminal recently. There weren't that many people arriving (no big airplanes) but the queue at immigration was quite long. Quite a bunch of counters were staffed but they took forever for each person. I waited about 40 minutes in the queue. When it was my turn, the officer asked me what I do in Thailand and I truthfully said I spend most of my time here. He probably didn't like that I had 3 tourist visas in my passport (from my home country) and suspected that I illegally worked here. I told him no because I own a company in Europe and am several months per year out of Thailand. I offered to show him good evidence of this but he didn't want to see it, he was adamant that I illegally work here. Of course he didn't want to tell me why he thinks so and just repeated his one sentence like a broken record player. First two times I thought "ok he wants to make sure" but after the fifth time it just felt stupid. He then handed my passport to another officer behind him who seemed visually happy to have been handed a "bad guy" or something, didn't even look at anything and told me I work illegally in Thailand and that I can't come in.  He wouldn't listen to anything and then with full pride walked me to his boss, a senior immigration officer who looked about 10 seconds at my passport and me (I don't look like a bum) and told that other officer to stop the crap and let me in as it was pretty obvious that I'm not one of the guys they want to keep out. That other officer lost a bit of face I assume and instead of walking to a booth and stamping me in, just gave my passport to some other booth without telling that officer what to do. Then that officer in turn started the whole nonsense from scratch all the while in the middle always processing some chinese people who he asked questions, which they didn't understand so he gave up and stamped them in after a while. There was no reason to always interrupt the processing of me apart from trying to show me how unimportant to him I am. After some back and forth that last officer finally got the word from his boss and let me in. Maybe I should just pretend next time to not speak any english or thai? Seems more efficient... what a disgrace.

 

Honestly I have never experienced so much nonsense and unprofessionalism at any immigration. I saw several other people being sent from booth to booth so I guess it's not only me who got that funny treatment. I travel quite a bit and never have had any issues anywhere (apart from Israeli border control grilling a bit because they didn't like a Malaysian stamp in my passport but I can understand that a bit and they were professional and intelligent about it). The building might have improved but the quality of staff went downhill.

[stevenl]

This morning 10.20 arrival, outside before 11.00 hours.

[eisfeld]

36 minutes ago, stevenl said:

This morning 10.20 arrival, outside before 11.00 hours.

 

International flight from Russia? How was it, full airplane?

[stevenl]

 
International flight from Russia? How was it, full airplane?

Guests of mine, yes, full plane.

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