Gay Boy Thailand

The inspiration?

I bring you a world exclusive – the first interview with myself. It is about the new airport in Bangkok.

What sums up your Suvarnabumi experience?
It’s an airport.

Is that all?
Pretty much. Planes land and take off. People come and go.

Is it impressive?
Only if you haven’t seen a large airport before. Most Thais have not so they go there for sightseeing. A bus full of school children came when I was there. They were impressed.

Is it beautiful?
Well… if you like the oil refinery style you might enjoy the design. It is glass and concrete and metal. The gates have unpainted concrete ceilings with bare metal pipes. There is a lot of that.

Does it have a distinct Thai feel?
No. The colours are shades of grey. There are a few art pieces to represent Thailand but they are not enough. Suvarnabumi reminds me of the airport in Hamburg. Maybe they used the same architect.

Hamburg Airport

But the airport does the job?
It did for me.

Are people helpful there?
When I departed I was lost for a moment about where to go after checking in and a man in uniform kindly helped me in the wrong direction. It then took three ladies a few minutes to figure out if my destination was a domestic or international one. But to be fair they have a lot of new staff since many of the old ones failed to show up at the new airport, as it was too far to commute from their homes.

What about the infamously tight arrival area?
It was as crowded as I had heard. I bumped into people and had to fight my way out. I had half a dozen limo touts yell “taxi sir?” in my face. The so-called limo is 1100 baht. They can stuff it.

How do the taxies cope?
Some wanted 400 baht from the Silom area but I told them no way. I got one that used the meter. It came to 253 baht. The distance was 35 km using the elevated toll way. It was 20 km to the old airport.

Can you get a taxi going to town?
I used the old trick and went upstairs to departures. It still works and many people do that. Incoming taxi drivers may try to get 500 baht at first but after a couple of doors slammed at them (mainly by Thais) they mellow.

Immigration?
They were quicker now. It seems they have dropped typing manually what the scanner reads from the passport anyway. And they don’t have those small cameras on a stick anymore.

Any surprises?
My Air Asia plane spent 15 minutes after landing taxing around the airport. I timed it. That’s quite a while to drive around in a Boeing 737 as if it was a bus. Considering this the rest was efficient. Total time from touch down to getting outside the terminal was 40 minutes. Six minutes was disembarking from the plane. Five minutes was in the transfer bus. Two minutes was Immigration. The rest was walking.

Did your suitcase arrive?
I only had carry-on. I played it safe.