Bangkok Transportation Tips by Fra.da.

'Mode': TO
Category: Airplane
Getting TO/AROUND: Suvarnabhumi is the brand new airport of Bangkok. The previous one is now being used by the Thai army only. I landed at Suvarnabhumi last January and I was really impressed by the new airport! How can I describe it? Huge, modern, new, clean, .... A real hub!! The immigration area works very well. Although there are always a lot of overseas airplanes landing at the same time, the lines are never crowded and in a few minutes you get a stamp on your passport with "Suvarnabhumi - Thailand Admitted" written on! The luggage area is also very big. Belts are long enough so that passengers can look at them withouth problems. When luggage are about to be sent on a belt, you are told not about flight number (of course) but also if the bags on the belt are the "first ones to be delivered" or the "last ones", so you know when you can start getting worried if you haven't collect your bags yet!!!
Tip: if you fly from BKK to an International destination with Thai, be prepared to go to the airport in advance. Thai Airways has just few counters working for all international departure and the line is really really long if there are some overseas flights leaving I had to fly to Yangon and I was about to miss my flight! Then it will take almost half an hour to reach your gate. So be there early if you want to have a look to Suvarnabhumi King Power Duty Free...

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'Mode': TO
Category: Airplane
Getting TO/AROUND: I flew to Thailand once with Singapore Airlines and three times with the national airline, Thai Airways International. I like flying Thai because it means that I am going to my beloved Thailand, anyway I think that Thai is not an excellent airline such as Singapore Airlines, the aircrafts used on my trips were quite old, food ok but not that tasty, and during my last night trip back to Italy the lights were broken and the main screen was not working. I need to say that I like 2 things about Thai:
*women are given an orchid at the end of each flight;
* Thai employees don't even check the wheigh of your luggage while checking in... and that was so good to me, because after shopping in BKK it's so easy to carry more than 20 kg luggage!!!

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Car/Motor Home
Getting TO/AROUND: While in BKK, I always use taxies to travel around. There are plenty of taxies so you will always find a free one for you. Taxi fares are really cheap, although sometimes there is so much traffic in BKK that it may take one hour to run 3 km. Sometimes taxi drivers can ask you that 100 THB (=2,5 US$) or even more to take you to your destination. This generally happens at night or in the rush hours. But it's ok, it's not that much though!
A normal taxi can accomodate up to 4 persons plus the driver of course. I was travelling in a group of 5 of us and taxi drivers always allowed us to share one car. So we gave them an extra tip!
Just a few taxi drivers can speak English. The main ones will not understand what you say, even if you are just trying to tell them that you want to go to "Siam Sq" or "Erewan" or wherever. So ask the hotel concierge to write down your destination in Thai and the hotel name/address to go back. Luxury hotels already provide business cards in Thai for taxi drivers.

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: Well, the first time I went to Thailand I was really excited about trying the typical "tuk tuk". My first experience was not so good: the tuk tuk was as expensive as a taxi, and breathing the BKK pollution was so bad! So we just took one within the Dusit park, and that was amazing.
In 2007, my friend Marco whom I met in BKK last January told me that it was impossible to catch a tuk tuk without paying less than 100 THB... Well, do catch a taxi instead and avoid breathing the pollution!
I noticed that there are fewer tuk tuk in BKK than in the past... now the tuk tuks are mainly for tourists, and they are more expensive than taxies!

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