Problems at Bangkok’s New Airport
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 02.05.07 | 8:07 AM ET
Perhaps it was all too good to be true. Bangkok’s $4 billion “Golden Land” international airport opened in September to great fanfare. Monks and Brahmin priests even went so far as to apologize to the spirits for any harm done in the airport’s planning and construction. But several months later, all’s not well. Problems ranging from “cracked taxiways to leaky roofs to inadequate bathrooms to luggage snafus” plague the airport, reports the San Francisco Chronicle’s Travelers’ Checks column. It gets worse: “The national airport authority has found some 61 issues at Suvarnabhumi needing repair or redesign that will cost an estimated $45 million and six months to fix.” Meanwhile, the airport can continue operating. Great.
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
Ben Keene 02.05.07 | 12:20 PM ET
Having just returned from Bangkok a little more than a week ago, I can report that there were people laboring away almost everywhere I looked at Suvarnabhumi: hanging light fixtures, landscaping elaborate gardens between terminals, etc. I got the distinct impression that it was still very much “under construction.” And in other good news for travelers to Thailand, the international departure tax just went up from 500 baht to 700.
Jim Benning 02.05.07 | 10:54 PM ET
Glad to hear they’re working on it, Ben, and that you survived the “construction”!