Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Don Muang Airport

I thought my story "Miraculously Bangkok" was the last about Don Muang...as the spanking new and futuristic "Suvarn...airport" opened late last year.

Recent news seems to suggest that the miracle may continue. The authorities are planning to move a significant part of air operations back to Don Muang to allow corrective and improvement works to be done at "Suvarn". As usual in Thailand or rather Bangkok...not everyone agrees.

There certainly are grounds for concern. Yes! many cities are served by more than one airport, London, Shanghai amongst some of them...why not Bangkok? The airport authorities are probably the only party that could answer the question, "can they manage?" I remembered some difficulties at Don Muang over whether we were exiting at Terminal 1 or 2. Thankfully these were just adjacent to each other. With the two airports being such a distance apart mess-ups will have more serious consequences. Even without a mess up, it would take some clever and artful scheduling to match connecting flights such that the convenience of transferring passengers willbe optimized.

For me, I am happy to go back to Don Muang. I have already begun to miss my Barbecued Duck Rice and Bitter Gould Soup at the Don Muang Village. I am sure the Uncle at the store will be happy to see me too.

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