Bangkok Airport

Attached are some pictures of the airports. This is not a grass hut with a dirt strip, as one might have envisioned.

The Singapore Airport is actually one of the facilities of which they are most proud. Unlike US airports, you don’t get screened for security until you go into the waiting area for each gate. As a result, the public can go to the airport and hit the shops there.

There’s an economic incentive program that I think is good for everyone – No $4.00 a bottle waters because there’s no corner on the market. Things looked to be priced about the same as in a regular mall (at least as well as I could convert!)

The Bangkok airport is similarly a massive structure that’s aesthetically pleasing. There are statues and artwork all around, even though some was covered away for construction where they were sprucing up a bit.

The other interesting thing we noticed is that there is signage everywhere that’s in a gazillion languages. There’s not just an assumption that everyone speaks English, although that does appear to be the default.

The native language uses an alphabet that’s very artistic, but unfortunately is about as comprehensible to me as Japanese or Arabic. The last time I can remember us having that much trouble with native language signs was in the Czech Republic, where our clues were like a crossword – 14 letters, begins with an “F”, no vowels.

We can’t even figure out what the vowels are in Thai!

Incidentally, all the movies on Singapore Airlines all have Japanese subtitles, which I couldn’t turn off.