Thailand Customs - Suvarnabhumi Airport

Thailand customs sucks! They are horrendous and they are slow. Perhaps the only country beating them at this is Indonesia. You would think that after building a new state of the art Airport, they would design it in such a way that the flow of people works better.

But, at last - I have found a trick! Well, it's not really a trick, it's just timing. If you get there between 10-10:15pm, there is no one at customs! You can be out of there in 1 minute! See the problem is, in the evening between 6-9 you have flights arriving from such places as Doha, Abu Dhabi, Kathmandu, .... now, don't misread what I am saying, but the fact is that from my observation I have noticed that Customs tends to take longer to examine a person coming from a Middle East/South Asian country, then they do for a person arriving from ASEAN, European, USA. So, if your plane lands 5 mins after the one from Pakistan arrived, then I'm very sorry my friend but you are going to be waiting in the customs que for a long time (maybe 1 hr!)

PS: Once you pass customs, take note of where you are suppose to pick up the bags. Sometimes it will say belt 16, but after standing there for a while someone will change their minds and all of a suddent your flight will no longer be belt 16. You have to go back, check the screen then find out that you can now pick up your bag all the way at the other end :)