Anyone who comes in or out of Thailand via Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok knows it has one of the worst immigration departments in the world. Long lines, rude and unfriendly immigration officers, and a seeming inability to get anything moving quickly, and a trip through Suvarnabhumi Airport’s immigration is always a nightmare.
That’s why it’s been funny to see how fast Suvarnabhumi’s immigration can move when they were the subject of a Bangkok Post article this week that slammed the department, followed by a slew of irate commentators who couldn’t wait to say how much they hated Suvarnabhumi’s immigration.
The article appeared on the Bangkok Post’s website on Monday. By Tuesday, the immigration department was defending itself against floods of criticism coming at it from all directions and, by Wednesday, Suvarnabhumi’s immigration department had an additional group of immigration officers in place to help shorten lines — 70 female police officers from the riot brigade that’s nicknamed the Sweet Troop in Thailand, or Kong Roi Namwan.
On top of that, immigration has also moved from those awful lines they used to have, one line in front of every immigration officer, to the typical ‘snake lines’ used everywhere else in the world. So now, when you line up at Suvarnabhumi’s immigration, you’ll have as much chance of catching your flight as everyone else in the line and not be stuck in that one line that’s just never going to move.
Thank you Pol Maj Gen Natthorn Phrosunthorn, chief of Immigration Division 2, and everyone else at Suvarnabhumi’s immigration division for implementing the new plan. All of Thailand thanks you.
As for the Sweet Troop, Suvarnabhumi’s latest immigration officers, you can see some of them in action on the video below. They really are lovely and will be a much more pleasant first impression of Thailand for visitors than most Thai immigration officers in the past have been.