Across your experiences, what are the most inconvenient or biggest PITA parts of the arrival process for you? Telecom? Money changing? Getting to your hotel? Errands? Immigration?
Numer one: Finding ATM machines, which accept international money cards.
While I had good experiences (e.g.) in DPS, GRU, KUL, be aware of TPE (Taiwan) and KIX (Japan in general), SGN (Vietnam).
The high-tech nations of Japan and Taiwan have a tendency that most bank ATM machines do not like foreign credit or debit cards.
Number two (not anymore): Finding a retail shop for local SIM cards.
At BKK everything was deserted. The only queue I saw in the arrival area was the one at the SIM card shop. It was massive. Moreover, the shop had a sign posted that most data cards were sold out.
Anyway, from that I decided that I might not want to be online all the time.
Check in times as late as 4pm and check out times as early as 10am.
But there is a choice. Often you can check these times on the hotel website, before you book.
the person operating the jetway doesn't know how to work it correctly and/or the jetway just doesn't want to cooperate with the operator.
If I can speak the local language, that operator would hear some bad (but still legally correct) language from me, while disembarking.
Non functioning airport taxi systems also suck. I wish more airports would implement simple but working systems like BKK/DMK.
KUL is also good. You prepay at a desk (which accepts foreign money cards), get a voucher and off you go.
No worries about being overcharged or getting local currency!