A couple of fridays ago, it was a complete mob scene at the Sukhumvit station ticketing area. Long lines of people waiting in line to buy tokens at ticket booths as well as ticket machines, one of which was out of order. This was at around 6pm. It took me over 15 minutes to buy a token. Once you get the token, it was fine from that point on. The trains themselves were crowded but not bad.

I was told that this was not an infrequent scene during rush hour periods. Usually there are additional staff selling tokens by the escalator to supplement the ticket booths and machines during rush hour, but those extra staff had just closed up shop and left, despite the total mess of long lines and over-crowding. Some passengers were taking photos of the scene and no doubt posting them online to complain...