It's not just third-world or foreign airports that can be "weird" and require extra preparation.

Two friends of mine, on separate occasions, missed their NW flights out of TOL because the TSA screeners had never seen a boarding pass printed from NW's website. Each time, due to rush-hour traffic and underestimating how far TOL is from DTW, they didn't get to security until 20-30 minutes before departure, so the Mesaba/NW Airlink employees had already taken off their "ticket agent" hats and put on their "gate agent" hats, so there was no one behind the ticket counter to print them boarding passes that would look "real" to the TSA screener. Both missed their flights to DTW. One waited for the next TOL-DTW flight and (obviously) missed her connection. The other drove back to Detroit and made his connection, but had to argue with the DTW agents to resurrect his reservation, which had been cancelled for missing the first leg.