My recent visit to Bangkok reminded me of how irritating it was to use the rail transit, and in general how much more I like the buses.
1) Transit-wise, the Rabbit card is
still only for the BTS. What a
joke. However, I did notice that Rabbit could also be used at some shopping center food establishments.
2) The advertising plastered all over the BTS carriages seems like it would be very unsafe in times of emergency. Plus, you could never tell how full the damn carriage is. And where's the mute button for the advertising inside of the BTS?
3) Where's the Spider card? I thought that was the key to unite BTS/MRT/Airport Rail.
4) Single-use tickets aren't valid for the next day, and they're only valid for specific stations. Ridiculous. In places where I'm familiar with the territory, I've tended to buy a ticket in advance (e.g. for a metro somewhere, when I'm lugging bags to an airport/train station) so as to not have to deal with peak traffic ... at the ticket counters/machines.
5) The major bus complaint is that at the newer bus stops, there are screens telling you when certain buses will be stopping there. However, those screens are only in Thai. Detractors might say, "then go learn Thai." I get that short-term visitors don't tend to use the bus (save for a few lines involving Sukhumvit/Khao San), but if you're going to have the name of the bus stop in English (and at random bus stops, a bilingual bus route guide), why not just have the screen quickly alter between Thai and English.
On the other foot, the good news is that those bus stops with screens tend to have wi-fi; just zip to
this website and it's all good.
6) [is there a bus between Ekkamai and Sala Daeng? Doesn't seem that way. I guess the Skytrain is the reason
]