Thanks to the terribly heavy traffic they must suffer every day, Bangkokians fail to understand the importance of punctuality.

Traffic is the eternal excuse for being late.

Even though Bangkok now has the Skytrain and the subway, they don't seem to have alleviated the irritatingly heavy traffic. It's a puzzle that some claim could be solved, but so far nothing has changed.

Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, an economic adviser to MasterCard International's Asia-Pacific unit, has visited Bangkok several times. Once in 1990, he had to jump on a motorcycle taxi and spread his arms out to carry his two suitcases all the way to the airport.

Another memorable experience back then was being stuck in the middle of the road, moving only two blocks in the space of an hour.

"I didn't know where I was going. If I'd known it was only a couple of blocks, I would have got out of the car and walked," recalled Hedrick-Wong.

He was back again this week to hold a press conference announcing MasterCard's Consumer Confidence Index survey results.

Since he's had some personal experience with Bangkok tardiness, when some of the reporters who showed up late blamed it on the heavy traffic, Hedrick-Wong, quite understandably, understood.

But although some instances of lateness are acceptable, others are not. How about the government's mega-projects or the opening of the new airport?

Maybe it's that compromising nature of Thais that leads them to accept this kind of suffering.