My friend and I recently visited Thailand and, as many others, started with a few days in Bangkok. Besides the scam described below, almost all the scams described on this website, happened to us as well. Luckily, we knew most versions and could walk away from them quite easily

On our second day we had seen the Grand Palace and we were on our way to Wat Pho. It's a hot and humid day and we decide to rest for a few minutes and have a drink at a small stall selling water and soft drinks (Sanamchai Rd). After sitting at a table for a while a Thai man, who has been reading his newspaper the minutes before, starts a little chat with us. He is neatly dressed and carries a briefcase. He talks about the weather, his work at the office (Thai Airways), his coming trip to Chiang Mai... etc. At first we try to ignore him and give short answers and no questions in return. He keeps chatting to us anyway... When my friend takes her map out of her backpack to determine the shortest way to Wat Pho (oeps, what a mistake!!), he strikes!

Where are we going? He might be able to help us!
He points out the directions to Wat Pho, but informs us that at the moment there's a specials ceremony going on at nearby Temple, Wat Suthat, also known by the locals as the Temple of Good Luck. This ceremony occurs only 4 times a year and is a special occasion to pray for good luck for you, your marriage and your family. The ceremony is suppose to end at 12:30, at the time speaking it's almost 12:00.

He offers to arrange a tuk-tuk for us. If we arrange one ourselves, he says, we will only end up paying a price too high. After visiting the Temple of Good Luck, we can always go to Wat Pho as originally planned.

We don't see any harm anymore in this nice, polite man who's only interest seems to truly help us out. We accept his offer.

We walk from the stall to the mainroad with him, chat away a little more, and when we come up a tuktuk driver he start talking in Thai. He assures us that the driver will take good care of us and, as discussed before, will take us first to the Temple of Good Luck and then to Wat Pho. Afterwards he will also drive us to the official Busstation, where we can arrange our trip to Chiang Mai (we told him minutes before that that will be our next destination). The final stop will be a special silk factory in the North of Bangkok, where no tourists, only locals, come...

Total price 60 bath...
According to the friendly Thai, the whole trip will take about 2 hours.

Before we know it, we agree, and are on our way to the Temple of Good Luck.

After a while, common sense seeps back into our systems and we realise we are scammed!!!

We decide to play along for a while and visit the first temple. Indeed a ceremony was going on here (and we had the pleasure to take part of it, with no other farangs in sight!). Afterwards, the driver drove us to Wat Pho. This is where we said thank you and paid him 40B (what we thought was a reasonable price for 2 very short drives). He, offcourse, was angry and tried to persuade us into continuing the trip as planned. Finally he took the money and left.

Two days later, when we visited the Amulet Market (near Wat Mahathat), another English speaking, correctly dressed man, approached us with a similar story. A nice chat, showed us pictures of his children, even visited our home-country recently... In the end he advised us some nice places to see and drew a route on our map. He was even willing to arrange a tuktuk for us, so that we wouldn't pay too much... We thanked him and politely said NO... His smile faded and he walked away immediately...

Comments (4)