heres a tip' rent an appartment rather than stay at a hotel' you can get a 4 star serviced appartment from 2000 baht per day in BKK, and they take much better care for you in my experience.

Tim can i have some details about getting a appartment in bKK. please :)

Please post more details of the hotels in question so that we can take action.

one nice apt building is called 'bangkok patio' just google it, another i stay at was known as 'arasia park' now name has changed to 'abloom exclusive serviced apartments' directrooms.com have many serviced apartments from budget to luxury for rent in BKK they have always been good to do business with.

try google 'serviced apartments in bangkok' i'm sure there will be a whole range to choose from.

hi john, almost everywhere in BKK has very nice service apt, yes I also feel that service apartment are much better than hotels in terms of their service attitude and it makes you feel more at home. Normally I stayed in Saladang area, u can try Saladang Colonade or Silom Serene. They are both near Saladang BTS, S. Colonade is less than 5 mins walk and Silom Serene is approx. 10mins. Enjoy ur trip!

For shorter stays you can also try the guesthouses , from 500 Baht pr night. Just walk around in the sois and have a look at the rooms before you decide to stay. You will save a lot of money.

Montien was the worst and most blatant about it.expecially pretending they could not speak or understand English to my travel agent.

Easy to fix this. Just don't go to Patpong. The market stalls are well ovepriced. Up tp 4 times the street price you can buy elsewhere. There are much better places to shop. The place is full of scammers. Do not follow a tout to an upstairs club. If you are curious about the bars forget it. They are expensive and full of ugly Thai woman. (As metioned above Kings places are the exception) Bangkok is full of bars that are tourist friendly. Try Soi Cowboy first BUT always asked for the menu and get drink prices first. Try sticking to the bigger venues if you do not want to be scammed.

ALWAYS ask the price of anything before you commit to buy. You don't go to a restaurant and order without knowing the price at home so why do it here.

We found a bad experience from a group of people staying in the Sea Sun Sand Resort Phuket in Thailand. It is not very unusual that this kind of people happen. The hotel management if they are Thai always stands on the staff side, even if their wrong, they do not know the words “the customer is always right”. I have the same problem with other hotels in Thailand and but they never reported to the media and most of the time a report is never mad at the police station.
Having stayed at the hotel for a couple of days, we build up a level of trust and decided that the room safe with combination code would be a safer option than having to carry passports and cash to the beach day in day out.. this was a big mistake..

Each day I would check to see how much money I had left to spend before the holiday came to an end. A few days before departure I confirmed that I still had around $1000USD in funds available. I then locked the safe and as I had previously done in the past few days, left my room key with reception.

After dinner and drinks one night I returned to my room to find that $200USD had gone missing from the safe, unusually not the entire amount, and that nothing else had gone missing from the room. I reported the incident immediately to the night manager and he suggested that perhaps a lady of the night had stole my money, which of course was not the case as there was no lady of the night staying in my room!..

I then called my friend in the adjacent room and he also confirmed that $200USD had gone missing from his safe.

The very next morning we visited hotel security and found that the 24 hour surveillance video had been deleted in certain parts. As we were exiting the security office 5 other Australian tourists questioned us as to whether or not money had gone missing from our safe, as had with theirs!

It a short amount of time, the whole lobby was filled with international guests reporting the same findings.

We demanded to speak with the general manager and were conveniently informed that the GM would not return to the hotel until after we had left Thailand. Staff also refused to cooperate in providing us with the GM’s mobile phone contact details.

At this point our group of victims visited the tourist police only to be informed that this is not the first time this had happened at this particular hotel and that the police were finding it very difficult to lay any charges against the hotel.
The group then returned to the lobby of the hotel to await the arrival of the police detectives which took the most part of four hours. We asked if we could make a call through to the police at reception and were told that we would have to pay extra to make a cheap local call, certainly no customer service whatsoever.

Finally the detectives arrived and we sat through a session of the daily surveillance video footage taken outside of my room. While the detectives did not question the number of deleted passages of footage, one particular piece of footage had not been deleted and mistakenly overlooked by the syndicate of criminal hotel employees.

The footage involved a house maid arriving at the entrance of my room with no cleaning utensils, entering my room, spending about 10 to 15 minutes in my room (clearly helping herself to my safe) then walking out suspiciously with the contents of my safe wrapped in a towel and not returning to my room. At this point, the detectives informed us that they would take the room maid down to the police station for further questioning.

The detectives simply escorted her to the front entrance of the hotel and at this point the detectives left the scene while we witnessed the house maid remain within the hotel compound.

The group of tourists were simply outraged by this. We stocked up on local beers and set up shop in the lobby of the hotel informing every other hotel guest of the incident and warning them against the risk of leaving money in the room safe.

The hotel F&B manager, security staff and even hotel tour operator accused us of being liars, threatened to smash bottles over our faces and then called the riot police.

Riot police (that looked more like thugs in police uniforms) arrived and also threatened us, pressuring the group to check out of the hotel A.S.A.P.

Clearly the hotel is well connected with local police and this system of fleecing tourists seems to have been established quite some time ago.

We clearly have no rights, the hotel is not accepting any responsibility and is clearly involved in a criminal racket of stealing money from tourists. The tourist police are simply corrupt and of no use.

Upon returning to Beijing I intend on writing to local media to warn tourists about the risks of staying in low-medium budget accomodation if visiting Phuket over the holiday season.

This really has left me with a bad taste of Thailand and I do not intend on EVER returning.

Hogan.... A truly sad tale, and one I can easily believe, I have found on my travels through Thailand that if I have to use the Hotel Safe, I use a good padlock on a small handbag especially for travelling and or/ sealing wax with a special stamp with my insignia and then place in safe. It has become a dilemma now whether to carry large amounts of cash around and get it stolen or credit cards where you can be cloned very easily, so insurance on credit cards is important. I dont bother with expensive jewels that cant be worn 24/7.Insurance companies state that all adequate care must be taken over your personel possessions but if the police wont give you a report then your stuck. It has got to the stage that they steal your shoes outside of the temples now (can you imagine!) I mean if someone wants a pair of shoes I will gladly buy them a pair but to leave me shoeless in the city is sad, so now I take a rucksac with me and place shoes, camera, valuables in it and a lock and carry it on the front.

I was given a small room at first when I had booked and paid for a suite room at one hotel in Phuket over the internet. Could have been an error with the check in staff or could have been a scam, people dont like to make a fuss and complain sometimes because it makes it sound like you are in the wrong and life is too short to get rustled over a hotel room for a few nights.

A small percentage of the Thai people are using their stupid racism and jealousy to make people who spend money in their country think twice about coming back, this just hurts all the Thai people, most of whom are great.

Seems that organised and police endorsed crime is everywhere in Thailand, just how do you stop something that is so ingrained into the establishment of a country from the top downwards?

So everyone who is dishonest can think well if the police rip off tourists to add to their incomes and the politicians rip off the tourists then so can everybody because its OK, right? Crazy

some years ago I had paid in advance ( cash when checking in) for a room in patong.

I had to return to usa suddely, and only used the room for one night, and requested the unused payment back, they refused.

next trip to patong area I mentioned in earshot of a few thai ppl that I was kicked out of the hotel ( patone inn hotel) and was not able to retreive the money I had hidden in the room.

seems for weeks there after, every time someone with a thai "friend" checked into room 220 the room ( mostly the air cond) was trashed by someone looking for something.

I wonder if they ever figured out what was going on?

Now Mikey I laughed at that one..... very funny and they only probably found cockroaches.
After the Tsunami in Phuket, you should have seen the way the Thai people were breaking open all the tourists safe deposit boxes with crow bars, taking the jewllery off the deceased RIP..... there is no doubt about it but as a singaporean we are so different from the Thai people in our upbringing and culture, so we are constantly shocked.. There was an Lauda Airways crash many moons ago going over to the islands and the robbing of the dead was prevalent... I always smile hoping "pee" will come back to haunt them lol
(PEE=GHOST)

Khun Issan

I'm glad you found it funny,

seems greed will get them every time.

( check my report on getting incorrect change at airport some time ago to see how it backfired on them also)

Mikey, your so right there.... I will check on that report when I get out of bed!... but I appreciated the humour, imagining all the little bodies in your ex room trying to find the hidden cash.....I was busy telling my family today to make sure that you concealed wallet, credit cards, keys, passport, cameras in a locked carry on bag before placing through the x ray machine at the airport because apparently that is the latest scam, stealing whilst your body goes through the body x ray scanner.... One thing for sure is we are all ending up like Inspctor Morse which is a shame because we loose some of our innocence in the belief of our fellow human being lol

also, as to being targeted for walk up scammers ( the friendly person that approchase you)

( am usually wearing old off brand running shoes) it seems they size up prospects by looking at their feet, or so it works for us. I rarely get hasseled by street b.s.ers.

I've booked through agoda website for a 3 weeks at Thai Cozy House, near Khaosan rd., and the first time they wanted to give me a room with no window. Of course, not what I've paid for. After arguing a little, they gave me one with window... opening on the other's building roof - had to keep it close being afraid of thieves coming inside. Also, dirty, bugs, bad food, nothing like the brochure.

Khun Issan, I thought you were half Thai/Singaporean?

Just something i wanted to add about hotels... I once came back to the hotel around 12 noon , was very hot and i needed to refresh.. i was on bed and all of the sudden someone opens the door.. without any knocking.. i quickly jumped and saw a young Thai guy with his hotel uniform.. he said sorry and closed the door.. i dunno what he was thinking.. i guess he didnt expect a tourist to be in the room at tht time.. so even if ur out , i think its better to lock ur luggage.. they cud be comin in when ur gone..