Beware the “Land of Smiles” aka Thailand

Traveling to Thailand, the “Land of Smiles”, was a great experience and one I truly enjoyed. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I plan on traveling to Thailand again real soon for a much longer time. After returning home from my trip I did a little research on the Internet about Thailand to get more acquainted with the area and tourist attractions; something I should have done before I went there on my last trip but couldn’t because of how sudden I found out I was going to Bangkok.

During my stay in Thailand, I had an uneasy feeling at times that the prices being quoted to me for merchandise, tours, taxi fares, etc… were a bit more overpriced than what they should be. In addition, when I spoke with certain locals around the tourist areas it seemed like something just wasn’t right. Well, I came across this site online about Bangkok scams and was amazed that some of the scams listed on the site almost happened to me! The name of the site, believe it or not, is Bangkok Scams, which can be accessed here http://www.bangkokscams.com. I suggest if anyone plans on traveling to Bangkok, Thailand they read up on this site beforehand. Now that I have the foresight to see what was happening during my trip I have to tell you there are many scammers around the tourist areas in Bangkok just waiting to take advantage of tourists.

Out of the Top 10 Bangkok scams listed here, I experienced three of them; and after thinking back about my trip and doing a little research, I can say some others scams were tried on me which I’ll blog about in the future.

The first scam I experienced on the list was “The Grand Palace is Closed Scam”. I took a taxi from my hotel to The Grand Palace and was dropped off right in front of the gate entrance to The Grand Palace. As soon as I stepped out of the taxi and headed toward what looked like the entrance, I was approached by a well-dressed Thai local man with an open umbrella (I guess to shade himself and anyone else he is trying to scam from the sun because it wasn’t raining that day).

The Thai man asked me politely where I was going, I pointed to the gate entrance and said “The Grand Palace”. He replied back “This is the exit to The Grand Palace, the entrance is over there” pointing to a further gate opening. He then offered to show and walk with me to the entrance. As we walked the other way he explained to me part of The Grand Palace was closed at the moment because there was some sort of funeral taking place inside for someone important who died and it would open up again at 2pm. He then pulled out a map and suggested I go visit two other temples close by and come back at 2pm when The Grand Palace opened up again.

This is when I started getting suspicious because I saw people going in and out of The Grand Palace gates. He then mentioned taking a tuk-tuk to the other two temples and it would only cost 10 baht (which is really cheap). Not any sooner when he finished his sentence a tuk-tuk pulls up on the side of the road with the driver looking very eager to have me jump inside. After some brief words and a conversation with him trying to persuade me to get into the tuk-tuk and visit the other temples, he finally pointed me to the original gate which I was walking too and said I can go and enter the Grand Palace through it. I was a little confused at first, but then realized it was some sort of a scam which he gave up on after I gave him a hard time and declined his request to jump into the tuk-tuk. I headed towards the gate entrance and to no surprise the Grand Palace was open.

In my next post I’ll be talking about a few Bangkok, Thailand taxi scams I experienced.