Bangkok scam: free tuk-tuk ride

It was our first day in Bangkok. We wanted to start our adventures visiting Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha). It wasn’t very hot, so we decided to walk. Maybe 200 meters after crossing the famous backpackers-party street Kho San Road, we noticed we had left the map of the city in the hostel. But we spotted a map on some post nearby. So, we are standing there checking the map and this very friendly Thai guy stops and asks if we need help. He asks if it’s our first time in Bangkok, if we have plans for later and where we want to go. When we told him about the temple we wanted to visit, he smiled and said it was closed now for lunch, but we should visit the other temple on the other side. I read in the guide before about the most typical Bangkok scams, one about tuk-tuk tours for 10 baht that end up being a scam to sell things at exorbitant prices… But it was our first day, we weren’t very prepared, and the man seemed quite trustworthy. He showed us what he recommended us to visit that day and that we could get a cheap tuk-tuk that would take us to all these places, but we need to find one with yellow license plates, because these are the ones that are cheaper, as the government pays them for gasoline… I know, sounds crazy, but I guess we were so excited about being in Thailand that we didn’t think straight. Suddenly a tuk-tuk arrived right next to us, with yellow license plates “by coincidence”. Our new “friend” told us to go to two temples, then stop in TAT (Tourism Authority Service), so that they can give us the coupon for free gasoline and at the same time we could ask for good connections for our further travel south. He mentioned that we need to buy our bus or train tickets soon, and that if we buy a combination of tickets and accommodation, it will be the cheapest way to travel. We weren’t interested in that, but agreed to pass by to get free gasoline for our driver.

Our tour started very nicely, we went to see the Standing Buddha temple, our driver showed us the way to the entrance, waited for us and took us to the second temple. The third stop was the TAT. We stopped somewhere close to a small, a bit dodgy tourist agency. We told our driver that we are not interested in buying any combination and that if he wants, he can go get the voucher for gasoline. He said he wouldn’t get it unless we go inside. OK, so we thought, we will go for a while, ask a couple of questions and leave.

The girl inside was initially  very polite and immediately started preparing us our tour through whole south. “Combination is cheaper, the more you book, the cheaper”. So, we let her prepare the tour, thinking that even if we don’t buy anything with them, we will have a nicely planned route and an example of prices for future comparison. We understood something is going wrong when, during some conversation, she said we can’t take the paper she was writing out route on. I joked that I can take a photo of it, but she didn’t take it as a joke and firmly said “No”. I quickly calculate the price to euro and told her it’s too much for us. She looked at me and asked “Are you Russian?”. “No, I’m Polish”, I said. “Ah, that’s why”. And then silence.

Finally, she gave us the final cheapest price for all transportation, but said that if we book accommodation with her, it will be cheaper. At this point we knew this is a scam, but didn’t want to be rude, so we told her, we would come back the next day. The “this promotion is only today” thrown when we were leaving only confirmed our belief that they were simply trying to cheat us.

We went back to our driver, who realized that something went wrong and we didn’t buy any tour, and instead of taking us to the next agreed attraction, suddenly wanted to take us to a market with clothes to get another gasoline coupon. Renato politely explained him that we were not interested in any shopping, and that we knew that the gasoline thing is a lie and asked him to take us to the next planned temple. We could see that he was getting angry, but he started driving. After maybe 5 minutes, he stopped at some temple and told us to go straight, and he would park at the corner. We didn’t have time to check if we were in the right place and left to the temple grounds. We looked back, but the car was already gone. The guy left us in some random temple and didn’t even ask for any money. He must have understood  that we are not the easy scam target and didn’t even care about the 60 Baht we agreed with him in the beginning. We left the temple laughing and slowly realizing how naive we were to have believed the “friendly recommendations” of the very first guy who probably aranged it all. But on the other hand, we got a free tuk-tuk ride 🙂

More about Bangkok scams and hacks how to avoid them soon in a new post.

Magda

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