See here. Seems pretty comprehensive. Forewarned is forearmed!
I’m not close to being the most street savy person anywhere, but that guy asking if he should pay the dowry to the girl’s parents had me banging my head against my coffee table. Of course that was a scam! Why would he even doubt that?
Technically, it’s called “bride price” when money is given to the girl’s parent. We don’t have the dowry system here like in India, but farangs (Westerners) keep calling it dowry because no one’s ever heard of bride price.
Traditionally, the groom gets the money back in some form. The cash itself or maybe as a new house, something that will help the young couple start out in life. But with the explosion of farangs marrying poor Thai girls from the Northeast, the poorest region, parents have been pushing daughters to marry a farang so they can get a lot of money. I’ve never heard of a faarng getting the money back in any form, and the prices they sometimes pay is outrageous. My advice to farangs is always don’t pay a cent; if the girl loves you, she’ll marry you. (That’s not to say you should not help out her family if you can, but there’s no reason to be played for a sucker.) I didn’t pay bride price for my wife; of course, her family actually had more money than I did anyway! It’s always the poor rural families pulling this scam on the farangs; I don’t think I’ve heard of this happening in middle-class Bangkok families.
The oddest line I’ve ever heard anyone fall for was two tourists who believed a tiktuk (three-wheeled motorized taxi) driver tell them the Skytrain (our elevated mass-transit) line was closed on Sundays! Then he of course took them around to all these gem shops that “just happened” to be having a sale that day. He told them the Skytrain was closed right at the entrance to one; didn’t they notice the trains coming and going I wonder.
I thought of one I have not seen on the website. We get a fair share of Africans in Bangkok, Nigerians and such, and there’s this one scam that only Thais seem to fall for. That’s probably because tourists don’t have the large amounts of money required, but I’ve not heard of farang residents falling for it either. A couple of Nigerians will claim they have chemicals that will turn ordinary strips of paper into US$100 bills. Really! They claim these are the chemicals the US government uses. Every now and then you’ll read in the paper of some poor Thai housewife or businessman going to the police after paying the Nigerians the equivalent of something like $30,000 or $50,000 dollars for the chemicals. A variation on this is that they are refugees who have disguised a suitcase full of $100 bills as worthless paper, and these special chemicals can reveal the money. They need YOU to put up some money to get their suitcase back from the evil landlord who won’t give it to them, and then they’ll split the money with you. In both cases, they are very skillful at using sleight of hand and other tricks to produce a couple of real notes as “proof.”
I’ve even heard of Nigerians simply walking up to people on the street in Bangkok and aggressively asking for them to be their business partner. Happened to an Aussie I knew; he just told them to get lost and kept on going before they finished speaking their first sentence.
How common are the airport theft problems? I’ll be flying out of Bangkok for a connecting flight after a night in a hotel, and I will have a laptop and camera in my hand luggage.
Airport theft is not a big problem. Just keep an eye on your hand luggage and try not to walk away from it.
P.S.: Airport theft of hand luggage is not a problem, but of course be sure to have a lock on your check-in luggage. Even then, I’ve heard some horror stories, but really we’ve never emcountered a problem with theft from locked check-in luggage ourselves.
That’s an interesting site. I’m realizing from reading the comments that telling someone to go fuck off comes a lot easier to me than most people.
It’s kind of sad to hear that people have had their trip ruined by someone trying to sell them a time share or giving them a ride to a jewelry store.
What makes it worse is that after traveling around a lot of countries in the region where the scammers are much more in your face, travelers often tend to let down their guard upon hitting Thailand. And these scammers can be pretty slick; I’ve heard of people who said they heard all the warnings, read the warnings in the Lonely Planet Guide, read all the warnings posted at the airport, and amazingly STILL they fell for it, that’s how smooth these operators are.
The bottom line is: If something seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is; and even though Thais are very friendly folk, they’re not gonna come up to you on the street and be your new best friend without having something in mind.
Speaking of scams, a guy who lives on Bali was telling me there’s a problem there with girls offering to blow you in alleys, then making off with your cellphone or wallet in the process. I don’t recall if he said they offered to do it for free or if there was a charge. But he told me what he’s done a couple of times is go out with an empty wallet in his pocket a couple of times, thereby getting a free blowjob. 
Yeah, that happened to me twice in Bali, but I couldn’t find the girl the third day, and I was running out of cell phones.
I noticed on the Thai site that a few people who were scammed started speaking Russian, and the scammers made themselves scarce, as they are terrified of Russian mob heavies in the area. Have you noticed any of the Russian gangsters around the country?
As a matter of fact, the Russian mafia has a significant presence in Thailand, especially in the town of Pattaya.