This is a public-service announcement to anyone planning to visit Thailand via Bangkok’s international airport, Suvarnabhumi (pronounced “soo-wanna-poom.”) See this story here.
Scams involving airport taxi touts and a host of others have long been a plague. Nothing much can be done to get rid of the airport taxi touts, as it is an open secret here that that particular scam directly benefits a certain member of a Family That Must Not Be Named. Some of the other scams too, no doubt; the local gem scam almost certainly does. (At Suvarnabhumi, always go to the official airport taxi queue; never let yourself be steered to another vehicle, no matter how offical-looking the person talking to you may be.)
But this latest duty-free-shop scam is extreme even for Thailand. King Power, the company that has the duty-free monopoly in this and other local airports, has always been a right bastard company with a poor reputation locally. Among other things, the prices in their duty-free shops are often significantly higher that what you would pay for elsewhere in Thailand, which is againt the whole duty-free concept.
But now some of the staff, in collusion with some airport workers and local police, are going about framing innocent travelers for shoplifting and extorting large sums of money. Sure, there probably is some real shoplifting going on, but some of these accusations are getting so extreme and so ludicrous that countries are starting to issue warnings about even stepping inside a King Power duty-free shop.
The fact that the police hold the alleged transgressors in a nearby hotel until they cough up some cash is an indication that police only in that particular district are in on it, but they obviously have some powerful protectors.
My strong advice: Don’t ever set foot inside a King Power shop, not even to browse. Do your duty-free shopping in another country during your trip.
Supposedly a crackdown on airport scams is underway right now, especially the taxi touts, began some days ago, but that’s always simply window dressing whenever it occurs. Won’t last long.
I recall one time at the old Don Muang Airport, the wife had a morning flight upcountry, and I saw her off. Sometime around 8am. Her flight is called, and she leaves. I go to cross the pedestrian bridge leading from the terminal to across the highway outside, so I can catch a commuter train at the station over there back into the city, when suddenly, while I’m still inside the terminal, this ratty-looking man reeking of alcohol – this is 8 or 9am, mind you – slinked out from behind a pillar asking if I needed a taxi. I’m thinking: “Sure, I really want to get into a car with you, yessirree!.”
I’m usually pretty savvy (or at least I like to think so, maybe not) about scams, but I fell for one once at the BKK airport. There’s a booth for hotel reservations inside the actual airport (so it looks official) and they’ll show you picture of hotel rooms, with very reasonable rates. I’m sorry to say that I let the guy convince me that the room in the picture was the room I’d be getting.
Not so, not so at all. The room in the picture looked like a small suite room at a mid-range hotel but the actual room was about the size of a prison cell and had a similar feel to it. I stayed there for one night and then moved on to a reputable hotel.
So, for everyone else, please don’t book hotels at the airport.
The hotels booked there are also usually in inconvenient locations, places that see little business from people who want to be more centrally located and so they resort to this scam.
Easy but not at all safe. I could be looking at 15 years in a Thai prison simply for naming this particular Family. This ain’t Kansas, Dorothy.
Oh, there are LOTSA words like that. Makes it fun to learn the language.
But Thai has no “V” sound, although for some inexplicale reason they often love to transliterate the “W” as a “V.” Straight Thai has no silent letters, but then straight Thai words are rarely more than a syllable or two. Otherwise, it’s a borrowing from other languages, usually Sanskrit, “Suvarnabhumi” being a prime example. It basically translates to “Golden Land” and was used to refer to this area some 2000 years ago. It’s rather a royal-level word, and that spelling has become traditional.
Many people, locals and resident foreigners alike, are not happy with the confusing name spelling, but it was selected by One Who Must Not Be Named, and so that was that.
If my guess is right about the family involved, it’s perfectly safe to name them in a respectful way without associating them with any wrong-doing. It’s just dangerous to defame or libel them, because people have been sentenced to long prison terms for saying or writing the wrong sorts of things about them.
It’s only a problem for people like Sam who are in country. Otherwise, you can say what you want. It’s not so much dangerous as illegal. Most if not all times the King pardons the offenders.
Ditto booking cabins on a ferry. I thought I was pretty savvy about this too, until we arrived at our “luxury tourist cabin” on Koh Samui that turned out to be a clapboard shack on an unswimmable beach. (Seriously, nothing but rocks and seaweed.) There was a pool, but it was filthy, and we hadn’t come to Thailand to swim in a pool, you know? The cherry on the miserable sundae: ANTS! Massive quantities of biting ants infested the shack. We left the next morning and found a nice, clean beach cabin for half the price elsewhere on the island.
I never said anything about the royal family! No one can prove I did either. Why heavens! I’d never even think of such a thing. Goodness gracious! But even in cases where the offender is pardoned – and interestingly, these pardons are becoming fewer – the foreign offender is kicked out of the country for good, and that after having spent at least some time in the infamous Bangkok Hilton, as it’s called. Witness that Aussie writer who spent something like 6 months in the pokey for something he’d written three years earlier before he was pardoned and kicked out.
Correct. There are several levels of speech formality in Thai. The uppermost levels are words spoken only by royalty and monks. But even at the lower end of the scale, there’s some variation. For instance, “kin” or “gin” is the verb “to eat,” but a little higher-level term is “than ahan.” English does this a little, as in “eat” versus “dine” or “walk” versus “stroll,” but the levels of formality in Thai are more rigidly defined. Many’s the time a Thai has asked me if a certain English word is “formal” or “informal,” and they don’t like to hear that many words in English are just words and don’t fit into a rigid hierarchy like every Thai word does.
The scam in the OP is the only new one I’m aware of. This website is good for keeping up on them. And in case you wander out to the bars, you will not be scammed in Nana Plaza or Soi Cowboy. All the bars there are safe. You might lose your heart and retirement savings later on down the line, but I can’t be held responsible for that. Patpong is where you have to watch out, and then only in certain upstairs bars that promise a show but no cover charge. What happens is you’re presented with a huge bill almost as soon as you sit down. All of the downstairs bars are legit, as are many of the upstairs ones. For the latter, just stick to any bar belonging to the King’s Group.
Frankly, Patpong is largely past it’s sell-by date, and its mostly local geezers like me who do hang out there. Soi Cowboy is much better. But tourists do like the night bazaar that sets up in Patpong, although the prices are higher than what you’ll find in Chatuchak or Suan Lum markets or even Khao San Road. But it is part of local history. The CIA’s Air America had their offices in Patpong, and Madrid Bar, which was a hangout of theirs back then, still serves some of the best pizza in Bangkok. Madrid was at one time owned by the real-life counterpart to and inspiration for Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, the legendary Tony Poe. (I believe their food menu gives a short history of the bar at the front.) Safari Bar was mentioned prominently by the writer Tom Robbins in I think it was Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climes (2000). Club Electric Blue is the Bangkok branch of a popular bar in Pattaya and is the closest Patpong has to a Nana Plaza or Soi Cowboy go-go bar. None of these have the “naughty shows” of the upstairs bars; if you want to see those, stick to the King’s Group bars, and you should be fine. (But really, go to Soi Cowboy.)
Also, read this recent article, and you’ll see Bangkok is not really so dangerous after all. You just have to maintain your common sense.
Update: The authorities launched a crackdown on the scammers at the airport but have failed. Story here.
In most countries, it would not be difficult to clear out the scum. But unfortunately, the person ultimately behind this is too untouchable. Reading the story in the link above, one wonders just what is the problem they can’t sweep these guys out. But as more than one reporter has told me, even hinting at the person everyone already knows is behind this wil get the paper shut down pronto.
Yeah, that’s a new low.