The Anatomy of a Bangkok Scam

Everywhere you look someone is trying to scam you. Our lightly sun kissed faces must call out to these “entrepreneurs”, most walks about the city involve one attempt or another to take our money.

One such incident was so well played that we didn’t even catch on until an hour into the ploy. Just remember the one piece of advice that all travelers will tell you, if someone is being too nice, whether a local or Farang (foreigner) don’t trust a word they say.

For future info and to record this crazy happening, I will share the multiple steps these people went through in an attempt to take our money.

Random Nice Stranger

Sander and I were off on a walk to explore the city. Randomly a man walked up to us and started talking. We’re used to telling people to piss off but this guy was smooth, his command of English impeccable and the next thing we knew he was telling us some of the great sights to see in the city.

His story surrounded the first falsehood of the scam, that the local tourist authority was offering Tuk Tuk drivers free gas to take tourists around to some attractions as part of a Tourist Promotion. For a mere 30 baht the drivers would take us to 5 Wat’s (temple) and Buddhas. He even wrote it down on a piece of paper for us. Up for an adventure we hopped in a Tuk Tuk, showed him the paper and were off on a ride.

The driver was nice, telling us to “take our time” as we visited the nearest Buddha, the amazing standing gold Buddha. After taking in the sights we hoped back in for the ride to the next stop.

Beware of Well Dressed men Doing Nothing

We were showed into a very run down Wat (temple) and directed to wait for the “monks” to come get us. While we were waiting a lone well dressed Thai Gentleman began conversation with us. He was a primary school teacher, had family in Australia and commented on how lucky we were to be visiting temples on that day since they were closed to foreigners the majority of the time.

He asked us if we were on the Thai government tourist promotion, we said yes and he asked what else we were going to see, asking further if we had it written down. We showed him the paper where he noted how nice those places were and quickly started talking about the “Export Center” that the first gentleman had written down for us. He started talking about the great deals on jewelry he got there on the special tourist week where the government waves all tax in order to promote tourism. He suggested we check it out as it closed in an hour and this was the last day. He told us to “buy what ever we could” to send back home and sell for double the price, showing us a receipt of nearly $5000 of goods he had bought, mortgaging his house, so he could send it to his sister in Australia and cash in.

Beware of other Foreigners

At this moment a French man appeared, asking why we were waiting. We told him that we were waiting for the monks. The Thai man continued to talk about his great way to earn money through buying jewelry. He even asked the French man if he had heard about it, the man said yes he had and that he had done it 2 times before and that it paid for his flight and some of his travels.

The Thai man said that we should go take advantage of this, suggesting we spend $500 - $2000 on small to medium “Princess Dianna Sets”. He said not to tell them you wanted to sell them at home and reiterated that today was the last day, also noting that the second floor on the “Export Center” had the best deals

This is where we caught on. We excitedly said ” Ok lets go!” and headed back to the Tuk Tuk. Sander started laughing as we got out of ear shot. We ranted on about those sneaky bastards and started to plan our get away.

Around and Around they Go, Where we stopped we didn’t know!

We told the driver to take us the next Buddah, testing his credibility, however knowing full well that our next stop would in fact be the jewelry shop. He then drove us in circles, through alleyways, over side walks, around and around. Eventually he pulled up to a medium sized jewelry shop. We had arrived at the “Export Center”. Sander and I had already made a plan not to go into the building, instead opting to put the 30 Baht on the seat and to walk away. The driver tried, insisted and whined to try to get us to go into the building, but we were on our way down the street laugh our heads off and keeping an eye on our backs to make sure no one was following us.

It took us a good 2 hours to find out way back to familiar ground, laughing and decompressing from the incident. The whole thing was so well planned it was amazing.

The Money

Each of the participants earns commission in the scam. The Jewlery and the “certificates” issued with them are fakes and the shops and scamers make a high profit from the worthless goods they sell. The first man on the street, the “school teacher”, the French dude and the Tuk Tuk driver all saw us a s dollar signs. We figure they insisted that we go to the second floor of the shop because it would be harder for us to get out if we caught on later. The sales pitch would be forceful I’m sure.

Crazy times in Thailand. Thanks to Sanders buddy Cam for telling him of stories such as these so we could clue in quickly. If you’re traveling here beware and have fun!