LONELY PLANET'S OFFICIAL GUIDEBOOK INFORMATION
Dangers & annoyances
Although Thailand is in no way a dangerous country to visit, it’s always wise to be a little cautious, particularly if you’re travelling alone. Solo travellers should take special care on arrival at Bangkok International Airport, particularly at night. Only take taxis from the airport’s public taxi queue or take the public bus.
Ensure your room is securely locked and bolted at night. Inspect cheap rooms with thin walls in case there are strategic peepholes.
Take care when leaving valuables in hotel safes. Many travellers have reported unpleasant experiences leaving valuables in Chiang Mai guesthouses while trekking. Make sure you obtain an itemised receipt for property left with hotels or guesthouses – note the exact quantity of travellers cheques and all other valuables.
When you’re on the road, keep zippered luggage secured with small locks, especially while travelling on buses and trains. Several readers’ letters have recounted tales of thefts from their bags or backpacks during long overnight bus trips, particularly on routes between Bangkok and Chiang Mai or Ko Samui.
Assault
Robbery of travellers by force is very rare in Thailand, but it does happen. Isolated incidents of armed robbery have tended to occur along the Thai–Myanmar and Thai–Cambodian borders and on remote islands. The safest practice in remote areas is not to go out alone at night and, if trekking in northern Thailand, always walk in groups.
Credit Cards
When making credit-card purchases, don’t let vendors take your credit card out of your sight to run it through the machine. Unscrupulous merchants have been known to rub off three or four or more receipts with one purchase. After the customer leaves the shop, they use the one legitimate receipt as a model to forge your signature on the blanks, then fill in astronomical ‘purchases’. Sometimes they wait several weeks – even months – between submitting each charge receipt to the bank, so that you can’t remember whether you’d been billed by the same vendor more than once.
Drugging
In bars and on trains and buses beware of friendly strangers offering gifts such as cigarettes, drinks, cookies or sweets (candy). Several travellers have reported waking up sometime later with a headache, only to find that their valuables have disappeared.
Male travellers have also encountered drugged food or drink from friendly Thai women in bars and from prostitutes in their own hotel rooms. Female visitors have encountered the same with young Thai men, albeit less frequently. Conclusion: don’t accept gifts from strangers.
Drugs
Opium, heroin, amphetamines, hallucinogenic mushrooms and marijuana are widely used in Thailand, but it is illegal to buy, sell or possess these drugs in any quantity. The possession of opium for consumption, but not sale, is legal among hill tribes.
Every year perhaps dozens of visiting foreigners are arrested in Thailand for drug use or trafficking and end up doing time in Thai prisons. A smaller but significant number die of heroin overdoses.
Ko Pha-Ngan is one of Thailand’s leading centres for recreational drug use, and the Thai police have taken notice. Particularly on days leading up to Hat Rin’s famous monthly full-moon rave, police often set up inspection points on the road between Thong Sala and Hat Rin. Every vehicle, including bicycles and motorcycles, is stopped and the passengers and vehicles thoroughly searched.
The legal penalties for drug offences are stiff: if you’re caught using marijuana, mushrooms or LSD, you face a fine of 10,000B plus one year in prison, while for heroin or amphetamines, the penalty for use can be anywhere from six months’ to 10 years’ imprisonment, plus a fine of 5000B to 10,000B. The going rate for bribing one’s way out of a small pot bust is 50,000B.
Drug smuggling – defined as attempting to cross a border with drugs in your possession – carries considerably higher penalties, including execution.
Yaa bâa (literally ‘crazy drug’), or amphetamine tablets, are imported in large quantities from Wa-controlled areas of northeastern Myanmar and sold inexpensively in Thailand. The quality is low and dosages erratic. This is an illegal drug to be extremely careful of.
Malaysian Border
Four of Thailand’s southernmost provinces (Songkhla, Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat) go through hot and cold periods that involve the Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO; www.pulo.org), a small armed group which, since its formation in 1959, has been dedicated to forming a separate Muslim state. The PULO is known to receive support from the Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia (KMM), a radical Islamic group in Malaysia.
Between 2002 and 2004 a series of arson attacks, bombings and assaults took place in Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat Provinces. Most attacks were on military posts or police posts, and the PULO has an avowed policy not to target civilians or tourists. There are no known links between the PULO and Al Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiya; PULO’s tactics are obviously quite different.
Unfortunately the Thai government’s heavy-handed responses to the 40-year-old Muslim nationalist movement – including the 2004 massacre of 108 machete-armed youths in a Pattani mosque and the suffocation deaths of 78 during brutal arrests in Narathiwat that same year – seems destined to provoke further trouble.
We therefore urge travellers to exercise caution when travelling in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. Avoid military or police installations and avoid road travel at night.
Myanmar Border
The Myanmar border between Um Phang and Mae Sariang occasionally receives shelling from Burmese troops in pursuit of Karen or Mon rebels. The risks of catching a piece of shrapnel are substantially lower if you keep several kilometres between yourself and the Thai–Myanmar border in this area – fighting can break out at any time.
The presence of Shan and Wa armies along the Myanmar–Thai border in northern Mae Hong Son makes this area dangerous if you attempt to travel near amphetamine- and opium-trade border crossings; obviously these are not signposted, so take care anywhere along the border in this area.
Scams
Thais can be so friendly and laid-back that some visitors are lulled into a false sense of security that makes them vulnerable to scams of all kinds. Scammers tend to haunt the areas where first-time tourists go, such as Bangkok’s Grand Palace and Wat Pho area. Though you could come across them anywhere in Thailand, the overwhelming majority of scams take place in Bangkok, with Chiang Mai a very distant second.
Most scams begin the same way: a friendly Thai male (or, on rare occasions, a female) approaches a lone visitor – usually newly arrived – and strikes up a conversation. Sometimes the con man says he’s a university student, other times he may claim to work for the World Bank or a similarly distinguished organisation (some even carry cellular phones). If you’re on the way to Wat Pho or Jim Thompson’s House, for example, he may tell you it’s closed for a holiday. Eventually the conversation works its way around to the subject of the scam – the better con artists can actually make it seem like you initiated the topic.
The most common scam involves gems. The victims find themselves invited to a gem and jewellery shop – your new-found friend is picking up some merchandise for himself and you’re just along for the ride. Somewhere along the way he usually claims to have a connection, often a relative, in your home country (what a coincidence!) with whom he has a regular gem export-import business. One way or another, victims are convinced (usually they convince themselves) that they can turn a profit by arranging a gem purchase and reselling the merchandise at home. After all, the jewellery shop just happens to be offering a generous discount today – it’s a government or religious holiday, or perhaps it’s the shop’s 10th anniversary, or maybe they’ve just taken a liking to you!
There is a seemingly infinite number of variations on the gem scam, almost all of which end up with the victim making a purchase of small, low-quality sapphires and posting them to their home countries. Once you return home, of course, the cheap sapphires turn out to be worth much less than you paid for them (perhaps one-tenth to one-half).
Many have invested and lost virtually all their savings; some admit they had been scammed even after reading warnings in this guidebook or those posted by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) around Bangkok.
Even if you were somehow able to return your purchase to the gem shop in question, chances are slim-to-none you’d get a full refund. The con artist who brings the mark into the shop gets a commission of 10% to 50% per sale – the shop takes the rest.
The Thai police are usually no help whatsoever, believing that merchants are entitled to whatever price they can get. The main victimisers are a handful of shops who get protection from certain high-ranking government officials. These officials put pressure on police not to prosecute or to take as little action as possible. Even TAT’s tourist police have never been able to prosecute a Thai jeweller in cases of blatant, recurring gem fraud.
Card games are another way to separate suckers from their money. A friendly stranger approaches the lone traveller on the street, strikes up a conversation and then invites them to the house or apartment of his sister (or brother-in-law etc) for a drink or meal. After a bit of socialising a friend or relative of the con arrives on the scene; it just so happens a little high-stakes card game is planned for later that day. Like the gem scam, the card-game scam has many variations, but eventually the victim is shown some cheating tactics to use with help from the ‘dealer’, some practice sessions take place and finally the game gets under way with several high rollers at the table. The mark is allowed to win a few hands first, then somehow loses a few, gets bankrolled by one of the friendly Thais, and then loses the Thai’s money. Suddenly your new-found buddies aren’t so friendly any more – they want the money you lost. Sooner or later you end up cashing in most or all of your travellers cheques or making a costly visit to an ATM. Again the police won’t take any action because gambling is illegal in Thailand – you’ve actually broken the law.
Other minor scams involve túk-túk drivers, hotel employees and bar girls who take new arrivals on city tours; these almost always end up in high-pressure sales situations at silk, jewellery or handicraft shops. In this case the victim’s greed isn’t the ruling motivation – it’s simply a matter of weak sales resistance.
Follow TAT’s number-one suggestion to tourists: Disregard all offers of free shopping or sightseeing help from strangers – they invariably take a commission from your purchases. We would add: beware of deals that seem too good to be true. You might also try lying whenever a stranger asks how long you’ve been in Thailand – if it’s only been three days, say three weeks! Or save your Bangkok sightseeing until after you’ve been up north. The con artists rarely prey on anyone except new arrivals.
Contact the Tourist Police if you have any problems with consumer fraud.
Touts
Touting (grabbing newcomers in the street or in train stations, bus terminals or airports to sell them a service) is a long-time tradition in Asia, and while Thailand doesn’t have as many touts as, say, India, it has its share. In the popular tourist spots it seems like everyone – young boys waving fliers, túk-túk drivers, saamláw (three-wheeled vehicle) drivers, schoolgirls – is touting something, usually hotels or guesthouses. For the most part they’re completely harmless and sometimes they can be very informative. But take anything a tout says with two large grains of salt. Since touts work on commission and get paid just for delivering you to a guesthouse or hotel (whether you check in or not), they’ll say anything to get you to the door.
The better hotels and guesthouses refuse to pay tout commissions – so the average tout will try to steer you away from such places. Hence don’t believe them if they tell you the hotel or guesthouse you’re looking for is closed, full, dirty or ‘bad’. Sometimes (rarely) they’re right but most times it’s just a ruse to get you to a place that pays more commission.
Always have a look yourself before checking into a place recommended by a tout. Túk-túk and saamláw drivers often offer free or low-cost rides to the place they’re touting. If you have another place you’re interested in, you might agree to go with a driver only if he or she promises to deliver you to your first choice after you’ve had a look at the place being touted. If drivers refuse, chances are it’s because they know your first choice is a better one.
This type of commission work isn’t limited to low-budget guesthouses. Travel agencies at Bangkok International Airport and Hualamphong train station are notorious for talking newly arrived tourists into staying at badly located, overpriced hotels.
BUS TOUTS
Watch out for touts wearing fake TAT or tourist information badges at Hualamphong train station. They have been known to coerce travellers into buying tickets for private bus rides, saying the train is ‘full’ or ‘takes too long’. Often the promised bus service turns out to be substandard and may take longer than the equivalent train ride due to the frequent changing of vehicles. You may be offered a 24-seat VIP ‘sleeper’ bus to Chiang Mai, for example, and end up stuffed into a minivan all the way. Such touts are ‘bounty hunters’ who receive a set fee for every tourist they deliver to the bus companies. Avoid the travel agencies (many of which bear ‘TAT’ or even ‘Lonely Planet’ signs) just outside the train station for the same reason.
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