Bangkok: The Epic.
So I normally take the approach of just writing a matter-of-fact account of what happened. I don’t put a lot of effort into the story of it. Because I’m lazy. Today I will make an exception.
Coincidentally, this is my 200th post.
We were in Bangkok for a little more than 1 day. That left us practically no time to see or get a feel for the city, so we had gotten a 1-day itinerary from wikitravel.
First we took the Skytrain (Think monorail!) to our stop. We walked across a bridge and down into the river banks below. This area was filthy and scary. It would be like if you took a homeless person, dragged him behind your truck for an hour, and rubbed crap in their face to add a nice sheen, that would be the people down here. Of course they wanted to sell you food.
Anyway, we acted like nervous white people and scuttled down to a pier where a boat was rumored to pick people up. There were no signs or anything, just the nearby homeless fruit zombies.
A boat did show up, and we jumped on, because it only stopped for about 30 seconds. We paid our fair of 8 baht and were sped down the river. It was a pretty cool ride.
We got dropped off at the old area of Bangkok where the old temples and palaces are. This is the tourist area because of the history and stupid 1-day itineraries.
So we are talking about what we wanna do, and a guy comes up to talk to us. He asks us where we are from and what we are going to see. He asked for our map and begins to mark it with big sight seeing spots. He also tells us that there is a big trade show going on nearby, so the government has compensated the taxis to make them really cheap and reliable.
We thought, “Oh, here’s the part where he says, ‘Get in my taxi.’”
He didn’t, he just wished us a good day and walked off.
We got in a taxi and went to see a 40 meter tall buddha. He was tall.
Next we went to the lucky buddha. It was the next closest thing. We never saw a buddha, the building it was in was shut tight.
While we were walking around looking for a weak spot to sneak in, a guy came up and started asking us really weird questions like, “What are you doing here? Why are you in Bangkok? Why are you at the Lucky Buddha?” These are kind of hard questions to answer, but we fumbled through it. We went on to have a really interesting conversation.
Turns out that the Lucky Buddha is rarely open to public because when it is all of Thailand flocks there for blessings in weddings, business, or whatever. It was weird that some foreigners were there. The guy then went on to tell us about his honeymoon. They were going to Sydney for 4 weeks. That is a pretty impressive honeymoon.
We kept talking and he told us all about the people and culture of Bangkok and asked us if we were going to the trade show today. We said that we weren’t and he said that we should. Then he told us all about how Thailand is renown for its sapphires and rubies and that every year the government invites jewelry wholesalers and such to build business relations.
That happened to be this week. He told us how that this is so important to the government that they even go so far as to pay off the taxis who are normally rather corrupt so that all the people who come can have a really great and cheap time and go back with great stories of Thailand.
He also told us that you don’t actually have to be a wholesaler to go to this show, but that you will be treated differently. If you are on a tourist visa they will allow you to buy one set of jewelry per passport at an untaxed wholesale price.
We had no idea what he was really getting at, but he kept explaining how that gems are one of those few things that never deprecate and are getting rarer, and how most banks in Thailand offer no interest in bank accounts which makes retirement and savings nearly impossible. So most people try to get these sapphires and such and hang on to them because they are always more valuable.
He told us how they come to Bangkok almost every year for this, buy a set of jewelry and then sell it back to other jewelers with the normal markup and tax which, he admitted, depended a lot on your personality, but that he always got what he paid in. He has since gotten good enough to pay for his entire honeymoon from this one trade show.
After we talked for a while we said goodbye and decided to go to our hotel because it was getting toward lunch time and we wanted to make plans to see kickboxing later. We told our taxi and he said that was fine, but he needed to go to the trade show to get his gas voucher to keep the fare at the low price. We said sure, and went to the trade show.
The trade show was a pretty neat place. Thailand is seedy and filthy everywhere but here. Men in uniform stop traffic to escort you inside where you are greeted by so many people in suits that show you all of the jewelry and give you a brief education and get you drinks and whatnot.
Megan fell in love with a ring after about 15 seconds from getting in the door.
They asked us how old we were and told us that we were welcome to buy anything, but they would put a spending limit on us due to our young age and explained all of that.
Eventually we settled for 2 rings and a pendant. We told them that we didn’t have passports or credit cards, or any money for a deposit. It was all locked in our hotel safe. They said that wasn’t a problem. Megan’s ring had to be sized up 5 sizes which required about 2 hours, so in the meantime we would go with a private driver and a representative to the hotel where we would complete the paperwork and pay from there.
They said that for the rest of the day we could use that private driver as our own and he would even take us to the airport.
This was crazy because we were smelly and sweaty tourists being told that we were going to be chauffeured the rest of our vacation.
We got in the car, the representative with their briefcase got in too, and we went to the hotel. She took all of the paperwork out and a portable credit card machine and walked us through all of the legal documents and we paid for our jewelry.
She said that the driver will take us anywhere we want for the rest of the day and to the airport in the morning. She also said that when our sizing is done that they will come to us wherever we are in the city to deliver our jewelry. Fancy!
Our driver, Tik, asked us what we wanted to do and we said Muay Thai. He smiled and said, “Absolutely!”
He took us to eat first because we would be there for hours and wouldn’t have much. He took us to a seafood restaurant that was cheap and had an English menu and the food was pretty good. When we were done he told us the messenger was coming.
We got in Tik’s car, and the messenger got in while Tik waited outside. He handed us our bag and told us to check everything before signing off. Everything was fine, so we signed the delivery slip, and the messenger rode off on his motorcycle.
At this point I was worried. All of the sudden I realized I was in a car with someone I didn’t know, carrying jewelry that was worth some money, and I had no control whatsoever. I realized I was screwed no matter what, so I waited for what happened next.
Tik got in and took us to kickboxing.
He called ahead and arranged for an escort into the arena through the hecklers, gamblers, and potential pickpockets. He arranged ringside seats. We paid for them, but he took care of the safety and details. This was a huge load off our shoulders to not have to worry about our safety.
Kickboxing was awesome and brutal and I loved it for 3 hours. Tik came and picked us up, took us to the hotel and picked us up at 5:30 AM to get us to the airport just as planned.
The day was so crazy. We went from being lost tourists to winding up with a personal chauffeur for half a day.
Better than all of this though was one thing: It was a scam!
Read on for the details…
This is the famous Thai gem scam. We fell for it 100%. At any point we even thought that it wasn’t a scam, there was some carefully inserted thing to make anyone certain that it isn’t a scam. Here’s how it works.
The suspension of disbelief happens in 3 main parts.
Part 1 is the first man we met who marked our map with tourist spots and told us that there was a foreign trade show an taxis are cheap. He never mentions sapphires or anything like that. Just that the cabs are cheap.
Part 2 is the cab. They will take you anywhere you want in the area, your choice. But you have been fed a list of places in Part 1. His job is that when you are done traveling that he takes you to the foreign trade show for his gasoline voucher.
Part 3 is the man you meet coincidentally at the Lucky Buddha. There is no such goddam thing as the Lucky Buddha. It is a trap. He feeds you this extraordinarily well produced story about him being married, the thai culture, sapphires, and investing. It is perfect.
When you get to the foreign trade show nothing is out of order there. It looks and feels exactly like a jewelry store anywhere in the world. When you are interested they talk you through the process. You sign paperwork saying you will not resale, you identify yourself, you get sized, and all of that. They even put a “limit” on your spending. How brilliant is that?
There is nothing bad about the chauffeur. He was awesome and did everything we asked and left nothing to chance.
Here’s how we were scammed. We bought jewelry with absolutely no idea of its value. Typically you do buy real sapphires that are of reasonable quality, but you do also pay around 4 times the price.
We can’t be sure how much we lost until we find out what we bought, but that is our Thai gem scam story.
A side story is that I had to go an ATM to get a little extra cash for the kickboxing fight. Upon returning home and googling our gem scam I also ran across the ATM scam. The Mafia, who also runs the gem scam (For 40+ years) also tampers with ATMs to clone your information.
There is also a seafood scam, but we weren’t roped into that even though we went to a seafood restaurant.
We were only slightly scammed by taxis upon our immediate arrival in Bangkok, but it was cheap, and a 1.5 hour ride in a cab cost like $3. If it was a scam it was really crap.
So, let that be a lesson to anyone going to Bangkok, we were in the city for little more than 24 hours and we were potentially scammed 3 times.
April 7th, 2009 at 9:26 pm by rl