Bangkok – Scammer’s Paradise

I feel bad for Thailand- I haven’t done many posts.  It’s not that I am not enjoying the country, it is beautiful.  The people are extremely friendly and the landscape is gorgeous but all that aside, it is nothing but easy to travel here.  This makes my blog-life difficult.  Gone are the days when simply walking down the street would leave me shocked and bursting with funny and often awkward travel stories.  I guess I have to change my approach, bite the bullet and share a story that I am not so proud of.
It all started when we arrived in Bangkok, after a long journey from the south island of Koh Pangan.  We hired an over-priced Tuk Tuk (Thai Auto-Rickshaw) to take us from the bus station to the so called ‘backpackers Mecca’, otherwise known as Khao San Rd.  We made our way from guesthouse to guesthouse in the hot, sticky, sweaty heat trying to find a decent, well priced double fan room.  We settled for a place, parked our things down and immediately fell down in bed for a much needed nap.  A few hours later we awoke, only as refreshed as the heat would allow, rolled out of bed and hit the bathroom for a nice, refreshing cold shower (the backpackers only relief from the hot, hot heat- oh that and the lovely air conditioned 7 Elevens on every street corner).
Since the late afternoon was beginning to cool and our bellies were grumbling, we decided to take a stroll around our neighbourhood.  Once we were all filled up with yummy Thai street food we began meandering, but while we were getting our lay of the land we were approached by a friendly Thai local.  This is in fact somewhat rare in Thailand, as the people tend to be more shy and reserved but this gentleman was the exception.  He was well dressed, had fantastic English and was also visiting Bangkok for a few days.  We chatted, he about Chang Mai and us about our travels.  He taught us some useful Thai phrases and suggested we go on a tour of the famous floating market while we were in Bangkok.  How convenient- Dan and I were planning on taking a trip but hadn’t priced it out as we had just arrived in the city.  He suggested that we avoid the tourist ports and go to a local port where the tours are cheaper and the boat less crowded.  Now, against our better judgement (I am blaming the islands for dampening my instinct) we decided to go on the tour that afternoon.  Why not? we had nothing else to do.  Another shocking convenience we neglected to notice was the oddly cheap Tuk Tuk driver that was conveniently close by and able drive us to this prime, secret location.  Upon arriving we forked over 700 Baht each (enough to pay for 5 days of accommodation) and hopped on a beautiful long boat, which we had all to ourselves.  This is when I snapped to my senses.  What had we done?  We had just gotten taken!  We paid too much for a private tour of the market- Shame on us.  Little did I know that we were scammed even worse than that.  We did get a somewhat nice tour of the river, but our market tour was nothing but a snails pace tour of a local river side town, then back to the dock.  We were livid.   I marched my way over to the man Dan guessed was the one that sold us our tickets and demanded a refund.  We argued back and forth for a few minutes- his argument was that he had closed his shop and that we were never promised a market tour in the first place.  My argument was simple- give us our money back.   Long story short, we did not get anything back and we never did see the famed floating market.
Basically, it was a huge embarrassment.  I was proud to say that up until this point Dan and I had yet to fall for any scam.  Yes, we did pay tourist prices from time to time, but even then, we tend to get a fairly good deal- this was just plain stupid on our part.  Every traveller reads about the scam artists that frequent at popular tourist destinations but I have yet to encounter  them on the scale that we encountered while in Bangkok.  Once we were aware of the game, we were approached by yet another man the next day- same story.  Well dressed, this one a music teacher, also from Chang Mai. And again a day later in a different part of town.  They are tricky here and unless you trust your instinct, I can almost guarantee that you will fall for one of their games at least once while staying in Bangkok.  I imagine there are plenty of friendly, legit business men in Bangkok, but now and forever, I will never trust one further than I could throw him.

A awesome tree beside the 'ticket office'- not sure why they decided to decorate

it with garbage.

A couple pics of the floating village.