The Thai government's tuk tuk scam

So anyone who reads up on Bangkok at all before they come here will see a list of warnings to avoid the tuk tuk drivers that offer 5-20B rides to the major sites in the city. They charge foreigners a low rate, reil them into their scam and then instead of taking the tourists to the promised destination, and then take them on a silk or gem store marathon, eventually getting to the requested destination. The drivers get coupons or some perk for every foreigner they deliver to these stores, even if the tourists don't buy anything. Ok.. so I've read about this and I had more than 10 tuk tuk drivers approach me on my first morning walk down Ko San Road. I politely refused every offer and managed to avoid being taken for a ride... or so I thought.

Brandi and I had no real plan for the first day. We decided the best thing to do was to walk around and see what we could find. No more than ten minutes into our walk we were approached by some man on the street asking us where we were going. He didn't seem to be a tuk tuk driver, so we sat and listened to him for a minute. He helped us find where we were on the map and seemed quite genuine. He told us that it was a big Buddhist holiday in Thailand and that there were a bunch of activities going on in the city. He drew a little map of a few places we could visit and told us that if we used a tuk tuk with a little yellow flag then we could see some of the sites for 20 B. Apparently the government was promoting tourism in the city that day and they were subsidizing licensed tuk tuk drivers for the day. Basically you could take a tuk tuk with a little yellow flag anywhere you wanted for three hours and only pay 20 B. Brandi and I thanked the man who told us about the holiday and set off on our little walk.

Less than a minute after we started sure enough, a tuk tuk driver with a yellow flag and uniform came up to us asking if we wanted to use his services. We thought we might as well give it a try and we hopped in. He took us to a big Gold Buddha where there were some people, but nothing too exciting was going on. Next we went to a temple, and had some Thai guy show us around. There seemed to be nothing exciting going on at these places and I soon started to wonder about the lovely little government promotion. There were Thai people greeting us at every temple, boasting about TAT, the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and all of the wonderful things in Thailand. Some of the information was useful, but it also seemed quite rehearsed. After the second temple we headed to a supposed government sanctioned "silk factory." It was a licensed silk tailor, that's all. It was at that moment that I realized we were being taken for some kind of ride. Brandi and I walked in and then walked right back out. Next on the list was the TAT office. I thought it would be useful because we could find out some information about the best way to head south. We walked in and they were extremely friendly, but something felt a little strange after we started giving a bit of information. By the time we were finished 20 minutes later, I realized that we were in a licensed travel agency, not simply a tourist information center. I obviously should have done a little more research as to what TAT actually stood for, but by the end of our little information session, I sure knew. Basically the tour agent made us this little three week plan to the islands and gave us a fixed price and then expected us to buy it. Brandi and I told him we had to think about it and we promptly got our butts out of there. By that time I had had enough and I asked our driver to take us back to where we started. He of course wanted to take us to one more TAT office and another factory and yet one more site. We agreed, since we really didn't know where we were. After one more song and dance in anther travel office and tailor shop, he dropped us off at The Golden Mount. It's yet another temple, but this star attraction has a hill with a view of Bangkok. Brandi and I didn't really feel like climbing the 400 steps, but we figured we might as well since we were already there. The walk up wasn't too strenuous but the view wasn't all that spectacular. After thirty minutes, we decided we were ready to be finished the Thai governments little tourism promotion and we headed back to where our driver had dropped us off. We looked around and couldn't see him anywhere. We soon realized that when he had said "one hour" as we were getting out, what he really meant was, he will be back in one hour and we had to sit and wait there for him. There was no way I was waiting any longer, so we got out our trusty Lonely Planet Map and walked the couple kms back to our guesthouse. We felt bad about not paying our driver the 20B, but I figure he got enough perks at all of the little places he dragged us to in lieu of the money we didn't pay.

So... lesson learned.. no more tuk tuk drivers period, government sanctioned or not.