Welcome to Thailand

Welcome to Thailand

So like most dramatic changes, you get some culture shock. It takes some time to adapt to going from one side of the planet to another. Thailand and Costa Rica might both have good weather, jungles and beaches in common -- but otherwise they are worlds apart.

Bangkok is a bustling place with a very hectic high pitched resonance pattern. People in bangkok are generally not very friendly, though some can be sweet in a quite manner. Our first morning was a casual browse through some local stands looking for breakfast, we found some fried dough stands and some thai-iced coffee being sold on the street but neither of us could actually understand what price they were asking.

To our benefit, a random thai-stranger appeared and saved us. Translating the amount we had to pay and then joining us on our way to get some iced coffee.

He told us he was visiting Thailand from Australia; where he has been living for a while and where he opened a Thai restaurant. He was really friendly and said that he was buddist, and "because I am buddist, you are my friend". He told us he was going to the tourist information center later that day to buy a train ticket and asked us if we wanted to join him. Along the way he would stop at a temple to pray. He got us all a tuk-tuk and negotiated with the driver a very reasonable price.

He seemed very nice and we were happy to meet a Thai person, so we agreed to join him. He brought us to a large golden budda, and then to a marble temple. We paid for the entrance to the temple but then he walked inside and quickly back out saying that it was closed due to a ceremony.

We were a little disappointed, but instead we talked about buddist retreats in Thailand and then we got back in the Tuk-tuk and made our way to the tourist information center.

When we got in, it seemed very full of books and computers and looked much more like an office than a tourism buro, but we sat down with an agent anyways. we asked about transportation but immediately he went into this giant tour package he wanted to sell us. 3 days at about 7 locations for a whopping 40$/day. We told him that was very expensive and he dropped it down to 20-something a day for fan rooms. He gave us about 7 broshures in our hands to hold and wrote all of this on a piece of paper. When we told him we wanted to think about it, he got upset and said that this deal was from the government and wouldn't last after today. When we tried to leave with the paper he wrote on and the broshures he refused to let us take them; said they were not for us to take. He totally lost interest in helping us with anything else we asked and it seemed like we should just leave instead -- besides our buddist friend was waiting for us in the tuk-tuk and we didn't want to be long.

When we got out, he asked if we bought anything and we said "no, just thinking about it". He didn't seem very happy about this, but he didn't say anything either. Then he turned to us and said that he had to stop by a tailor to get a shirt for his father. We were suddenly on a detour, and told to look around the tailor shop for 10 or so minutes. We were ushered into a VIP room, essentially an airconditioned-freezer tank with 4 walls and a pile of fashion magazines; and then we were expected to look interested and browse the magazines.

At this point we were feeling duped and getting angry. I wanted to just leave the tuk-tuk but I had no idea where we were anymore and I felt it was best to just play along until this sharade was over.

We got back in the tuk-tuk and then we all got off at a temple. Our friend was supposed to go back to his hotel to give us his email address so that we could contact him if and when we went to Australia; and we were supposed to now all have lunch together, but instead he said he had to have lunch with someone else that just called and encouraged us to tip the tuk-tuk driver for his trouble. We paid the tuk-tuk a small tip and then he jumped on the tuk-tuk [which we just paid for] and zipped off without a word.

It took us a good few hours to process the entire falsehood of what just happened and we were quite surprised to read very detailed similar stories from others in the lonely planet later that day.

Our welcome friend to Thailand was none other than a perverted con-man...