Tourist scams at Bangkok airport

There is no question that Thailand has suffered losses in the tourist trade they are so reliant on. It is also certain that the global economic slowwdown and the advent and spread of H1N1 virus has curtailed tourist travel all over the world. However, Thailand has added to their difficulties in several ways that are unique to it. Last year's inexplicable shutdown of the airport as it was occupied by protestors is one example. That Thai authorities did not move decisively to clear the airport, and instead chose to take a major hit to their economy as a result, seems incredible to the average traveler from outside this arcane and internecine country. For those of us who find ourselves on a frequent basis we have a common lament that we share with one another when we encounter something that seems amazingly thick headed. We simply say TIT (this is Thailand) and shrug our shoulders. There are so many things that happen here that fall into the category of beyond comprehension that one would have to wonder if the acronym F.U.B.A.R. retired to Thailand after WWII and found fertile ground here. However, the story that is emerging about corrupt police scouring the airport for unwary tourists to shake-down just about takes the prize. Read on and wonder:

Jul 20, 2009 Bangkok's showcase new international airport is no stranger to controversy. Built between 2002 and 2006, under the governments of then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the opening date was repeatedly delayed. It has been dogged by allegations of corruption, as well as criticism of the design and poor quality of construction.

Then, at the end of last year, the airport was shut down for a week after being occupied by anti-government protesters. Now new allegations have been made that a number of passengers are being detained every month in the duty free area on suspicion of shoplifting, and then held by the police until they pay large sums of money to buy their freedom.

That is what happened to Stephen Ingram and Xi Lin, two IT experts from Cambridge, as they were about to board their flight to London on the night of 25 April this year. They had been browsing in the duty free shop at the airport, and were later approached by security guards, who twice asked to search their bags. They were told a wallet had gone missing, and that Ms Lin had been seen on a security camera taking it out of the shop.

The company that owns the duty free shop, King Power, has since put the CCTV video on its website, which does appear to show her putting something in her bag. However the security guards found no wallet on either of them.

Despite that, they were both taken from the departure gate, back through immigration, and held in an airport police office. That is when their ordeal started to become frightening.

The "Interpreter"
"We were questioned in separate rooms," Mr Ingram said. "We felt really intimidated. They went through our bags and demanded that we tell them where the wallet was." The two were then put in what Mr Ingram describes as a "hot, humid, smelly cell with graffiti and blood on the walls". Mr Ingram managed to phone a Foreign Office helpline he found in a travel guide, and was told someone in the Bangkok embassy would try to help them.

The next morning the two were given an interpreter, a Sri Lankan national called Tony, who works part-time for the police. They were taken by Tony to meet the local police commander - but, says Mr Ingram, for three hours all they discussed was how much money they would have to pay to get out. They were told the charge was very serious. If they did not pay, they would be transferred to the infamous Bangkok Hilton prison, and would have to wait two months for their case to be processed.

Mr Ingram says they wanted £7,500 ($12,250) - for that the police would try to get him back to the UK in time for his mother's funeral on 28 April. But he could not arrange to get that much money transferred in time.

'Zig-zag' scheme

Tony then took them to an ATM machine at the police station, and told Ms Lin to withdraw as much as she could from her own account - £600 - and Mr Ingram then withdrew the equivalent of £3,400 from his account.

This was apparently handed over to the police as "bail", and they were both made to sign a number of papers.

Later they were allowed to move to a squalid hotel within the airport perimeter, but their passports were held and they were warned not to leave or try to contact a lawyer or their embassy.

"I will be watching you," Tony told them, adding that they would have to stay there until the £7,500 was transferred into Tony's account.

On the Monday they managed to sneak out and get a taxi to Bangkok, and met an official at the British Embassy.

She gave the name of a Thai lawyer, and, says Mr Ingram, told them they were being subjected to a classic Thai scam called the "zig-zag".

Their lawyer urged them to expose Tony - but also warned them that if they fought the case it could take months, and they risked a long prison sentence.

After five days the money was transferred to Tony's account, and they were allowed to leave.

Mr Ingram had missed his mother's funeral, but at least they were given a court document stating that there was insufficient evidence against them, and no charge.

"It was a harrowing, stressful experience," he said.

The couple say they now want to take legal action to recover their money.

'Typical' scam

The BBC has spoken to Tony and the regional police commander, Colonel Teeradej Phanuphan.

They both say Tony was merely helping the couple with translation, and raising bail to keep them out of prison.

Tony says about half the £7,500 was for bail, while the rest were "fees" for the bail, for his work, and for a lawyer he says he consulted on their behalf.

In theory, he says, they could try to get the bail portion refunded.

Colonel Teeradej says he will investigate any possible irregularities in their treatment. But he said any arrangement between the couple and Tony was a private affair, which did not involve the police.

Letters of complaint to the papers here in Thailand make it clear that passengers are regularly detained at the airport for alleged shoplifting, and then made to pay middlemen to win their freedom.

The Danish Embassy says one of its nationals was recently subjected to a very similar scam, and earlier this month an Irish scientist managed to flee Thailand with her husband and one year-old son after being arrested at the airport and accused of stealing an eyeliner worth around £17.

Tony told the BBC that so far this year he has "helped" about 150 foreigners in trouble with the police. He says sometimes he does it for no charge.

The British Embassy has also warned passengers at Bangkok Airport to take care not to move items around in the duty free shopping area before paying for them, as this could result in arrest and imprisonment.

It would be easy to become cynical in a place in which corruption seems so ingrained into everyday life. However, I have considerable experience being in Thailand and doing business here. I would have to add to the above in an attempt at fair balance that the vast majority of people I have met and had any interchange with here have treated me fairly and honestly. Like all aberations, it is the few that abuse power or are simply criminal that spoil it for all. That is why I would suspect that a crackdown on the airport "zig zag" scam has probably already quietly begun.

Observations from a Bangkok bar

An email and a story to my daughter in the U.S.

Hi My Dear,

I really enjoyed awakening to your long email this morning. It is about 7 am here in Bangkok and yesterday I spent the whole afternoon and much of the evening in a bar. Sounds rather unwholesome, I know, but I was catching up with a friend who used to work in Singapore and has been in China for the last three years. When he went to China we didn’t see each other very much, but we occasionally exchanged emails or phone calls. He is a senior VP of engineering and works for a large U.S. company. He was visiting his company’s facility in a town about two hours from Bangkok.

If you don’t mind this little side story I’ll go ahead and explain:

For a start, I was really pissed off at this guy. Originally our plan was to get together for dinner Friday night. He told me he planned an early get away from work and would drive to Bangkok to arrive in the early evening. Well, Friday evening arrived and I sent him an SMS to ask what time he would be into town. He wrote back simply “9pm” which was about four hours past the time he originally told me. So I wrote back simply “OK, just sms me when you get here”. To which he wrote back that he was going to be in a conference call with the company’s people in the U.S.and that Saturday would be better. (Which obviously meant his last sms noting 9pm was out of the question to begin with. Long story short, he wasn’t going to make it to town because a quick calculation told me that it was only 6 am in Minnesota when he wrote that. I was pissed off because he hadn’t been candid with me and because he hadn't let me know sooner that we wouldn’t be able to meet up that evening. In fact, I was so pissed off I mentioned in an email to Veronica what a “dick” the guy was. In any case, I simply replied to him to just let me know by sms if he made it to town and I would try to catch up with him.

So Saturday rolls in and about 1 pm I get an sms from him that he is in a bar down the street from our apartment here in BK. I was just finishing up some work so I wrote back that I would join him when I could. I got there about an hour later and there he sat, in a crowded and noisy bar, on the edge facing the street on a hot muggy Saturday afternoon, drinking beer and watching that special circus parade of Bangkok people in a bar area on a weekend. I can tell you that it is not a bad sport. The array of people that go by is as rich as it can get, almost better then people watching in an airport. It includes all of tourists, the beggars, and the street hawkers selling everything from woven baskets, handmade brooms, tourist trinkets and novelties, to locally sewn cheap clothes, and roasted insects sold as the local delicacy (which you have already experienced in Phuket). The street hawkers are pursuing the tourists and local trade that crowd the streets. By “local trade” I refer to the hookers that are everywhere. These include the sometimes garish, but often gorgeous kathoeys (transgenders). In many of the bars there are more members of the local trade then there are potential customers in this off-season time.

Interestingly the tourists are no longer mostly westerners. There are many Chinese couples, whole families of middle easterners and Africans,and groups of Japanese girls escaping the drudgery of their lives at home. They seek out the trinket traders, food sellers, and cheap massage places with an ernest equal to the purveyors so that all come together in this big celebration of commerce that only an Asian city can display with such fervor.

This parade of humanity also includes the localized expatriates. Many of them are business types like me. But in Bangkok there are also crowds of men who have settled here, often they are pensioners, attracted to the cheap living, the girls, the anonymity, or the worn out idea that this all somehow equates to adventure. Some of them are alcoholics who are living out there days in a shabby (but visually rich) existence. They often walk around hand-in-hand with their miia naawys (literally means wife/minor or lesser), who simultaneously assume the roles of care giver, lover, maid, confessor, and companion. They are seemingly happy to do so, as it is often a step up in their situation. I think these expats console themselves with the notion that they have true lovers and friends (many of whom are transient and/or on the hustle) and a life. They gather in bars to feed their habits and greet each other in boisterous ways that seem more boyish then mature. When I observe them I often wonder what they have left behind.

My curiosity about people draws me to watch this parade, but I affect a detachment out of an irrational fear that I could somehow become one of them. I am also mindful that to anyone else who might be watching, I would be regarded as just part of the parade, so I make no judgements about what I am observing. I easily fit in to the scene, wearing an old beat up cowboy hat, khakis, and sandals, nursing a beer at midday, and looking as derelict as the next derelict.

My friend is plopped in the middle of all this awaiting my arrival. He is something of an egotistical, artificially rough talking (favorite word starts with F) guy, and affects the mannerisms of a cowboy (he used to rodeo according to him) or a biker (he used to ride Harley’s according to him), or a bar bouncer (he used to be a weight lifting body builder – a fact I can attest to because I have worked out with him some years ago when we both were into using the gym. He is, himself, a colorful and interesting character. For all his bravado, he is perhaps the most brilliant engineer I have ever known. I sometimes think that his outward manner is an affectation he uses to hide his intelligence, which he is embarrassed by. Long ago I cracked this crusty exterior and while he can still be socially challenging, he talks plain and straight when we chat. The truth is, each and every time we get together I learn much from him. He literally thinks with extreme clarity and logic and in ways that the writing of Stephen Hawkings or Carl Sagan comes to mind. He is younger then I and seeks advice from me often. I am flattered by this partially because of his brilliance, partially because he doesn’t listen to advise from very many people, and partially because he would not hold me in this regard if it were not for the fact that a mutual friend, one that we both respected and admired, had introduced us and he was advised by him to listen to me. The two of them are among a small handful of minds I have met that think in ways that transcend common logic.

His queries in this regard are usually about office politics, the market for his products, organizational issues (he has a huge one - something that he doesn't feel all that comfortable with), or his personal relationships. He bounces technology &manufacturing ideas off of me that come in a blur of creativity. I frequently have to ask him to repeat himself but not because he spoke too fast for me to recognize his words, but because he spoke them too fast for me to string the logic of those words together. I need to stall to think them through. Sometimes the logic eludes me entirely, and I have to ask questions. In a display of one of his social handicaps, he is impatient with this, and shows it, but I ignore that. I knew long ago that he thinks faster then most of the people on this planet and I feel no shame at all in asking for him to explain more.

So I spent the afternoon listening to him and occasionally responding to his questions. I nursed beer slowly, which means that in this hot climate you end up drinking warm beer by default. The parade kept rolling by, offering occasional diversion, from heady subjects. He brought up the subject of whether there was anything meaningful in helping a big company make more money. (My view was that there was meaning in it as long as you got your share of the money and that money gave you an opportunity to do what you wanted to do.) We talked about his new relationship with a Chinese lady, something I recognized as new in his life because he had been a confirmed bachelor and serial girl chaser for as long as I had known him before. Sure enough, the girls in the bar seemed to hold less importance to him then in times past. I recognized his comments about his new relationship and his concerns about finding meaning in life as evidence of his maturing and a growing sense of urgency that affect all men of reasonable sensibilities. This is the trouble with great minds who think beyond the borders of their every day existence and yet are trapped in those boundaries by their earthly needs or a lack of confidence. The afternoon progressed into evening with a thunderstorm demarcating the two periods of the day. It was great entertainment to watch the circus parade scramble for cover. I watched a man on the street who was baking rice cakes on a charcoal fire dutifully holding an umbrella over his works while he got soaked. After the rain there was a brief period of cool air that was as welcome as any air I had ever felt. It was transient however and within what seemed like minutes, the hot afternoon had become a steamy night. I, having long ago switched to bottled water, realized that the beer finally caught up with my friend and he brought up an idea of food. That was a very welcome idea to me, not only because I was hungry, but I was ready to make a move, any move...off of that bar stool.

We ate “dinner” at a burger stand nearby. The whole shop consisted of a rolling cart on which had been mounted a propane fired flat grill and an iced compartment built in below. The fat lady proprietor of the operation flipped burgers in rapid fire succession. After making our way through the line of and collecting our burgers, we stood on the crowded sidewalk and wolfed them down. At that moment I wouldn’t have traded that burger for the best steak in town. It was a miracle explosion of flavor. All the while I ate it I hoped it wouldn’t give me a case of food poisoning.

We parted company there, eating, saying goodbye, then going separate ways. I returned to our apartment and washed away the days grit in a long hot shower. I started a movie on television and fell asleep in my chair within minutes.