Bangkok Tourist Trap Tips by Dreks

Beware of people along temples and other tourist areas offering their unsolicited help and advice. Though they may give legitimate locations and places, these people actually want to lead you to a jewelry shop or any other shops for you to buy stuffs, which in turn give them commissions from those shops. To start a conversation, they usually ask questions like from what country you come from or where you are going then telling you that such temple/palace is still closed for some reasons 'til certain time and then tell you to go some other 'tourist' place first. Then they ask you for your map (aggresively, when you are unwilling) and start marking the location and the name of the place on it. They may even call a ride for you (tuktuk) and arrange for a 'fair' fare with the driver. Bottom line, while they may not be dangerous (and convincingly, look kind and helpful enough), they are untrustworthy people hoping to get advantage of you! Several of them are prying for their next victim around Grand Palace and Wat Po with their readily available ballpens and cellphones - maybe to contact the shops that their vicitim is coming. (Lucky me, i insisted on checking for myself whether the Grand Palace and Wat Po are indeed closed, which turned out to be the opposite, before falling to their trap).

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In relation to the above, one of the places they tell you to visit prior to visiting the shop 'every-tourist-go' is the 'Lucky Buddha'. It turned out, as i confided with my official and legal tourist guide named Mali, that every Buddha becomes a Lucky Buddha -meaning, unscrupulous people can just point any Buddha nearby as the Lucky Buddha for you to get their trust when you find that the Buddha is actually there which may eventually make you reconsider visiting to the 'tourist shop'! (This happened to me at the World Trade Center. The not-so-old-man who claimed to be the 'head security' (of the open car park,maybe) offered to take me a photo with the Buddha with an elephant head, located rightside of WTC and fronting 'his' guard house. What followed next were familiar conversations/tricks with those at Grand Palace and Wat Po.)

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