You know the saying that "bad luck never comes alone"? After the whole shenanigan we encountered at
Samboondee Restaurant, we encountered another one as my buddy and I were leaving the
con man's restaurant by taxi. Only this time, it was trickier because it involved a corrupted policeman.
On our way back to our hotel from that fateful restaurant, we were stopped by a policeman at a roadblock. Upon questioning our taxi driver and learning that we were heading towards
The Davis Bangkok, he immediately demanded for our passports. He then proclaimed that our passports were invalid and that we must follow him back to the police station.
This time our half-functioning brain (we had a very long day) saved us some money though. We argued that everything was indeed in order, and had never for the moment suspected that the thing was actually a ruse for us to offer him "coffee money". We only came to that realisation after returning to our hotel.
After 20 minutes of our constant insisting that everything was in perfect order and he seeing that we were not "smart" enough to just offer him money to "make the trouble go away", he decided that he did not want to waste any more time on us so as to move on to other preys. The taxi meter was obviously still running the whole time, but that was quite cheap compared to how much we were cheated of during dinner.
I do have to wonder if the taxi driver was in cahoots with the policeman since we gave him the instruction to head towards The Davis Bangkok, which was a 5-star hotel. Perhaps due to that, he reasoned that my buddy and I was rich or something....
Basically after this unfortunately day, my impression of Bangkok's as the "land of smiles" was totally shattered. This happened in October 2006, a month after the military backed coup which deposed the then prime minister, Thaksin.
Leave a Comment
email me
add as friend
on Jul 10, 2007
Comments for DarkRay about Bangkok