By this time you’re enjoying yourself, feeling relaxed, and thinking that taking this tour was a great idea. You walk around, take a few photos, then get back into the tuk-tuk.Ĥ) He brings you to a 2 nd temple. Maybe 5 minutes later you arrive at the first temple. You’re hesitant at first, but since your plans for the day have been ruined or delayed you say “ok”.ģ) The driver drives you around the old city which is quite nice. He conveniently has a tuk-tuk driver a few feet away who nods and says he’ll take you and that it won’t cost much (they’ll tell you 50 baht or so, which is under $2). He also slips in “and you go to Export Center, also vely good”. He might tell you that it’s closed for only a few hours for lunch.Ģ) Your new Thai friend then proposes that you take a tour on a tuk-tuk to a few nearby temples (“go see Standing Buddha Temple/Lucky Buddha Temple/ Lying Buddha temple. He tells you a variation of “Grand Palace/Wat Po closed today for construction/because monks are praying/because it’s a national holiday” (fill in one of the reasons). You tell him “I’m going to see the Grand Palace/Wat Po”. A friendly Thai approaches you and asks you where you are going. ![]() If you don’t have time to see the Scam City episode, I’ll give you a very quick summary of how the Gem Scam works:ġ) You, as a tourist, show up at the either the Grand Palace or Wat Po to see the sights. There are tons of warnings in travel books about the Gem Scam and most tourists who have done their research should never fall for it. Just like my encounter, the episode shows lots of tourists walking in and out of the gem shop (or “Export Center”) in question. The episode was filmed in 2012 and it covers the Gem Scam which surprisingly, many years after I was scammed, is still going strong. The city they were highlighting was Bangkok. I’m writing this post only because I watched Scam Citya few weeks ago. Only idiots fall for that, right? But there’s something about Bangkok that brings the crazy and stupid out of people – and I was one of those. I never wanted to write about the Bangkok Gem scam.
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