Honest Thais

[Guest wowpow]

Bangkok Taxi Driver returns 630,000 baht left in cab Good deeds bring year-end cheer - The Nation

 

Bangkok taxi drivers have been in the news for all the wrong reasons this year but yesterday one hit the headlines for his honesty. Cabbie Boonruam Boonchuchuay yesterday turned over US and Thai currency totalling Bt630,000 left by an American passenger.

 

The 51-year-old hopes his "good deed" will generate a better image of taxi drivers and generate a feel-good factor among foreign visitors. The relieved passenger gave Boonruam a US$100 (Bt3,525) reward.

 

At 2am yesterday Boonruam picked up 50-year-old American tourist Daniel Melga from Suvarnabhumi Airport bound for Sukhumvit Road. After dropping off Melga, Boonruam headed back to the airport. An hour later airport staff asked him to check if Melga had left a bag in his taxi. Boonruam found the bag and handed it over. The bag contained $17,000 and Bt30,000 in cash and important documents.

 

"I didn't look inside the bag and I call the Jor Sor 100 radio station if I find anything passengers leave behind. I'm happy the passenger got his bag back and I want foreign visitors to know there is at least one good taxi driver working at the airport. "I want visitors to feel good about Thailand. I want to erase the negative image of unregistered taxis that do bad things," Boonruam said. Melga has a business in Thailand. He had travelled from San Francisco.

 

He thought he had taken all his belongings when he got out of the taxi. He later realised his mistake and had a friend call the Ruam Duay Chuay Kan and Sor Wor Por 91 radio stations to help locate the taxi. "I'm thankful for the taxi driver's kindness and also for the others who helped get my bag back," he said.

 

In related news, Lampang roadside-restaurant dishwasher Sutri Manoy, 35, reported a customer had left a handbag with more than Bt28,800 in the restaurant.

Kamphaeng Phet police later said Vipavadi Vongkhoksung, 27, reported the missing bag. The two were reunited and the honest dishwasher was rewarded with Bt1,000. Vipavadi earned the money selling rice and was about to settle some debts. "It's New Year good luck that Thailand still has good citizens like this person," she said.

 

[Guest freeyourmind]

As much as we all like to hear the warm and fuzzy reports of honest Thais.... I don't believe a word of it.

 

Me thinks ToT feeds this to the press because crime is way out of control in the tourist areas. And in an attempt to fool the tourists provide these stories.

 

What was the first thought you had after reading these articles about large sums of money being returned to thier lawful owners?

 

Was it ahhhhhhh how nice to see good people that work the tourist areas still honest?

 

A nice thought sure........but in reality the Thais who work the tourists areas will rip you off or cheat you for a few baht and to think they find a wad of money that equals 2 or 3 years salary and all of a sudden they have a desire to give it back to the rich farang.........

 

I don't think so.

[firecat69]

A nice thought sure........but in reality the Thais who work the tourists areas will rip you off or cheat you for a few baht and to think they find a wad of money that equals 2 or 3 years salary and all of a sudden they have a desire to give it back to the rich farang.........

 

I don't think so.

 

You definitely do not know what you are talking about . In the last 10 years I have had many instances of money left in pants for laundry, giving a 1000 baht bill thinking it was a 100 etc etc etc.

 

In every instance the money was returned to me. The average Thai is a hard working honest individual and anyone who says different must have deserved what he got.

[Gaybutton]

I don't believe a word of it.

 

You don't? What you do or do not believe is your own affair, but quite frankly I'm tired of seeing posts from "experts" who attempt to portray Thailand as nothing but a nest of prostitutes and thieves whose sole purpose in life is doing everything possible to rip off "farang." That is simply not true.

 

Sure, there are serious problems with theft and dishonesty in Thailand, and Pattaya has more than its share. But there are also plenty of good, honest people, and that includes boys, who wouldn't dream of taking anything that doesn't belong to them or isn't offered and will also bend over backwards to help people when they can.

 

Considering that you are posting under the handle 'freeyourmind,' perhaps you ought to free your own mind and be a lot less narrow minded.

 

I suppose if enough "experts" post enough nonsense about what goes on in Thailand, then people start assuming it must be true. Meanwhile, all this stuff about the Thais being a nation of thieves and prostitutes and, while we're at it, along with posters who insist that going to Sunee Plaza means you're a pedophile, is nothing but a bunch of crap.

[Bob]

Yes, hardly fair to express disbelief when the poster doesn't really have a clue.

 

I recall when a Bangkok taxi driver exerted great effort to locate me and return my passport which

I left in the backseat of his taxi (I frankly can't figure out how he found me a day later - he must have a great memory given all the fares he has in a day). And I practically had to force him to take the

tip I gave him as a reward. Nice guys (including taxi drivers) do happen in Thailand.

[Guest PeterUK]

 

 

Sure, there are serious problems with theft and dishonesty in Thailand, and Pattaya has more than its share. But there are also plenty of good, honest people, and that includes boys, who wouldn't dream of taking anything that doesn't belong to them or isn't offered and will also bend over backwards to help people when they can.

 

 

 

I couldn't agree with you more, though I don't know that I would have referred to boys who will 'bend over backwards to help people' - too much fuel for the probably already overheated imaginations of board members. Of course we should all be on our guard when making commercial transactions out here (or anywhere else) but that doesn't mean that we need to assume that everyone we deal with is a rogue. In the case of the boys, I have met many more honest ones than devious ones. I can only recall one small instance of theft from my room in nearly twenty years of coming to Thailand. Cases of greed have been more common but I hardly blame the boys for that - it goes with the territory, just as lust does on the part of the customers. Our more cynical contributors love to sneer at the rest of us for being deluded and 'jai dii' (which I now understand to be an insult when I always used to think it was something to aspire to) when we make positive statements about Thais; sadly they fail to realise that by emphasising the negative side of things all the time (perhaps burdened by bitter personal experiences) they are showing themselves to be even more deluded themselves. In life generally, the truth tends to lie between the two cartoon extremes of black and white.

 

[Gaybutton]

I couldn't agree with you more, though I don't know that I would have referred to boys who will 'bend over backwards to help people' - too much fuel for the probably already overheated imaginations of board members.

 

Hah! Yes, I see what you mean. An unfortunate choice of words on my part. . .

[Guest wowpow]

freeyourmind -

 

You must be reeling from Gaybutton's written onslaught.

 

I think you are too quick to jump to conclusions but, like you I thought to myself "this is happening just too often to not stretch my credulity". Like many I do ocasionally get a bit tired and a little cross at the constant attempts to rip one off for small amounts.

 

Only this week a taxi driver was very amusing until we arrived and noted that he had forgotten to switch on the meter. As I knew the correct fare it was not a problem. A restaurant 'accidentally' gave us 100 baht short change.

 

Also this week I entertained a bar boy that I have known for years. We joked about what he asked his customers to pay. He took me to Paradise and back and it's Christmas so I slipped a very generous tip into his pocket. A few minutes later he rang me to say he was joking about the money and had I given him too much. Twice recently people have chased after me to return my mobile phone.

 

I bumped into a very wealthy friend of a friend at a cocktail do the other night and he told me that he thought Thais would stab you in the back and were only interested in money. That confirmed my previous opinion of him.

 

Every time I think I understand something about Thai culture, something happens to prove me wrong. Don't become cynical there are lots of honest and good people in Thailand.

 

[Guest buaseng]

As much as we all like to hear the warm and fuzzy reports of honest Thais.... I don't believe a word of it.

 

Like a great many other people I have had my fair share of being ripped off by BKK taxi drivers and generally treat them with suspicion. A great many of them try to take farangs for every baht they can through refusing to switch on the meter, doing large detours to bump up the price and claiming they do not have even the smallest amount of change when offered a 100 or 500 baht note.

 

I am also usually a cynic in these matters but am nevertheless prepared to believe that there are some honest taxi drivers around. As a general point I have found the majority of Thais to be honest but also conversely that the more contact a particular section of the Thai population has with foreign tourists the more dishonest some of them become and it turns into a game to see how much money they can take the tourist for, much the same as some tourists seem to delight in how much they can save (and subsequently boast about to their friends) by bartering to ridiculously low prices for particular goods and services.

 

What does amaze me is the large sums of money that people seem to carry around in notes of various currencies and denominations in their bags - have they never heard of travellers cheques or bank transfers (or for that matter safe deposit boxes)? They are asking for trouble and in general I have no sympathy for them at all?

 

Also the paltry sums of money offered in some cases to the honest drivers who return property is insulting rather than being an incentive for them to remain honest.

 

[Smiles]

" . . . . A great many of them try to take farangs for every baht they can through refusing to switch on the meter, doing large detours to bump up the price and claiming they do not have even the smallest amount of change when offered a 100 or 500 baht note . . . "

RULE #1 (regarding the use of taxis in Thailand, and Bangkok especially): always take a street-wise Thai Guy with you!!! One of those older body builders from Tawan Bar would do quite well but in general, you and your treasure will be safer with a Thai speaker sitting in the back seat (necking) with you. You just shut up.

 

Cheers ...

 

[Guest freeyourmind]

Ok folks, I don

[Gaybutton]

I have a great idea Mr. GB.

 

 

Is it as great as the rest of your post? Nobody's asking you to leave this forum. Whether you do or not is your choice.

 

If you think my remarks were directed solely at you, then you're wrong. When I referred to "experts" I was referring to the whole gamut of people who love to post without any idea of what they're talking about, and that's what I'm tired of reading. You're the one who came out with the absurd comment, "Me thinks ToT feeds this to the press because crime is way out of control in the tourist areas. And in an attempt to fool the tourists provide these stories." Sorry if you're all bent out of shape as to the way I responded to your post, but I stand by every word I wrote.

 

Now you're saying,"What I did say is that Thais that work the tourist areas will rip you off or cheat you. I did not imply or suggest it was nationwide. As a matter of fact I said specifically that it was the tourist areas." Oh, ok. I get it now. It's not the whole country. It's just the tourist areas. Well, for fear of getting your dander up again, I'll let you decide for yourself what I think of that comment.

[Guest kenrfc]

Its in the newspaper because the guy gave the money back. That's the big news story.

 

Of course you would never see a headline that says : "ANOTHER DUMB F**K DRUNKEN FARANG LEAVES HIS MONEY IN THE TAXI: Driver pays off all his debts and has a big party"

 

As far as tourist areas go they are the same the world over. Heck, I got ripped off pretty good in front of the Colloseum in Rome.

I live in San Francisco which is a big worldwide tourist destination. I can tell you that most native San Franciscians love thier city and would be more than happy to help out a tourist in need. But still there is a whole class of people that hang out in the big tourist spots that are ripping off the rubes. Just walk down "Fisherman's Warf" and you'll see the con artists with their shell games and 3 Card Monty games, the touts, the $15 t-shirts. We even have the "Ugga-Bugga Man". He's a scruffy guy who crouches down behind 2 branches of foliage he holds in his hands. When unsuspecting tourists walk by he jumps up and shouts "UGGA-BUGGA!" People are startled and scream and then eveyone laughs- AND THEN THEY GIVE HIM MONEY!!!

Yes, part of being a tourist is to be ripped off.

 

 

[Guest Hedda]

Me thinks ToT feeds this to the press because crime is way out of control in the tourist areas. . . in reality the Thais who work the tourists areas will rip you off or cheat you for a few baht

 

That's what the man said, regardless of how many posters then warped it beyond recognition to try and make it an indictment of all Thais. That's not what the man wrote.

 

Frankly, I would not put it past some tourism promoters to plant a news story like this. The Thai papers these days are so full of political plants, it's so easy to imagine one like this to promote tourism and fight any negative image.

 

But whether the stroy was a plant begs the point. The fact is that most tourists are prey for con men and dishonest vendors all over the planet and Bangkok or Pattaya are certainly no exception to that reality. In Thailand, there's also the issue of how eager the Thai authorities are to "wed out" the bad apples known to prey on tourists.

 

No, not every Thai working in tourist areas is a crook, but neither are the Thais any more virtuous than any other poor person who works in tourism and gets exposed to wealthy foreigners, too many of whom are indifferent to how they treat the locals.

 

In return, many, but not all, locals fall victim to the Tourist Syndrome: "They're so rich they'll never miss it. We're so poor, it's really a "victimless crime." Once that kind of attitude sets in, and the clash of cultures commences, unhappy things can happen. It's not a Thai phenomenon; it's human nature.

 

I think that's what the poster was trying to say, before the indignant farangs arrived for tea with their Jim Thompson handbags.

.