Beware of Tourist Bus Trips

[Guest Gordon]

I was told about this last year, but I doubted it at the time. Now today on Thai television there is another incident of the same thing.

It would appear that some tour buses are robbing their passengers after putting them to sleep with something in the air-con system.

The incident today says that everyone on the bus, a large type double decked, was sleeping and were robbed by the driver and assistant. They went through everyone's belongings without anyone knowing what was going on.

I don't know what type of sleeping drug was put through the system but this must go on quite a lot.

In the incident that I was told about last year, one of the passengers did not go to sleep and saw what was going on. However they thought it better to pretend to be asleep and only spoke about it later. I do not know what the outcome was.

Both incidents were trips from Bangkok to Chaing Mai.

 

 

[Guest lvdkeyes]

This sounds like something out of a movie.

[2lz2p]

From Bangkok Post today:

 

20 sleeping tourists robbed

 

SUNTHORN PONGPAO

 

AYUTTHAYA : Twenty foreign tourists were robbed in their sleep on a bus and awoke to find they had been left in the middle of nowhere in Bang Pa-in district early yesterday morning.

 

Local police came to help the tourists from Europe and the US after four bus crew stole their belongings and abandoned the bus after parking it on the side of the Asian Highway about 6am.

 

The victims said they took the bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok on Sunday night with four male staff, including the driver. Exhausted by the trip, the tourists fell asleep during the night, unaware of the plot to steal their belongings.

 

It was believed the driver stopped the bus by the roadside early in the morning and the crew stole valuables, laptop computers, cameras, hand-held game consoles and cash from seven bags, totalling more than 150,000 baht, before fleeing.

 

Police contacted a tour agency on Khao San road where the tourists bought their package deals. The agency did not manage the bus in question but had outsourced to a bus company.

 

The outsourced bus owner, Sirada Boonme, 26, said the bus belonged to her father's company.

 

After hours of negotiations with the tourists, she agreed to pay compensation of half the amount that had been stolen in cash and the rest by bank transfer.

 

She refused to give any details about the bus staff. Police suspected Ms Sirada's father might be one of the four men.

 

 

[Gaybutton]

To me, the strangest part of the story is the fact that the bus crew did this in the first place, whether they gassed the passengers or took advantage of them when they realized they were all simply asleep. Wouldn't the bus company know who staffed the bus? Wouldn't they at least have their names? It would seem to me that the easiest thing in the world would be for the police to track down the perpetrators. If they can't, then the phrase "What's wrong with this picture?" leaps to mind.

 

[Bob]

......after putting them to sleep with something in the air-con system.....

 

I don't know what type of sleeping drug was put through the system but this must go on quite a lot.

 

The one newspaper story doesn't support anything about any drug-induced sleep. Think of it, if there's a drug like that going through the air system, wouldn't it have affected the driver and all of the people engaging in the thefts? Or did they take the secret antidote ahead of time?

 

As to your commment that "this must go on quite a lot", I respectfully don't believe that at all. An incident of this type would receive publicity - as evidenced by the one newspaper story - and I've never "heard" or read anything like this before anywhere.

 

Based on my experiences on buses in Thailand, it seems the Thais can sleep in just about any position and regardless of the noise level around them. The newspaper story simply indicates that somebody stole items from their bags while they were sleeping. That's happened on rare occasions even on airplanes.

[Guest topjohn5]

It is extremely unlikely that its a gas on a bus.......the bus driver and guide could not take something themselves to stop the gas effects that would be fool proof anyway.......and, to get the dose correct for children and adults and, large and small sizes of people is almost impossible. In a large bus with the draft in a bus and with the people near the vents getting a higher dose than others is a real problem. You simply either kill somepeople with an over dose or not put out others at all.

Also, to put people out for hours as is suggested is not realistic with a gas unless it is fed constantly.

This story doesn't make any sense really......

Much easier to do it with a liquid given in the free meals but, even then it's still difficult to dose right.....unless you want to simply to do a Jim Jones with kool-aid and kill people......then its easy to over dose them all.

And, sure they should be easy to identify you'd think.........

[Guest xiandarkthorne]

Sorry if I come across like a killjoy again but I don't think suitable dosages would be a consideration if they really decided to put everyone to sleep. For starters, the person coming up with such a brilliant idea would have little knowledge about dosages - or possibly fatal ones. Like it or not, this is Asia where very few people are aware of things like that.

 

Let me give you another example. A peanut allergy, for example, would be considered hard to believe in general simply because it is so rare here, and so few people (comparatively) come into contact with faragns who might have it. And since many Asians still cook mainly with peanut oil, if you accept a dinner invitation to an Asian's home, the onus is on you to stress that any kind of peanut product could cause a possibly fatal allergy reaction or your hosts could literally kill you with kindness.

 

Having said all that, I am inclined to agree that they couldn't possibly be using sleeping gas as that would certainly affect the driver as well. If you were a typical Asian man-in-the-street, the more believable explanation would be black magic.

[Gaybutton]

Not only that, but where would the driver and bus staff have gotten this gas in the first place? How come the Russians never heard of it when that terrible incident occurred when terrorists took over that theater in Moscow several years ago? I'm not a chemist, but I've never heard of a gas that has this sort of capability.

 

The other point is the one about how they could have gassed the passengers with no effect on themselves. Unless they were wearing gas masks, how would they know whether it would put them to sleep too? At least they didn't use Zyklon-B.

 

I don't swallow the gas story at all. Even without any gas, the story is still bizarre. Given that a number of passengers must have been on the bus, the driver pulls over, he and whoever start stealing from the luggage, which had to take time, and none of the passengers wakes up or notices a thing until the perpetrators are long gone. It sure seems strange to me. I wonder what the perpetrators had in mind in case any of the passengers woke up and started raising hell while the thieves were still in the middle of this robbery.

 

It just doesn't make any sense.

[Guest Gordon]

Not only that, but where would the driver and bus staff have gotten this gas in the first place? How come the Russians never heard of it when that terrible incident occurred when terrorists took over that theater in Moscow several years ago? I'm not a chemist, but I've never heard of a gas that has this sort of capability.

 

The other point is the one about how they could have gassed the passengers with no effect on themselves.

 

With the greatest respect to Gaybutton. In the quick pictures on the television news this morning, I am sure I saw that there was a closed compartment with door between the driver and the passengers.

Does that help you to swallow it ??

 

 

[Gaybutton]

Does that help you to swallow it ??

 

No, it doesn't. There's still too much to this story that doesn't make any sense. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but again I would want to know what kind of gas was used, how they managed to gas the passengers, and where they got it from.

 

Let's suppose they really did gas the passengers somehow. Along with my above questions, and the questions posted earlier by me and other posters, there's one more thing bothering me: Why this particular group of tourists? If they were going to attempt a crime like this, obviously they must have planned it out and targeted this tourist group. Why this group as opposed to other tour groups they would drive for? Was it just a random choice? Was there something particular they thought was in the luggage and they were after it?

 

Also, what about the ease of figuring out who they are? The bus company has to know who was driving their bus. How hard could it be for the police to figure out who did it?

 

This sounds like something right out of "Columbo."

[Guest lvdkeyes]

This sounds like something right out of "Columbo."

 

.

Or from a movie as I suggested previously

 

[Bob]

The same story is on another forum. Another poster said:

 

"never let facts or common sense get in the way of a good urban myth"

 

He said it better than I did so I'll leave it at that.