Scamming the Scammers

The wild beach at Khao Lak and an evening football game (all the locals descend on the beach at dusk, only mad foreigners would expose themselves to midday sun...)


From Kanchanaburi we had a few days R&R in Khao Lak, on Thailand's Andaman Sea coast. It was off season and very quiet, but it was immediately obvious we were in a foreign outpost of Germany. Signs everywhere advertised Artz (doctors) Wir sprechen Deutsch, Curry Wurst etc. We met up with a couple of honeymooning Brits (Tom and Laura) who had ill-advisedly picked this coast for their break - it's pretty unswimmable this time of year, but at least it's attractive I suppose.


The ubiquitous SE Asian men's cooling technique of rolling up the t shirt (perhaps actually taking it off is more offensive?)

We had an eventful journey to the party island of Ko Phangan.


It started well with one of those fun buses you get in Thailand, no air conditioning but all the windows open, people carting enormous boxes and sacks onto the bus and random things happening like the bus stopping to pick up parcels but no customers.



When we arrived in Surat Thani (port for the islands of Ko Phangan and Ko Samui) things went rapidly wrong. We were dropped on the side of the road and immediately jumped upon by touts selling tickets to the islands. At the same moment the strap of my rucksack decided to break so I told them to get lost in a less polite way than that! They didn't though and after some deliberation we took them up on their offer of a 450 baht (around 8 pound) combination bus / boat ticket to Ko Phangan. This was around 200 baht more than we thought but they explained it was because the cheap tickets are only early morning ones. So we got some lunch and waited in the tour office for the bus to arrive. A minibus showed up 15 minutes earlier than they'd said and they told us to get in it. Not knowing any better, we did, but just as we were getting in a guy from the office came rushing up and asked to see the ticket. Steve showed the only ticket we had (no separate receipt) to him, and he grabbed it from Steve, who tried to protest, but he wouldn't give it back.

In retrospect we should have known at this point in time something was up, but to be honest this kind of thing happens all the time when you're travelling, and up til now it's been fine. We were thinking that the driver would have our ticket for the ferry - this has happened to us before.

Anyway we arrived at the port (60km from Surat Thani) and guess what, we had no ticket, no proof of purchase (as it had been nicked by that guy), the driver claimed ignorance (though we doubt that) and we didn't know the name of the tour office we'd booked from or even where it was.

At this point the route of least resistance (and clearly what the scammers count on) would be to just buy a ferry ticket and cut your losses and we both agreed if we'd been on our own we would have, but we were both so POd that we wanted to get our money back (900 baht plus the 100 baht each it cost for us to get a bus back to Surat Thani.) We arrived back and were looking out for the area where the office was. We found it without too much trouble and as we got there the guy in the office was just pulling the blind up. I nipped under it to prevent him from closing it when he saw us.

He made two mistakes: first he acknowledged that he recognised us, and second he gave us 1000 baht. I'm not exactly sure why he gave us the money, but I think he was trying to claim it was all some terrible mix up and that we would get our money back, less the 400 baht that it cost him to take us on the futile trip in the minibus to the ferry port!

Of course once we had the 1000 baht in our hands we weren't letting go of it, but we wanted a further 100 baht to compensate us for the bus fare back to Surat Thani we'd paid. He, meanwhile, wanted us to give him 600 baht "change" from his pointless bus ride. So we were at a kind of stalemate.

It all got quite messy and he threatened to call the police, we said "please do" and in fact I went off to call the tourist police (specific police in Thailand for this precise kind of thing). In the meantime I think the guy had got scared and decided the game was up and left the office. Not before he'd taken photos of us on his mobile phone and we'd taken a photo of him.



The scammer tries to confuse Jo with some rapid hand movements

Anyway being honest people we were a bit worried we'd technically stolen 100 baht off the guy (originally we paid 900 baht and we'd got 1000 off him) but after hanging around for a while it was obvious he wasn't coming back and he was impossible to reason with anyway - so we went off to buy a legitimate ticket, only 100 baht down for the escapade but slightly paranoid that our mugshots might be circulating around some Thai police stations!

As a precaution we've been checking into hotels under Steve's name since the scam artist had my name!!!


Our bungalow in Ban Tai complete with pet dog

Anyway we're in Ko Phangan now and Steve will report on the shenanigans of the Full Moon Party which is the reason for coming here. Just one photo to whet your appetites - here are the "buckets" of alcohol people buy on the party lined up ready to go....
Buckets of alcohol for sale in Haad Rin, Ko Phangan