Month: April 2020

Posted on

Tip, Commission, Bribe, or Scam?

In the previous blog I described the adventure trying to find a hotel, just someplace where I can sleep at least. During that adventure a few things happened that are kind of interesting and shed some light on Thai culture and business.

The driver of theThe taxi I took from the hotel I was staying at to the hotel at the airport where I had the booking kept talking with the hotel people about hotels open in the next province. I was not quite sure why
he spent so much time talking about it but I soon found out.

When we got to the airport hotel I saw the driver slope about 700 baht to the hotel owner and just after that the hotel owner keep huge prices on the taxi driver, how reliable he was and how much good information he had regarding hotels. I was assuming the payment was for the hotel owner to promote the taxi driver. I wasn’t sure if they knew each other and the payment might’ve been for something else. In fact, a lady who tried to check into the clothes airport hotel the day before could not check in since the hotel is closed and through the discussions with the hotel owner they told me the taxi driver had taken her on an hour and 15 minute taxi ride to the next province to a hotel that was open. So I think the 700 baht was Commission for either taking that lady the long distance to the open hotel where it was for my ride. 700 baht is about half of the taxi fare and a good daily income for anyone in this difficult economy.

Both the hotel owner and the taxi driver kept talking about the 1000 baht daily room charge I might face when I get to the hotel.
During the trip the taxi driver talked about how I could probably negotiate the daily charge down to maybe 650 bud.

When we got to the hotel the hotel owner said the room charge is 650 bud but I asked how long I would stay. When I explained that it depended upon the charge and that I might stay a week or even a month she reduce the daily charge to 600 but. Two days ago I pulled up to hotel booking websites and both of them indicated that the room I had rented was normally 500 but. So for the second week staying here I negotiated the price for the next week. It turns out that taxi driver is the one they use here at this hotel all the time to drive customers to and from the airport which, again, is an hour and 15 minutes away, a 1500 baht fee. Having lived in Thailand seven years I can tell you that the difference between 500 baht and 600 baht which in total was 700 but since the difference was paid for seven days, was a commission to the taxi driver. So you can see how the commissions were flowing.

When I explain what happened to a friend of mine who was a diving customer with me many years ago he kept saying, “oh that’s the old hotel scam”. What he was talking about is when you wind up someplace, not knowing any hotels and having to take a taxi and the taxi takes you to a hotel that usually increases the daily fee in order to pay commission to the taxi driver. That, of course, is one way to look at it, as a scam.

In my situation all of the hotels in the province were closed and the Airbnb were rejecting people as well so there was no place to stay . I did have to pay 1500 baht and another 700 baht for the convenience of being able to go to a hotel that was open in another province. I look at those differently from my friend, based on my experience. I didn’t see it as a scam, I saw it as a convenience, a fee for a very friendly emergency advice in guidance. Some kinds of these commissions I look at as very much like a tour guide for you. And in a difficult economy I was not angry that the airport hotel owner benefited, the taxi driver benefited, the new hotel owner benefited and I benefited. It cost a little money but everybody was happy.

And what about Groves? Well, you might pay some cash to policeman when he catches you in a traffic violation. If you didn’t pay the money you would have to go to the police station and fill out forms and go through a bureaucratic fit process while paying a smaller fine. Paying the policeman is clearly a bribe. But the policeman will try to explain to you that he’s trying to save you time and hassle going to the police station and going through the bureaucratic process and a very friendly way.

When you’re moving to Thailand and your personal effects come to the airport and you have to go to the airport to clean them in customs, you have probably done enough research to understand there is no import duty on those personal items. But you go with a tight friend who knows how to do this process and when the customs officer leaves the office you are currently in your friend will direct you to putting a certain amount of cash in a desk drawer. With the customs officer comes back in the office, he will open the drawer to “get the appropriate forms to fill out”. He will see the cash in the drawer, you will fill out the forms and there will be no duty imposed on your personal effects. This is also clearly a bribe. But in the case with the policeman and the customs officer the amount is not very high and the benefit of getting things done quickly and smoothly it seem to benefit everybody. Everybody complains about the system but it is not really changing. Everyone knows the appropriate amount to pay as if it were a menu in a restaurant.

So you can look at the extra fees being paid as a tip, a scam, a commission, or a bribe. As we say in Thailand, “up to you”.

Posted on

Musical Hotels and Total Confusion in Paradise

About two weeks ago I had spent three weeks in Suratthani, the main town in the Suratthani Province and the port that carries most of the people to some of the very nice islands on the east coast of Thailand, Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao.

But a few days before April 8 the hotel rang the room and said the government told them to close the hotel on April 8. Since I paid until April 10 I could stay until the 10th. They help me try to find other accommodations which was very difficult. Once they found something a few days later the police went to the place and told them they had to close down.

I tried Airbnb and most of those were asking questions how long I had been in Thailand and in that area. Once they found I had been there for more than 2 weeks they refused to except me. One Airbnb host said there was an airport hotel allowed by the government to accept guests. So I called the hotel, they confirmed they would accept my reservation so I booked online.

On the 10th I went down to check out and the police were there with people from the health department. They wanted to interview me asking questions concerning my travel to date, how I felt and what I planed to do. They were very nice, I answered all the questions and I got in a taxi and went to the airport hotel. When I got to the airport hotel the owner came out of the entrance which had blacked out the name of the hotel on either side of the door, an ominous sign. The owner confirmed I had a reservation but said the police had been there two days before and told them if he did not close the hotel on the 8th he would go to prison for one year and be fined 40,000 Baht (US$1,250).

The taxi driver passed some money to the hotel owner which I described in the next blog and explained the next province of Nakhon Si Thammarat had a hotel that would except customers but the ride would take an hour and a half and cost an extra 1,500 Baht (US$47). After some discussion back-and-forth about the different possibilities I decided to take the taxi ride. I got to the very small hotel with six rooms in the middle of the jungle, very nice place and nice people and I’m very happy here. Evidently the governor of this province noted that there are very few virus infections in his province and so did not issue the hotel closure orders that Suratthani had issued. I am still here in this little hotel bungalow and find it very sufficient for just staying and waiting until, I really don’t know what. But at 500 Baht/night (US$16) and a family restaurant with delicious food next door I can’t complain.

Posted on

HAPPY VIRUS DAYS?

When times are tough and when travel becomes a little bit more complicated very often the stories turn to difficulties, sadness and complications. But maybe I can just get around some of that and try to give you a little picture of what it’s like to commit yourself to traveling during a virus outbreak.

I left Singapore on March 17 to fly to Phuket to go diving with my godson, Dennis, the second generation of Bubbles, and to visit a few friends on the island. But what started out as a somewhat normal yet vacant vacation spot turned into what everyone realized was becoming a fairly dangerous situation. Too many people not taking care to keep distance or protect themselves from the virus. So after a week there I left for Suratthani to get away from the tourists in Phuket who were not observing most of the safety measures to keep from getting the COVID-19. The streets were also fairly crowded and Patong Beach is always a very noisy place to be.

Getting a 5 1/2 hour bus to Suratthani was not quite as difficult as I had expected since there were quite a few mini buses employed instead of the normal large buses to take large number of tourists here and there. But I got lucky and I got a big bus so there was a lot of space between passengers and it was very relaxing.

But upon arriving at a very nice hotel, costing only $18 a night, everyone found the government orders were increasingly shutting down the city. Now restaurants can only provide take-out meals, regulations even coffee shops need to obey. But there are plenty of little carts selling deep fried chicken, barbecued pork, sticky rice, mashed up fruit drinks and all sorts of other kinds of food so life was going on just fine if you are satisfied with fairly minimal survival necessities being plentiful.

Everyone is wearing masks and in order to enter many shops, especially department stores, you have to have a mask, get some alcohol and wash sanitizer and have your temperature taken with the laser gun. On returning to the hotel one time my temperature read above normal and above the recommended maximum so they asked me to sit down for a few minutes. After about two minutes my temperature went down to an acceptable maximum. It was the heat and the walking outside and the black hat that raised it above the allowed maximum.

After the first three days of just walking around, going by the docks and watching the people fishing and feeding the pigeons, and then going on to see the Thai temples and Chinese temples and open marketplaces, my tourist journeys were completed and it was time to spend the rest of my two weeks getting some work done, reading a lot of newspapers and information about the virus, protecting myself and getting some of the 7 to 8000 images of family photos and heirlooms organized, a job which will take several more months.

So today I decided that since the hotel called me yesterday and told me that beginning today all the hotels had to close, it was time for me to go to immigration to try to extend my stay here another month as well as look for other accommodations. I have two more paid days at the hotel so they let me stay for those two days. Immigration was pretty easy since I was only one of two foreigners there. Immigration officers on the islands around seem to be extremely crowded since that is where the tourists are. Suratthani City is the jumping off point for those islands and so there really aren’t many foreigners here. On top of that the immigration office is way out in the countryside which discourages people from using that office to get anything done. Good for me.

So now that I have another month okayed by immigration I need to find a place to stay. There aren’t many options since all the hotels will be closed tomorrow so I’m trying to be a little creative. But the staff here at the hotel has been very helpful and has given me some ideas. If I can get to one of the islands Airbnb accommodations are available which seem to get around the regulations that shut down the hotels. I read in the Bangkok post today that a fellow from France was walking around Phuket without a mask and so was arrested. I am not only wearing a mask when I go out but when I buy anything and bring it back to the room I wash my hands and then I wash whatever I bring back in. Since I can’t see the virus I don’t know how much good this is doing but I know it’s a good practice to at least be doing my best to keep healthy.

The cleanliness in this hotel is exceptional. Every day they go into every unoccupied room and clean it as though it were occupied. They don’t take all the sheets and towels out but they do a fairly good once over. And of course they thoroughly clean and fix up all the occupied rooms. Today since they are closing they have taken a lot of the mattresses off the beds and have obviously put them somewhere, not sure where they went.

Well I think that’s enough for today.

PS I want to explain why Dennis is my Godson. I was at the Phuket hospital when he was being born. When I saw the 4kg (8.8lb) newborn I said, “God, son, you are big.” That’s the rest of the story.