I love the idea of Bangkok – the temples, the floating markets, the food, the culture – but sometimes the ideal doesn’t match the realism. When we visited Bangkok for 1 week we both unintentionally morphed into 電視的Scully和Mulder展示了X文件 – we became 2 people who started to “trust no one”.
We were so looking forward to our adventure in Bangkok, Thailand. We had planned our itinerary so very carefully and we left no room for errors – or so we thought. We wanted to see it all…and see it all we did.
And so it begins…
It began as soon as we left the Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport. We were arriving on a late flight having just spent 1 week in Hong Kong, it was dark outside and we were so very tired that we did not notice the meter ticking and ticking and ticking… We were getting the extended tour and we didn’t notice until we arrived at our destination. The ride to the hotel was much more costly than we had originally anticipated. We paid the fare because we had no choice due to the late hour. Thankfully, due to the exchange rate, it wasn’t that horrible but it was the start of more lessons to come.
到處都是痛風
It didn’t matter where we were going or what we were planning to do but everywhere we went we were told by locals that either the street was closed / the mall was closed / hotel was under construction or even burned by fire. They were always helpful though and suggested an alternate _____________ instead, even providing a tuk-tuk nearby that arrived at a snap of the fingers (眨眼). We quickly learned to ignore them and just kept walking…
我特別喜歡封閉式和正在建設中的酒店一詞，因為他們指的是我們已經很幸福地入住的酒店。
It’s Always Chicken
No matter which restaurant we ate at we would order pad Thai. Sure we are fans of the noodle dish but we don’t love it so much that we would want to eat it 7 days in a row! We ordered it to prove a point and for a laugh.
It didn’t matter what type of pad Thai we would order because we would always receive chicken.
訂購蝦–我們得到雞肉
點牛肉–我們要雞肉
點豬肉–我們得到雞肉
I’m not sure if it was because chicken is an inexpensive protein compared to beef or if they thought we would forget what we ordered but there was never a comment or explanation from the waiter. We never did send it back or complain because the dish was still super tasty but I just wonder why they even bother to list the other varieties of pad Thai on the menu if they aren’t going to serve it.
設置誘餌
在許多大城市中，公共牆壁上的地圖非常豐富，可以幫助旅行者找到自己的出路。這當然是曼谷政府豎立標牌的初衷，但我們很快發現，曼谷的牆壁和拐角標牌上的地圖更像是誘餌。
Consult a map or pull out your own personal map and you instantly give off an “I’m lost” signal. No worries though, because seconds later you’ll find someone offering their “personal assistance” with a ride in a tuk-tuk to a shop that you hadn’t planned on visiting.
Official help that’s not that helpful
Asking shopkeepers and security guards for directions seems like a smart thing to do if you can’t consult a map or trust a person standing on the street. But this quickly proved to be like a game of balderdash – you have to decide if they are telling the truth, intentionally lying or just making it up as they go along to get rid of you. Asking multiple people hoping to get a consensus was almost impossible.
有據可查的“寶石騙局”
Now you would’ve thought that after these days in Bangkok that we would’ve truly become “Scully and Mulder” but no, sadly we hadn’t bought full on into the conspiracy theory yet and we fell for this hook, line, and sinker.
We were walking towards the Chao Phraya River when a voice from behind tapped hubby’s shoulder and said: “you are very tall for an Asian”.
接下來您會知道我們正在交談，並告訴我們，既然我們是中國人，那麼我們應該參觀唐人街的這座華人廟宇，他們今天在這裡舉行特別儀式以紀念國王。如果我們著急，我們仍然可以開始。幾分鐘後，我們在去廟宇的途中，騎在三輪摩托車後面。
我們到達聖殿，除了一位正在冥想的紳士外，沒有人看見。當我們進入並歡迎我們時，他迅速轉過身來，於是我問儀式何時開始或我們是否錯過了儀式。他不知道我在說什麼，相反，他鼓勵我們去附近的一家寶石店，直到今天，這裡的價格都被降低到了令人難以置信的低價。
It was a struggle with words to get out of there and to get our tuk-tuk driver to take us to MBK mall. He begrudgingly agreed for fear of us getting into another tuk-tuk and losing his fare. Even as we were leaving the temple the driver kept trying to get us to go to the gem shop as we convinced him that yes we still wanted to go to MBK instead even though it had “burned down last week”.
A short time later – he dropped us off among the crowds of shoppers at the mall…that obviously had not “burned down”.
If you are a fan of the TV show “Scam City” on the Travel + Escape Channel, you may have seen this scam in an episode – well, it’s the exact same Black Buddha Temple AND the exact same gentleman that we met. The temple was lovely though （照片在文章的頂部）.
Will “Scully and Mulder” ever return to Bangkok?
Absolutely we would return to Bangkok in a heartbeat because it’s such a beautiful country and please don’t misunderstand, there were other warm and helpful people that we met on our trip. But on our NEXT trip, we will just return wiser, more alert, more cautious and more “Scully and Mulder” – trusting no one.
Check out this video and you can see why we’d return to Bangkok:
Have you had similar experiences travelling? Do you agree or disagree? I’d love to hear your stories…
您可能會發現這些文章很有趣:
我很高興有這麼多人發布有關這些騙局的信息。明天我們要去泰國，它將對此更加明智。
很想听聽詹妮弗（Jennifer）的最新消息，如果您看到其中任何一個，請告訴我…玩得開心！
哈哈！閱讀這篇文章時，我笑得很開心！讓我想起了我第一次去曼谷的經歷。是的，所有這些騙局都還在，似乎保安，警察和篤篤司機都在裡面。這些天，就像您一樣，我要聰明得多，完全不理會他們！曼谷仍然是一個值得參觀的好地方-所有那些美食和友善的人-我已經很想念它了！ :)
有趣且有些令人失望的是，您認為的人不會引導您朝正確的方向前進。感謝您真正的大開眼界。我認為某處有一首歌。等一下…
真是太可惜了，但我需要強調不要讀這本書，並以此作為不去曼谷的理由。泰國是如此美麗-請注意，到處都有壞蘋果，請當心。
是的，當我寫這篇文章時，這首歌一直在我的腦海中流淌。