Travel Story: Bangkok Tuk Tuk Scam

Bangkok City Vibes

I started writing about my recent Bangkok trip and how it felt so misaligned with my personality and soul. You can read the full story here.

Although my memories from that trip aren’t very positive, I’m still grateful for the experience because it highlighted aspects of my true self that I wasn’t aware of.

While looking back at photos from my first few days in Bangkok to choose the ones to include in this post, I came across the Tuk Tuk pictures. That experience was one of those bad memories that I have of the city.

But because my blog is all about authenticity and raw stories, I decided to share this story with you.

I also will continue to write about the trip and share my experiences – the good and the bad. I won’t change any facts and I won’t describe the story from a positive point of view. I will just say it as it happened while honoring my true feelings about the experiences, people and situations.

I hope that you will enjoy these stories and will find them useful. There will be no rosy lens as they say.

You will hear the story exactly as it happened – even if there was a huge amount of darkness and negativity around it.

Tuk Tuk Scam

In my first few days, I wanted to visit an art gallery that had an going exhibition. The gallery was in the old town of Bangkok.

I took the BTS to get to the nearest station and I started walking around the area.

Because I didn’t have a local SIM card or roaming, I didn’t have access to Google Maps.

I usually rely on checking the map before leaving on my adventure and then getting Wifi from a cafe if I can’t find the place.

In that part of old town where I was walking, there were no cafes. I walked in a huge street with famous landmark buildings like the Grand Palace.

After walking for a very long time and not being able to find a cafe to use the Wifi, I asked a guy who looked normal about the gallery location.

He immediately took out a piece of paper with a map from his pocket and proceeded to tell me that the gallery is closed now. And that I should visit the sleeping Buddha and other sights instead.

He called a Tuk Tuk driver that was parked in the street and showed him the map. All of this happened in a matter of minutes.

These are the moments that make me wish I was in a relationship and remind me of how miserable being single and solo travel can be! LOL

Seriously, the more that I have these types of experiences in a destination, the more I hate myself, my life and being single. And this of course takes away from the energy of being at peace with yourself and your life when manifesting.

To say that I spent half a day trying to get to that national gallery is an understatement.

I literally reached the gallery at around 4:00 pm or something after leaving the hotel at around 11:00 am.

I basically fell for the Bangkok Tuk Tuk scam.

After taking the Tuk Tuk to a couple of sights that weren’t on my itinerary (but I didn’t mind visiting some Buddhist temples), I walked to a tourist information booth and read a piece of paper taped on the front that described the exact scam that I fell for!

The piece of paper listed things that you shouldn’t believe when a local tells you that a place is closed and that they approach you out of the blue (although in my case, I approached a guy!) LOL

The worst part of the Tuk Tuk scam wasn’t the waste of time, riding in a Tuk Tuk in mid-day heat or even the inflated price that they charge clueless tourists like me.

To me, the part that I look back to with hostility is the aggressiveness of the Tuk Tuk driver when I said that I didn’t want to visit a jewelry shop that he insisted to take me to (so he could get a gasoline voucher or something). Yes, it was a very crazy experience and I’m grateful that I didn’t have worse encounters in Thailand.

I ended up going to this small jewelry shop (because the driver got super aggressive when I kept saying that I didn’t want to go) and I bought a small elephant keychain for good luck.

So I now have that keychain and another wooden elephant one from the hotel facing each other (pairs of things help manifest love) on my desk.

I honestly don’t know what to say other than the rudeness, aggressiveness and unfriendliness of some Thai people is what struck me the most about that country.

There might be some friendly Thais but the amount of rude encounters that I had in my 25-day trip was just too high that it made me never want to visit again. And even regret visiting.

I’ll end the story here because I feel so angry just remembering that day and that driver.

I share my favorite Thai dish – Pad Kra Prow – made with beef slices in this photo.

In Bangkok, I used to mostly eat at the food court (more about this in future posts) and I like to stay that I truly made peace with being single and just having a late lunch at a random mall food court.

Did it feel great? No. It felt like I was making peace with myself and my current reality.

Did I enjoy exploring the city and eating local food? Yes, because I’m a foodie so it didn’t matter that much if I was sharing my lunch with anyone.

Did I like not being able to communicate with the locals at a food court to make changes to my order?

More about this in a future blog post!

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Love,

Leela