Skip to main content

TIFU by falling for the most obvious scam ever

This didn't happen today, but rather a few months back when I was in Thailand with my sister. This also is not a monumental fuck up at all, it could have been A LOT worse.

For context; me (20m) and my sister (22f) both never travelled outside of Europe before this. We went to Thailand together as a bit of a 'fuck it'.

We arrive in the evening, go to the Mcdonalds (this is a crime, I know). Next day we go explore Bangkok still a bit jet lagged. We are from the Netherlands and the biggest city I have ever been to is London, so Bangkok was a monster.

Before we were able to get used to it a guy approaches us in near perfect English (learned later this is red flag one). He wrote some places for us to go on a piece of paper. He then calls a over a seemingly random tuktuk driver who proceeds to accept a deal for 50THB for more than 2 hours of driving around (red flag 2). They told us it's because it's a 'national holiday'.

First, we go to a very unknown temple. It was beautiful and not touristic at all. We are enjoying it. Another 'random' local approaches. He tells us we should REALLY go look for suits in a store nearby and get advice at a tourist information spot.

We get on our way again and go to the suit store, where a (looking back) way too pushy guy gets me to buy a suit. I drove the price down a lot and, with suit in hand, don't even feel scammed by this to be honest. It's a decent suit and fits me perfectly.

We move on to the tourist information since both locals told us they could really help us. They told us the government wants to support tourism by funding this free information place. We get there and it looks a little sketch. Inside are a few desks and basically no other people except for the workers.

The guy starts out by asking where we want to go. We tell him and he immediately starts naming specific stuff. Didn't feel too off yet at this point. We thought tourist information must be nice, since in Europe these are all over the place and incredibly helpful.

He then starts offering us stuff. Eventually it comes down to 1.2k per person for the month. Sounds fine to us, since this would be considered incredibly cheap in Europe. We decide we want to think about it. He doesn't like that.

He starts making up excuses why we can't. Like he needs to book quick and we need to leave a deposit. We actually tried to pay, but I was using a debit card which declined for suspicious payment. He then took us to an ATM where he kept pushing. I then said this wasn't feeling right at all.

We decided to say we'd think about it and maybe come back tomorrow. He kept saying we couldn't and we legally had to leave a deposit otherwise he'd call his 'friends' etc. Well, eventually we were stupid enough to leave him the deposit. This came down to 100 euro's in total.

We went back to our hotel after and realized this was all sounding incredibly stupid. Looked online and within one minute found the same story like 5 times. Apparantly it's an incredibly common scam in SE Asia.

Oh well, I did get a suit that fits for 250eu. It's mostly a TIFU because it just seems sooo stupid to us now. We learned our lesson though and had an amazing trip.

I guess it's a small price to pay for something that will help us on all of our future travel.

Still can't help but feel dumb when I think about it.

​

TL;DR we believed one of the most common scams in the country we travelled to and lost 100 euro's and our self respect.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TIFU By Fumbling My Gym Crush

I've never posted on Reddit before so apologies if anything is off. I (F) had a crush on a man at my gym for months. We would make extended eye contact frequently, workout in proximity, the usual gym things that get over analyzed when you like someone. He's wildly handsome, but I liked his vibe. A lot. It's hard to explain when someone's energy just hits different but his did. One day he started coming in with a woman. The day I saw her with him, he and I actually stared at each other from across the room for a while, and I turned and walked away because obviously gym rules - that's his girlfriend until I'm told otherwise. The eye contact continues and so does the proximity but I've dialed back completely because in my head, he has a girl and I am no home wrecker. Well, recently, on a Sunday, I was having a real shit day. I accidentally hurt my shoulder so my back day was all off, my body wasn't cooperating, the gym was packed - all I wanted to do w...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by getting called racist for not handing cash to a customer

today I (F18) fucked up by worked a long ahh shift and got put on register. I never hand money in people’s hands as customers have yelled at me for it, and i think it’s germy so I scoot it towards them as a sign of respect. this lady came in and after i did that she goes “Imma need you to do that again and put it in my hand, you did this last time too don’t you know it’s disrespectful” (meanwhile i haven’t worked register in 2 months at said job and didn’t recognize her) so i apologize, and then cuz it’s call off time i go talk to my boss about it and they all agree with me. apparently though she told my keyholder who’s a poc i was being RACIST by not touching her. so i got told i need to do better even though i didn’t do anything. she was insinuating i was a racist. idk if i should quit or what but i fucked up. TL;DR: i’m a dumbass
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by making a joke that landed horribly

I was talking to someone and thought I was being funny, but the second the words left my mouth I knew I had messed up. It was one of those jokes that sounds fine in your head and then just dies completely in real life. Nobody laughed, the mood got awkward instantly, and I could feel my face getting hot because I knew I had just made everything weird for no reason. What made it worse is that I tried to recover from it instead of just shutting up. So then I started talking more, which only made it more obvious that I was panicking. You know that feeling when you can hear yourself getting worse while it’s happening and you still can’t stop? yeah, that was me. I kept trying to act normal, but the whole thing was already gone. After that I just wanted to disappear and pretend it never happened. I’m still thinking about it way more than I should, which somehow makes it even more embarrassing. I really should have just kept my mouth shut for once. TL;DR: I tried to be funny and the joke...
Post a Comment
Read more