True Tales of a Traveller: One Day in Bangkok

True Tales of a Traveller is a series of short stories and novellas consisting of several dozen traveller’s tales covering 35 years. Although presented in a short story format for reading convenience, these stories are not fiction. Apart from some of the characters’ names which have been changed to protect their identities, everything in these stories is true.

The tenth story in the True Tales of a Traveller series, One Day in Bangkok is set in Thailand and the Netherlands in the mid-1980s. It's a story of an ambitious travel plan thwarted by the kind of seasoned tricksters who prey on tourists anywhere in the world where the volume of foreign visitors makes it worthwhile to devise schemes to relieve them of their finances. At least one of the schemes detailed in the story is still in use today, though perhaps in a slightly different form. This true account serves a reference and a warning, just as valid for travellers who have been on the road for years as it is for those setting off overseas for the first time.