Tourist Police -- Open Letter For Your Reply

[SamuiBond]

Tourist police is not hiding tourists' problems ( as far as I know). These guys didn't hit the note. This story sound a silly "It was me" story. I f you hit someone despite knocking off the power it is just stupidity off the driver to hit someone while moving. However it could have been a child learning to do backstroke. This Frenchy friend of yours needs to understand one singular idea of life - be safe-take care.

Tourist police surely could have been there to prove this. They do have numbers and locations right behind the McDonald's next to lake. They can serve people in (to my knowledge) 13 languages. All off them (people who speak these languages) do this voluntarily. I doubt there's much You wrong - Me right stuff. Copy that.

P.S I volunteered to translate my native language if they ever needed me - day or night.

[Comehome]

Hi.

The Tourist Police on Koh Samui just moved and have their new office a few hundred meters after Big C if you go on the mainroad towards Maenam.

Just heared that there are only ten Police men working for the Trouistpolice and their district includes 3 islands!

So they are 10 persons to look after Koh Samui, Koh Pagnan and Koh Tao. The main reason why there aren't more of them is that most of the local policemen don't pass the englishtest.

The few times we have needed the TP:s help, they have been fantastic.

It isn't about taking anyones side, it has to do with following the laws and show the tourists that everyone needs to follow it, no matter if they are thai or tourist.

Many tourists come to the TP expecting them to "solve their problem".

If you are a tourist in a foreign country it is your god d*mn duty to learn about the "what you do and what you don't do" in the country. You must also understand what you sign and what you agree to WHEN you sign something.

[NHJ]

getting money instead of going to the repairman is a common way to earn money, have a look at those rental contracts for motorbike, it's said in the contract you can't go to repair the bike by yourself and on the other side of the paper sometime you got the price of every part plus 300%...

[mattias33]

getting money instead of going to the repairman is a common way to earn money, have a look at those rental contracts for motorbike, it's said in the contract you can't go to repair the bike by yourself and on the other side of the paper sometime you got the price of every part plus 300%...

Well, go to a repairshop yourself is depending on what it is. I have a small rentalcompanie and in my contracts it say that major damage must be reported to me and i choose mecanic. Reason for this is that if you smach up a for instans Honda wave completely, all the original plastic from honda costs close to 15000 baht. If you go to a thai workshop and let him put the copy-parts on it you can get away with 3500 baht.

However, you smach a rented vehicle you pay for the repair to get it back in the same condition it was when you got it. Nothing more. Normal procedure is that you get the receipt from the repair. Any renter of bikes/jetskis/cars or whatever have a repairman they use and can get pretty advanced damage fixed in a day. You should not just only give the renter money. You should get the recipt of the repair, ask what was changed and maybe even get to see the damaged parts. Otherwise they add their own "bonus" for sure. Then again, a rich tourist with 2 weeks/year of the hardlife might value time more than money in this matter. But bottom rule- you brake it=you pay repairs. Pretty easy.

[Gatorade]

I think that with all the pontificating going on the main point is being missed.

The phone call to the Tourist Police was not answered. It doesn't matter a jot as to who was right/wrong.

The support to Tourists was simply not there, perhaps there was a good reason, but it would be comforting

to know why. I appreciate that it is manned by Volunteers, but if they are short staffed a recorded message

advising callers to ring the 'professional' police. would be helpful.

[animatic]

If the Thai guy from the jetski company ordeed the french guy to cut the motor,

he would have KNOWN, as rental agent the affects of cutting the motor like that.

His fault.

I certainly think the rental agent is significantly more at fault,

the french guy lost control of his craft at the SPECIFIC order of the rental agent.

End of story.

Other than ANY farang is 100% more guilty of anything, every time,

if more than two Thais are squared off against them.

Makes no difference Farangs are money trees, and ting tong,

and incompetent, because the don't kow tow, and just aren't Thai,

so make them pay. Unless one Thai is on their side.

then they can pay a little less.

End of real story.

[SamuiJens]

Tourist police is not hiding tourists' problems ( as far as I know). These guys didn't hit the note. This story sound a silly "It was me" story. I f you hit someone despite knocking off the power it is just stupidity off the driver to hit someone while moving. However it could have been a child learning to do backstroke. This Frenchy friend of yours needs to understand one singular idea of life - be safe-take care.

Tourist police surely could have been there to prove this. They do have numbers and locations right behind the McDonald's next to lake. They can serve people in (to my knowledge) 13 languages. All off them (people who speak these languages) do this voluntarily. I doubt there's much You wrong - Me right stuff. Copy that.

P.S I volunteered to translate my native language if they ever needed me - day or night.

Well, here's your next weeks news story for your You Tube site: Tourist Police not home! What are they doing?! Don't they have a mobile phone?

Good luck, can't wait to see an interview (please ask some of the questions on this board)!

[BigC]

I can assure you that even if the TP had showed up the result would be. "Show me the rental agreement" "Does it say here you agree to pay for all damages?"

"OK you damaged the jetski - now you pay to have it repaired." FOR WHATEVER REASON!!!!!!!!!! (A fricking boulder falls out of the sky & damages the jetski, not your fault but you pay nevertheless).

Yes I am off topic.

However don't assume the TP are gonna take the side of the tourist in every situation.

Sounds to me like people looking foir someone else to blame for their own stupidity. Just MHO.

Forangs are only good to thailand for one thing that is money. so if u assume that the thai's are going to pay. forget it. tough but that is what a parradise country costs. It has its good points to it aswell though

[jfchandler]

A few people are wandering off point here...which certainly isn't uncommon on TV...

I'd suggest, the point of the OP WASN'T to argue who was or wasn't responsible for the damage to the jetski...

The point of the OP WAS that a couple of farang got into a difficult situation, wanted help from a supposedly neutral third party (the TP) to help fairly mediate a question of reimbursement, and no one was home to even answer the call.

Someone talked about TP volunteers above. Yes, in Pattaya, and maybe elsewhere, there are farang volunteers who help the actual Thai tourist police. But the majority of Tourist Police folks are regular Thai police officers, who may or may not speak English very well.

There have been prior posts here out of BKK about people talking about having called the main TP number in BKK and getting no answer, and/or about having to deal with TP officers who couldn't speak English. I've never dealt with them personally, so I can't give any first hand account.

But I did deal with the regular Thai police in BKK once in a somewhat similar situation, where a motorcylist came along curbside just as I was getting out of a taxi and hit the rear door that I had just opened starting to get out. The whole thing ended up at the local Thai police station where the officers spoke 0% English (fortunately I had a Thai lady friend along).

I'd never encountered that kind of situation in Thailand before (property damage). So I was clueless about the local ways. I would have hoped and expected that the motorcylist and the taxi guy would have gotten repair estimates, I would have seen them, and then covered my share. But.. no way...didn't work like that.

An officer at the station, who'd never seen either the taxi or the motorcycle, after talking to everyone involved, decided I was responsible for a certain amount, so much for the motorcyclist and so much for the taxi guy. Period, End of story. No estimates, no repair bills... The total baht bill wasn't so bad. But the process and the lack of any sense to it made me crazy.

[lazygourmet]

Don´t put anything in your mouth that you would´nt swallow.

Pardon my "french"!!

"Pas de probleme".

I am completely agree with your thoughts.

[Mark Wolfe]

SamuiBond Wrote:

I f you hit someone despite knocking off the power it is just stupidity off the driver to hit someone while moving

Only if you are aware of the consequences of your actions. See animatic's reply above.

It seems to me that one of the biggest forms of assistance that the tourist police, should they exist, can give in similar situations is proper assessment of damage. Anytime there is a problem in this regard, the Thai person(s) whip out a figure based on (fill in reason not based on actual repair costs).

Of course you have to be careful what you sign; the motorbike "lease contract" is classic. I totaled up all the costs of the "cosmetic" items listed on the exploded diagram -- these do not include key (and expensive) parts of the bike like the engine or transmission, etc. the total for the plastic bits and other exposed body parts was more expensive than the cost of a completely new bike. And of course, technically it is not permissible to give your passport away as collateral, but these are First World issues.

I suppose this snipe-hunting for tourist police ought to be the cover story for the next issue of the Express....

[BusyBee123]

'The result was a fiberglass puncture -- an irregular hole about fist-sized.'

this whole story doesn't make sense, to create a hole that big in a jet ski takes some doing at some speed, they are built to withstand a serious pounding.

If it's just a post to have a go at the tourist police leave the jackanory bit out.

[funfun]

'The result was a fiberglass puncture -- an irregular hole about fist-sized.'

this whole story doesn't make sense, to create a hole that big in a jet ski takes some doing at some speed, they are built to withstand a serious pounding.

If it's just a post to have a go at the tourist police leave the jackanory bit out.

exactly, correct,

1 if it was his jet skis he would have wrote a post of why the silly french lads wernt locked up for a week, each! tisk, tourist police, never around when ya need one, getting like london this place!!!!

[Gatorade]

As stated earlier the rights or wrongs in this case are not the point.

The question was ...why didn't the TP didn't take the calls on either number? This could have been a much more serious matter.

[SamuiBond]

Well, here's your next weeks news story for your You Tube site: Tourist Police not home! What are they doing?! Don't they have a mobile phone?

Good luck, can't wait to see an interview (please ask some of the questions on this board)!

I already thought this story would have been done but our schedules have not fit. I spoke with one person at TP and surprise: Biggest work for them is related to accidents with jetskiis! One missed phone call could have been wrong number, everyone out for duty or just few guys around. It's not that they got fancy phone system that connects to volunteers' home numbers or mobiles if no one answers...

Time will come and the story will be there. SN is getting better and Tourist Police connection on regular basis is part of it. Tomorrow there's other issues like marina and dead thai girl and reasons why Samui will survive crisis and so on...

[Mark Wolfe]

'The result was a fiberglass puncture -- an irregular hole about fist-sized.'

this whole story doesn't make sense, to create a hole that big in a jet ski takes some doing at some speed, they are built to withstand a serious pounding.

If it's just a post to have a go at the tourist police leave the jackanory bit out.

This is off topic, but I'll bite.

First, this "whole story doesn't make sense" bit has the faint odor of calling me a liar. For your information, the jet skiis in question were not the newer models. It you had seen the damage, you'd have immediately understood how the bow of a craft could have (and did) rise over the "rim edge" of the other jet ski and, with the right momentum, crack the fiberglass.

SamuiBond wrote:

It's not that they got fancy phone system that connects to volunteers' home numbers or mobiles if no one answers...

Why not?

[SamuiBond]

'The result was a fiberglass puncture -- an irregular hole about fist-sized.'

this whole story doesn't make sense, to create a hole that big in a jet ski takes some doing at some speed, they are built to withstand a serious pounding.

If it's just a post to have a go at the tourist police leave the jackanory bit out.

This is off topic, but I'll bite.

First, this "whole story doesn't make sense" bit has the faint odor of calling me a liar. For your information, the jet skiis in question were not the newer models. It you had seen the damage, you'd have immediately understood how the bow of a craft could have (and did) rise over the "rim edge" of the other jet ski and, with the right momentum, crack the fiberglass.

SamuiBond wrote:

It's not that they got fancy phone system that connects to volunteers' home numbers or mobiles if no one answers...

Why not?

Ask yourself if you volunteer to run ice cream van sales on Sundays or on any other time you have a moment of free time...

[highdiver]

As stated earlier the rights or wrongs in this case are not the point.

The question was ...why didn't the TP didn't take the calls on either number? This could have been a much more serious matter.

please don't let logic, comprehension of the original post or common sens get in the way of a good debate...

[Mark Wolfe]

Ask yourself if you volunteer to run ice cream van sales on Sundays or on any other time you have a moment of free time...

If you can't be available, you shouldn't have volunteered.

edit to fix quote

Edited October 20, 2008 by Mark Wolfe