Tat drive to pull more expats

[Buccaneer]

A note send to TAT:

Dear TAT,

I have read in Thai Visa that you want to encourage the Expatriates in Thailand to make more use of what Thailand has to offer in terms of recreation and leisure. I have been in Thailand for 4 years as an expatriate and thoroughly enjoy your country. There are off course positive as well as negative experiences, the negative ones generally in the area of cheating.

On of the greatest cheats in Thailand , and this spoiled quite a large number of family holidays in Thailand is:

DUAL PRICING

I think that most of the expats , and forgive me for my choice of words, are very “pissed off” about this.

We all know that once race always plays the mayor role in deciding if one goes in for free (wat prae keow) or has to pay. Famoust examplese are Rose gardens , Nong Nooch , ancient city, wher4e staff openly use the “you don’t look right” argument to charge 3 , 5, 10 and even more times the Thai rate (read the rate of someone whio is ethnically correct)

I belive strongly that if you want to improve on numbers of tourist, this should stop, and you are in the best position to appeal to the government to do something abvout it.

Imagine if we in the west would say, ah not Caucasian , well then pay 200 pounds to go into the londo0n Zoo, , pay for the British museum (it for free for all races).

My experience is that letters of this nature are never answered, and I can imagine that on the other , receiving side,  the delete button is pushe (with or without kriengjai smile) as soon as the second alinea is read. I hope that this will not be the case this time.

[Buccaneer]

You never guessed what happened to my mail to TAT, see this  (BTW , who can forward it to an address that is not there to fool people to belive that they listen)

This is the TAT Mail System program at host mail.tat.or.th.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned

below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.

For further assistance, please send mail to

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the message returned below.

The TAT Mail System program

: Recipient's mailbox is full.

[snowwolf]

Well said dude.

You got a very valid point here, and most foreigners would, in one way or another agree with it. I think that for example, Thai Airways should always have just Thai staff, otherwise this would be an incorrect representation of the Thai people towards the rest of the world, given that there are practically no foreigners who are living in Thailand that can be considered to be "Thai", but this dual pricing thing is a totally different matter.

First of all, as an Australian from Sydney, I feel not only priveleged, but also feel that its great to come from a "western" city where almost half the population was born overseas, with perhaps 1/3 being of Asian backgrounds, many of whom are also Australian citizens. What this means is that there is a fine line between what is acceptable, and what is not. If an Australian (or Indian, or whoever) shopkeeper said to a Chinese person (or a person who is assumed to be Chinese) that they have to pay more because they are not "true blue" Australians (ie westerners or Aboriginals) then there would be outcries of racism and possibly even violence, and the international reputation of arguably one of the worlds most respected, tolerant, and multicultural nations would be severly tarnished. 90% of my friends in Sydney are from Asian backgrounds, whereas I'm a westerner and this just goes to show the great tolerance we have in Australia. Not only that, but this notion of "you clearly stand out as a foreigner due to your appearence" leads some (not very educated) Thai people for example, to believe that if they were to live in Australia, they would be a tiny minority, forever seen as "foreigners" in the way westerners are in Thailand. That couldn't be further from the truth.

Given that Thailand up until now has seen anything up to 10 million foreigners a year inside its borders, this kind of "racism" clearly can not be tolerated, and while it is not wide-ranging (it is usually limited to temples and national parks and the like) it nevertheless gives the foreigner a sign of not being welcome, or of being unnecessarily discriminated against.

From my experience, I just can't even endure the word "racism" because fortunately for me, it is hardly relevant, but when I see such practices being made, it certainly shows the cold shoulder approach that just shouldn't be accepted anywhere in the world today.

[markt]

If Thais still call the Indians who have lived there for many years, Kairk,  then they aint gonna accept farangs.

We are tourists, please spend and leave.  If you wish to stay for a long time you must have the where-with-all.

I think that the Thais have had enough of Thailand being used as a hedonists playground.  

By the way, does any one know if there is a ruling goverment in the "west" whose party is called...     We love us?  As in Thai rak Thai.