Chiang Mai: Thai tour guides accuse Chinese of stealing clients

[webfact]

CHIANG MAI
Thai tour guides accuse Chinese of stealing clients

CHIANG MAI: -- A group of tour guides from Chiang Mai province on Thursday sought help from the junta after some Chinese students disguised as guides stole tourists from them.

Manop Saejie, president of a tour guide association in Chiang Mai said he and his friends are licensed tour guides.

However, in recent weeks groups of Chinese staying in Thailand and Chinese students were illegally working as guides in the province, he said.

The Chinese had stolen their customers, Manop said, adding that foreigners are prohibited from working as tour guides. Training is also required to get a license.

He said that illegal tour guides also give inaccurate information about Thai culture. Tourists are charged high prices, and this would earn Thai tourism a bad reputation.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Thai-tour-guides-accuses-Chinese-of-stealing-clien-30241458.html


-- The Nation 2014-08-21

[Thailand]

[iReason]

" Tourists are charged high prices, and this would earn Thai tourism a bad reputation."

[96tehtarp]

I sympathize with the Thai tour guides. The unfortunate fact of the matter is Chinese tour guides look an awful lot just like Thai tour guides, and they aren't as easy to spot as farang (ghost face) tour guides. Also, most notably, they speak Chinese fluently.

Increased numbers of Chinese tourists come with both pluses and minuses. Here in the OP is just the beginning of a long list of minuses.

The Chinese have been colonizing Thailand for centuries.

I hope I am wrong.

Edited August 21, 2014 by 96tehtarp

[MESmith]

Did they take them to "commission" shops?

[shirtless]

You reap what you sow, Thats why the chinese prefer chinese guides.

[klauskunkel]

I just snorted coffee...

[Strangebrew]

Yeah not fair we wanted to overcharge them. Beside I went to school 30 years and now can spell my name

[Alwyn]

I laughed so much a bit of wee came out...

[BernieOnTour]

Did they take them to "commission" shops?

No - it's similar to the Korean tours in Siemens Reap - they charge them directly and pay off their local "subcontractors", the money ends up in the pocket of the foreign tour guides.

Additionally, Chinese tour guides for PRC tour groups are well known for giving a very biased view of the visited country, rather nationalistic and with unfair comparisons to their great nation, culture and great government., combined with lack of knowledge about the visited tourist spots. (It's the same with PRC tour groups in Europe).

[Rimbuman]

Thai cry baby tour guides speak chinese???

[Jonmarleesco]

'... illegal tour guides ... give inaccurate information about Thai culture.' As, all too often, does Thai history.

'Tourists are charged high prices, and this would earn Thai tourism a bad reputation.' Nah!

[CMHomeboy78]

'... illegal tour guides ... give inaccurate information about Thai culture.' As, all too often, does Thai history.

'Tourists are charged high prices, and this would earn Thai tourism a bad reputation.' Nah!

Most legitimate Thai tour guides - and even museum guides - have a memorized spiel about the sites and the things they are showing.

The tourists usually don't have the background knowledge to ask intelligent questions. That's just as well, because the guides probably couldn't answer complex inquiries anyway,,, a classic example of the blind leading the blind.

[CMHomeboy78]

'... illegal tour guides ... give inaccurate information about Thai culture.' As, all too often, does Thai history.

'Tourists are charged high prices, and this would earn Thai tourism a bad reputation.' Nah!

Your comment following the statement that illegal tour guides give inaccurate information - "As, all too often, does Thai history" needs some clarification.

Thai history has been recorded since the 6th century BC by the Chinese chronicles, and was continued by the Thais themselves in the small kingdoms and city-states they established in the 13th and 14th centuries. Unfortunately, much has been lost to war and neglect. Notably, in the sack of Ayudhya by the Burmese.

The arrival of farangs who started to take up residence here in the early 19th century marked the beginning of an era when the country's history began to be meticulously recorded in first-person accounts.

The problem isn't that factual narratives of Thai history don't exist, they do; and most of them have proven to be accurate. The problem is that so few people - Thai and farang - take an intelligent interest in them. The lessons to be learned from the art and culture of the past could, in many cases, be applied to modern life; complimenting technology with the civilizing influence of aesthetics and the refinement of manners that are so often conspicuous by their absence nowadays.

[cmsally]

There are quite a few Thai tour guides who have an in depth knowledge of the culture and history, unfortunately these seem to be more of the older ones. The younger ones seem to do better on the "sanuk" activities and things more flash and modern.

I don't know if anyone saw it, but there was a weird Facebook screenshot doing the rounds a few days ago in which (in Chinese), someone was suggesting bumping off a few Thai guides so that they would be too scared to take the Chinese customers and the Chinese guides wouldn't be bothered by them! Very strange.

[HiSoLowSoNoSo]

Why this bullshit about some tourist guides when the whole bloody country was taken over by the Chinese after 1949? Maybe its time for the school kids to read the book "letters from Thailand" again?

Edited October 7, 2014 by HiSoLowSoNoSo