China to punish noodle water-throwing tourists gone wild

[lil fluffy clouds]

Probably already been lobotomised, now walking around some ward in china like a zombie...

[The Deerhunter]

So, did the Hostie get the 50,000 baht Fine in compensation to her, or did it go where too many other fines go? And the stupid rude B*$ch who threw the boiling water got a lousy 200 baht fine.

Thailand should have punished them including imprisonment & let the Chinese govt bargain punishment in China to get them back after the spent a couple of weeks in "the Hilton" to think about their behaviour. Perhaps this special treatment is reserved for quality tourists from Russia & China. Lesser quality tourists like English, Euro, North American, Scandinavian & Brit Commonwealth tourists might have been more appropriately punished.

[bubba]

So I see this made the front page of CNN International's website today:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/15/travel/beijing-airasia-hot-watergate/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

Yes, a total fine of US$1509 for assaulting a flight attendant and declaring a bomb threat during a flight. This should reassure potential tourists that Thailand is tough on terrorists!

[Big Daddy]

First, I will never fly Thai Air again. I won't knowingly fly on an unsafe airplane.

Just to clarify, the flight was a Thai Air Asia (a low cost carrier) not Thai Airways (the national carrier) flight.

Agreed. AirAsia is NOT Thai Airways. They probably wish they were. Then they could give out free water...

[Big Daddy]

So I see this made the front page of CNN International's website today:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/15/travel/beijing-airasia-hot-watergate/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

Yes, a total fine of US$1509 for assaulting a flight attendant and declaring a bomb threat during a flight. This should reassure potential tourists that Thailand is tough on terrorists!

According to CNN:

"The woman was also fined 200 baht ($6) and the other three passengers 100 baht ($3) each for disturbing public order."

I would have paid $3 to get a lick in. At least a hard elbow accidentally...

Uh oh, but then I would be an ugly American.

[anto]

The guy looked well built and very angry .Some of the armchair heroes on here would have shit themselves in reality .lol

[wabothai]

It may be wise for the Chinese government to have travellers take a mandatory course in common behavior, before they leave China.

i guess that is not going to happen. All over the world people will remain being aggrevated by Chinese non-behavior.

adding that to the already widespread hatred around the planet. We don't need it and don't want it. You hear mr. China?

[Big Daddy]

The guy looked well built and very angry .Some of the armchair heroes on here would have shit themselves in reality .lol

He looked about 5 foot 7 inches and 150. Didn't strike me as the Bruce Lee type though from what I could see.

A little old lady could have brought him to his knees, especially after his girlfriend started whining about having to turn around and go back to Bangkok. Stupid people sometimes need to know their negative actions are met with resistance to rethink things.

By the way, I'm a economy class seat hero dude. I usually use my voice, but I have resorted to other means and none of those resorted to shitting myself.

[BlackJack]

looks like some new donor organs coming on the market soon

good move by Thailand

dont upset the China trade and let the

Chinese deal with their own in the own way

[Bluespunk]

This airline has a policy of paying extra to choose seats. I am wandering if check in staff deliberately separate people who check in together and do not allow them to change seat on the plane, as a way to force people to pay the extra charge. This same thing happened to my family of 3.we were all seated in different area, including my little 6 year old. These airline staff need training in defusing dangerous situations as there will always be some unhappy people. Asking another single person if they could swap seats,would have been easy and helpful. Airline staff need to understand that they are there to help.not escalate the problem. The 2 chinese really should write a letter of complaint.

I thought the airline staff did move passengers so these two could sit together and they still kicked off after this was done.

Am I wrong in thinking this?

Edited December 16, 2014 by Bluespunk

[Big Daddy]

This airline has a policy of paying extra to choose seats. I am wandering if check in staff deliberately separate people who check in together and do not allow them to change seat on the plane, as a way to force people to pay the extra charge. This same thing happened to my family of 3.we were all seated in different area, including my little 6 year old. These airline staff need training in defusing dangerous situations as there will always be some unhappy people. Asking another single person if they could swap seats,would have been easy and helpful. Airline staff need to understand that they are there to help.not escalate the problem. The 2 chinese really should write a letter of complaint.

I thought the airline staff did move passengers so these two could sit together and they still kicked off after this was done.

Am I wrong in thinking this?

You're right Bluespunk. They just wouldn't leave it alone like they should have.

[GeckosDiving]

The guy looked well built and very angry .Some of the armchair heroes on here would have shit themselves in reality .lol

So tell us how many times have you shit your self then ? I take it you like cheese !!

[Tomtomtom69]

Thailand does not want to do anything that might possibly offend China. Too many big financial and infrastructure deals pending. I would guess someone rather high up in the junta placed a call to China, or the local Chinese embassy (same thing in the end) and asked the Chinese how they wanted the incident handled.

That kind of speculation about the reasoning for not punishing them further by the Thai authorities is absurd. Ordinary Chinese citizens who exhibit criminal behavior (as in this case) are every bit as bound to Thai laws as other Thai citizens or citizens of third countries. Punishing them does NOT offend China just as punishing a Thai citizen in China does NOT offend Thailand especially as both countries would normally consider any acts that threaten the safety of an aircraft to be a criminal act. Well, at least China does, perhaps not Thailand.

These tourists should have been punished by Thailand with I dunno, 6-12 months jail or something. I highly doubt the police officers at the airport thought anything of this other than they stupidly didn't think it was serious enough to put them in jail, so they simply fined them. That's all that happened. Strangely though, the Thais didn't think anything when they put them on a flight the next day - didn't they think they could cause trouble again?! The Chinese authorities on the other hand rightly considered this to be far more serious and are pressing charges back home.

Like every little transgression or criminal act by Chinese nationals is going to involve a call to the Chinese embassy etc. I get your point but that would be absurd. I have never heard of every single foreign criminal having their nationality established and then phone calls going out to their embassies/consulates. Sorry but that is ABSURD.

In fact it's more likely to be the other way around - foreign criminal is arrested, then they plead to make contact with their embassy/consulate, which is usually approved and then the consular staff visits them in their holding facility. A foreign national does NOT need to have permission given by his embassy to be charged - that's up to the laws and the court system of the country he/she is alleged to have committed a crime.

While Chinese citizens are no more likely to commit any criminal acts in other countries including Thailand, compared to nationals of other countries, they certainly do get into hot water just as nationals of other countries do. Case in point (although it wasn't a criminal act in this case, more a case of offending the sensibility of a university) but last year I think it was some Chinese tourists, in this case a family, were taken into custody at Chiang Mai University for dressing up as students and having their photos taken at the front gate of the university. Obviously this was NOT a criminal act and in most other countries such as the USA, Australia etc. a similar incident would have been laughed off. But apparently Chiang Mai University lost face hence they took a hardline stance, fined them and warned them not to try this s*** again otherwise there would be trouble, i.e. arrest.

I personally think what happened in this case was the Thais have a strange concept of how to handle such cases as this one. It didn't occur on physical Thai soil, but up in the air. So there were questions of jurisdiction even though being a Thai aircraft it should be treated as having occurred on Thai soil. I also learned that the flight was actually 90 mins out of Don Muang and it was incorrectly reported that the flight was still over Thai territory at that time. This is impossible because Thailand's territory isn't that large - it takes under an hour to leave Thai territory if flying in the direction of China from Bangkok and even the longest flying time out of Bangkok in any direction (south) would be not much more than 1 hr before reaching Malaysian airspace. In this case, the distance from Don Muang to the Lao border by air is less than 500km, so with a normal B737, A320, A330 or whatever aircraft they were using, it would have taken only like 40-50mins to cover this distance hence the incident probably happened over Lao or even Vietnamese territory.

If the incident had occurred closer to it's destination of Nanjing in China, then I suppose the jurisdiction could have been considered to be Chinese territory because the flight's destination was Chinese and the incident occurred over China. But since the plane actually turned around and went back to Bangkok it should have been treated as occurring in Thailand.

OK so I'm hardly an expert on Thai or international law when it comes to jurisdiction but my feeling is that the Thais mishandled this but it is not without precedent.

I can confirm that similar incidents are usually solved simply by paying money to "save face" rather than incarceration. This seems to be the Thai way. I know of an incident of an angry guy (a foreigner) who was denied boarding on his flight at Don Muang some years back (due to arriving late) who smashed the glass door to an airline office in frustration (well it was kind of an accident, not done intentionally). He was only charged for replacing the door, got treated for his injuries (they were mostly minor) and was on his way. It turns out he had travel insurance so wasn't even out of pocket in the end, lucky for him!

Perhaps if a similar incident had occurred in a western country, he might have been taken to court, but in Thailand all that mattered was the act of saving face and that involved paying some money straight away.

I think this incident could therefore be quite similar.

Edited December 16, 2014 by Tomtomtom69

[outsider]

Go on. Encourage more Mainland-Chinese cave-dwellers to visit Thailand.

[Tomtomtom69]

This airline has a policy of paying extra to choose seats. I am wandering if check in staff deliberately separate people who check in together and do not allow them to change seat on the plane, as a way to force people to pay the extra charge. This same thing happened to my family of 3.we were all seated in different area, including my little 6 year old. These airline staff need training in defusing dangerous situations as there will always be some unhappy people. Asking another single person if they could swap seats,would have been easy and helpful. Airline staff need to understand that they are there to help.not escalate the problem. The 2 chinese really should write a letter of complaint.

I thought the airline staff did move passengers so these two could sit together and they still kicked off after this was done.

Am I wrong in thinking this?

Well although I have never flown with Air Asia as I don't want to suffer the indignity of flying with a low cost carrier not to mention I wouldn't be earning frequent flyer points by flying with Air Asia, but let me give you guys some recent experiences flying within China and to/from China recently.

China Southern flight from Guilin to Kunming - I was travelling with my family, the four of us and we got seated 2 together next to the window on both sides of the cabin, in one of the last rows. Two of us were seated together but the other two were seated on the other side of the aircraft in the same row. Being a narrow body aircraft this didn't matter too much. This was our assigned seating but my dad didn't request for us to be seated all together at the time of check-in as I was in a different booking to the other three members of my party (this was a mistake), hence why this occurred (and the flight was quite full too).

I sat down in such a way that we would be all together and then a Chinese businessman and a British lady came along. I didn't make a fuss other than being a bit upset as to why we weren't all seated together - but since we didn't make a proper request at the time of check-in, nobody was seated alone and we were all seated in the same row, plus it was a relatively short flight I let it go without asking cabin crew to force the other two to sit together.

However, a few days later on my THAI Kunming to Bangkok flight I had selected our seating (this was on an A330) such that two of us would be seated next to the window and another two straight behind.

Some clueless elderly Chinese man was seated in one of our seats and I told him nicely to move (in Chinese) directing him to his proper seat, which was whatever row it was but seat D. He was very OK with that but on other occasions on THAI, where myself and a travelling family member weren't originally seated together I requested to be seated together at the time of boarding. On a previous THAI flight on the same routing I basically asked cabin crew to get rid of an American girl who was seated next to my dad because I wanted to sit there and as we had checked in separately I think we weren't seated together originally. She was like "this is my seat!" but the cabin crew told her that me and my dad are travelling together so she was promptly reassigned.

So basically I don't know how or why this situation with these 2 Chinese travellers escalated so badly. They should have realized they were seated apart at the time of check-in and requested they be seated together then. If that didn't work they could have asked nicely, like I do, for others seated where they want to sit, to move once on-board. I've had Chinese travellers do so when I was travelling alone to/from China and even though I was a bit grumpy at first I moved promptly because as long as I have a window seat, any window seat, I'm happy not to mention the fact that when travelling alone I don't need to be seated next to anybody in particular - in fact I'd prefer to sit alone, provided the flight isn't full. The last time that happened I ended up meeting a very nice young Chinese lady and was actually glad I was able to move from my original seat!

The final option is to ask cabin crew to re-assign you. All of this should take place on the ground not up in the air.

[awayego]

Worse than the Glasgow Fair Fortnight!

[elgenon]

I've had "interesting" experiences with Chinese tourists in Pattaya. A Chinese tour boarded the baht bus I was riding alone in. The first one on, a middle aged women, shoved me to one side along with her empty water bottle.I calmly said "Don't do that".Then she had everyone one taunt me as I walked by after paying.

The next night was eating at a seafood place on 2nd Road. The Chinese at the table next to me placed their empty dishes on my table.

The folowiing night I was eating at Fra Pattaya and things were quiet until a group of Chinese came in and walked around looking at the food photos on the walls and yelling across the restaurant to each other.

etc

Loud, rude, superior.

[Whyamiandwhatamidoinghere]

So they lost their "Shit"? LOL!

[Whyamiandwhatamidoinghere]

So they lost their "Shit"? LOL!

[timewilltell]

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Some Chinese people are so rude and have no manner. They think they own the world and show no respect for others.

Go and live in HK for awhile and you will experience how the mainlanders hate whitey's and every other race is regarded as inferior

Sounds a bit like Thailand.