TAT Scam

TAT stands for the Tourism Authority of Thailand and they are a government agency.

What the Tourism Authority of Thailand does:

TAT promotes tourism in Thailand to both the domestic and international markets. They publish literature, books, magazines, etc. They attend travel fairs. They bring the amazing wonders of travel in Thailand to the world. They license travel agencies and travel guides.

What the Tourism Authority of Thailand does not do:

The TAT does not operate travel agencies. They do not sponsor tours. They do not sell tickets – not for the bus, not for the train, not for an airplane, not for a concert, a cabaret show, nothing. They don’t sell anything! They do not have agents wandering around bus and train stations to assist travelers.

And there lies the scam. Hualumphong is Bangkok’s main rail terminal and if you’re going to take a train somewhere it’s here you need to buy your ticket. So what happens is you arrive at the depot, looking like a tourist (does any tourist ever consider how their experience in Thailand might change for the better if they wore long pants and a collared shirt? But I digress…). You spot the ticket windows and start walking in that direction when you are intercepted by a pleasant individual possibly displaying what is a bogus ID card saying they are with the TAT. They’ll ask you where you are going, inform you that the route is sold out but what good luck for you they have a TAT travel agency across the street that can take care of you. So you head across the street, see the TAT license and assume you’ve been told the truth – that this is a TAT travel agency. But what you don’t know is that TAT doesn’t operate any travel agencies, only licenses them with the criteria being little more than the agencies’ ability to comply with a few bureaucratic requirements. Inside the agency, the pleasant people will sell you a bus ticket on a private “VIP” bus. And as most people who fall for this scam report, the VIP bus stands for Very Inferior Product, the trip was one hassle after another that would be a true comedy of errors if it wasn’t all intentional and what kind of operation is this TAT running anyway?

So here’s what you need to do. When you go to the train station to buy a ticket somewhere make sure you go straight to the ticket windows and ignore anybody that tries to prevent you from reaching those windows no matter what they may say. The only person that can tell you with any authority or veracity that a route is sold out is the person behind the window. If they have what you want, buy the ticket. If it really is sold out, then you need to buy a bus ticket. But you do not buy one across the street from one of these travel agencies. Rather, ignore the people that tried to intercept you in the first place and leave the train station by whatever means you arrived and go to the proper bus terminal (southern or northern) and buy your bus ticket there on a government bus.

And do ask yourself, how is it that these fraudsters wandering around the Hualumphong lobby know the ticket availability status of every train on every route for every day? Hmmmm… And why are they not dragging Thais over to the same agency you’re being carted off to? Hmmmm…

As national tourism authorities go, TAT is a pretty good one. They’ve done a marvelous job promoting Thailand and are certainly one factor, though hardly the only factor, in Thailand’s surge in foreign visitor arrivals all the while conveniently ignoring one certain aspect of Thailand that brings in quite a lot of these visitors. While it’s true sometimes the people of TAT don’t quite grasp just what exactly foreigners want or need, as a national promotional organization they are pretty good at what they do. But they aren’t a travel agency or tour company. So don’t be fooled.

Should you approach a check-in desk of the budget US carrier Southwest Airlines, try to look narrow. Those deemed too wide for their seat are now to be charged for a neighbouring one as well. Now wedged in a public relations fiasco, Southwest says it is merely making explicit a long-standing policy for passengers who encroach on the space of those seated around them.

It is tempting to see the issue as a storm in a super-sized cola cup (with a burger and large fries please), but obese Americans are not the only ones being squeezed by the airlines. The average width of economy seats on the ten most popular international airlines is less than 18 inches, though those on SAS were a spacious 21 inches.

Seats as narrow as 15 inches were found by a recent Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) study looking at the safety implications of UK aeroplane layouts. While Britons are not as burly as their American cousins, more than a third of British women and a fifth of men would not fit their hips into such a small seat. More than 5% of British women would not even be able to squeeze between the armrests of an average economy seat.

How wide is your economy seat?
# Lufthansa 17 inches
# British Airways 17.25 inches
# Swissair 17.3 inches
# United Airlines 18 inches
# SAS 21 inches

How wide are your hips?
# 50% of British women 13.9 inches plus
# 36% of British women 15 inches plus
# 5% of British women 19 inches plus
# 1% of British women 21 inches plus
Sources: IATA, System Concepts

Seats on UK trains, coaches and buses must be at least 17 inches across according to government regulations, however no similar stipulation applies to the UK’s airliners. And it’s not only comfort at stake. Those crammed into their seats before take off may find it difficult to escape in an emergency, according to British ergonomists evaluating the current rules.

A person struggling to leave a narrow seat may also hinder the evacuation of other passengers – a problem that not necessarily avoided by forcing large travellers to buy two seats. The CAA’s Airworthiness Notice 64 (AN64), which sets the standard for seat spacing on UK aircraft, does stipulate a minimum distance of 26 inches between your seat back and the seat in front.

This so-called seat “pitch” – how much legroom a passenger enjoys – has been the focus for the recent debate over deep vein thrombosis (DVT). However, seat width has also been suggested as a contributory factor to the potentially fatal blood clotting condition. While squeezing yourself into a too-small seat can cause the sort of “tissue compression” that could restrict blood flow and trigger DVT, even slim-hipped passengers may be at risk.

“[A narrow seat] restricts the opportunity for passengers to change posture, not only because of the limited space but also because of the disturbance it may cause the adjacent passenger,” says the CAA survey. ]