Thorn Tree travel forum

What TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) does & doesn't do

Clarification on TAT
Taken from Tales of Asia website

Okay, let's go back to talking about scams on tourists. This one's the 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. 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.

For more about government bus versus private "VIP" bus, see last month's column.

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

The TAT website is at: http://www.tourismthailand.org/index.php. Though is often the case, for truly useful travel information you'll find dozens of better sites, but this will at least give you an idea of what they are about.

As this is related to transport, two websites are:

For the government bus service, which I often rave about, or at least rave in comparison to the KSR tourist bus nonsense, see: http://www.transport.co.th. However the site is only in Thai and I suppose if they really want foreign tourists on their buses they might want to address this situation, but there's really not that much on the site anyway. And for the trains, try this: http://www.srt.or.th, which is a bilingual website and does include train schedules.

The forecast today is dark and cloudy with a possibility of a drive-by.