BB pal Sean Bonner is traveling in Thailand, and spotted this street hawker selling fake identification cards. "Check it," he emails, "For the low price of 3,000 baht I could have bought a California Drivers License!" I dig the assortment of press passes. Pick me up one, Sean, but make sure mine also has the bald white dude's photo on it, just like the one belonging to "Miss Heather Roberts," below (click to enlarge). Flickr image link.
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Stephen sez, "In re-reading the Hobbit, I realized that the opening chapters made it sound like Thorin was running a con. From there, I wondered what Thorin's pitch would look like if it were a modern con, which resulted in me writing a Nigerian 419 fraud letter for the Hobbit." Dear MR BAGGINS, F... More.
BB pal Sean Bonner is traveling in Thailand, and spotted this street hawker selling fake identification cards. "Check it," he emails, "For the low price of 3,000 baht I could have bought a California Drivers License!" I dig the assortment of press passes. Pick me up one, Sean, but make sure mine... More.
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Hey, I been there.
I saw these while I was there, too. There's a couple perpetually on Khaosan road where all the backpacker tourists hang out. No idea if the IDs they make are at all convincing. Now I wish I'd bought a couple random fake docs as souvenirs.
What!? No "CopyFight" tag?
Homely Nate
I'm guessing this was Khao San Road. I was there with my dad when I was eight. We got ourselves a couple of press passes and photographer licenses. The woman had a little photobooth, then drove away on a scooter and came back twenty minutes later with our shiny, pretty official-looking passes.
Khao San road is a cesspool of corruption, mostly enabled by all the dumb white tourists who go there and think it's all in good fun and a good laugh to do something like buy a fake ID or a prostitute. The truth is though Thailand has always had problems with corruption, the influx of western tourists who take these matters as "a bit of a giggle" are creating the demand for such services. Thailand continues to go down the toilet, and the Western tourist dollar is the one pulling the handle on the flusher - "all in good fun" :)
"Now I wish I'd bought a couple random fake docs as souvenirs"
Like to get the TSA private patdowns, eh?
So you've been to Khao San road, anonymous? Perhaps as a tourist?
Is that Aleister Crowley on the far right?
@mypalmike - I have been there indeed, but not as a tourist. Check out the last time I was there - vimeo dot com slash 4749410 .
It is absolutely amazing. I the black markets (at least the one up the ally from my hotel) one can find almost everything, from the absolutely legal painting of anything one could want to drugs, weapons, sex and IDs. Aside from being a great place to grab some food from a cart at a late hours, one can get just about anything. I wasn't interested in any of it. I could care less about Rolexx watches, proustites, or freshly filched cameras.
Then something guy stopped me and showed me his booth. Complete with printer. "Look BBC, CNN, press-passes .. .. I know what you want." He was right but I didn't cave. The BBC pass even had the large building entry placard made of thick plastic.
The "holograms" were on clear tape. He had several rolls of clear tape with generic, but truly holographic, tape.
I have to say, even the California drivers licence looked real, less the picture being on the wrong side, the state prints the picture on right side if one is over 21.
It's hard walking away from the sales pitches if a good sales person knows how to read you, and how to make a pitch.
While I was tempted, I bought a painting from a kid in an American army jacket, in exchange for some money to buy paints and canvas.
"Thailand continues to go down the toilet, and the Western tourist dollar is the one pulling the handle on the flusher"
Then do something about it you big crybaby. Start a campaign to encourage people to resist their lower impulses. You'll be hailed the savior of humankind.
#5 While I don't disagree with your description of Khao San Road (and the whole Banglamphu area) as a cesspool, it's not exactly the Gomorrah you make it sound like. I can't say that there are no prostitutes working Khao San Road, but prostitution is certainly not as overt there as it is in some other parts of the city. This stands to reason: any Thai hooker with a smidgin of business sense knows that (a) the tourists in Banglamphu have less money than tourists staying elsewhere in the city, and (b) there's no point in competing with backpacker chicks who'll give it away for free.
Western tourism in Thailand (both sex tourism and tourism in general) has many obnoxious features, but to blame it for 'corrupting' Thai society is a bit extreme. The huge majority of prostitutes in Thailand - as elsewhere - cater to the domestic market, not the foreign market. If the tourist dollars stopped coming, the market for prostitution would contract but it certainly wouldn't vanish.
Common in tourist areas, especially Khao San Road. The 10 minutes I spent "touristing the tourists" there was a depressing portrait of Western culture, I tell you.
Khao San Road is lame, but certainly no Gomorrah. For Gomorrah, you have to visit Pattaya on a slow Tuesday.
Nowadays, it's harder to get a press pass than it is to get a press. I think these Thai are doing us all a big favor, and I don't think buying a fake press pass should be considered as an example of someone giving in to their lower impulses unless desiring to be at newsworthy places and events and writing about what goes on there (without being affiliated with corporate media) means you're giving into lower impulses.
And remember, Thailand is still one of the only places left in the world where it is possible to ride around in a lush tropical forest on an elephant while caught in an opium stupor. Imagine what intense pleasure such an excursion would bring! As far as a vacation, I can't possibly think of anything better than that.
There's still a store on Yonge St. in Toronto, just north of Dundas that makes "ID Cards" on the spot.
I've never been there to procure an out of country ID to frequent bars. Especially not in high school.
The really disappointing thing about Khao San was that it was overpriced. Tank tops, tshirts, board shorts, souvenirs, whatever you want you could get cheaper at the local shopping center/mall.
The Chatuchak Weekend Market was full of bargains... but crowded.
Best part about these fake ID folks is that a lot of them would get PISSED if you tried to take pictures of their signs. Apparently *documenting* pseudo illegal activity is the problem. Ironically amusing.
"Thailand continues to go down the toilet, and the Western tourist dollar is the one pulling the handle on the flusher"
- anyone blaming Thailands Ills on Tanon KaoSarn is exhibiting naivity and ignorance on such a colossal scale that any other utterence on the subject cannot be taken seriously.
Blaming the eveil corrupting influence of the farang for Thailands corruption issues is incredibly condescending to the Thai people.
Thailand is a large multifaceted nation and the Tourist zones/industry really just a small (but ignificant) area.
I've seen Thai cops issuing very informal non-receipt fines and heard some very nasty stories relayed from my Thai inlaws of what happens when you don't have the foreign press and an embassy to run to....
On a related note there is an interesting articles at kohphangannews.org about ex-resident Beckman's kafkaesque dealings after he was shot in the back in his house in Thailand by two intruders
lulz, they got diplomas.
I didn't see any of these when I was there. I can't say I would've bought any, though, so I didn't miss out.
I don't think it's Western tourism that's corrupting Thailand, I think it's Western economic institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. I won't go into the details here, but I can refer you to chapter 13 of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" for details of the manipulation to disaster of the Asian Tigers in the late '90's. Harsh economic conditions will push people towards less legal ways of making money/surviving.
@zog
So blaming the foreigner is condescending to Thais, but blaming the Thais is not? ;) I do blame the Thais as well, but my original statment really was not nuanced enough. Granted, I generalised when I said western tourism is the root cause, but I do think it's one of the major causes - indirectly. I agree that the endemic corruption in Thailand has nothing to do with tourism, but it is also a perfect fit with the tourist industry, and is unstoppable so long as certain tourist practices continue. So long as people keep coming over in droves, buying flesh, fake viagra, or fake id's, there will still be a market for the police to take bribes and look the other way as the street vendors sell these things. On the other hand, so long as wages for normal people are kept low, there will always be people willing to go into these lucrative areas of selling tourists illegal goods.
My experience in Thailand is it's not so much the tourists themselves that is the problem (although sometimes that is true), but rather their contemptible and patronising attitude. @pyros' comment (although I hope he was being ironic) is a classic example of what I'm talking about. Many tourists go to Thailand and don't even realise it has a rich cultural and architectural history - they're just there for the drugs, or the Mekong and Red Bull "Buckets", and cheap T-Shirts. People are knowingly there to exploit the wealth gap between themselves and the people selling them these things - with no interest in learning about their culture or heritage. In Khao San road the average tourist spends 120 baht per beer. In Khao San road, the average waiter makes 200 baht PER SHIFT.
Most tourists are blissfully unaware of this, and it's one of the issues at the heart of the problems of corruption and poverty.
I live in Thailand, and have for the better part of a decade.
It does my head in to see the comments of those tourists (who visited for a few weeks or at most a few months) espousing their enlightened opinions of what's wrong with the country and who is to blame. It is a disgusting modernization of the old 'white man's burden', this high-handed judgment-passing over the poor simple people of a helpless third world country. What dreck!
The Thai people are perfectly capable of handling their own national self-interests and often, quite vocally, insist that persons of other nationalities should mind their own business when it comes to issues of Thailand's political or social policies.
Thailand (renamed from Siam, as a very pointed message, 'this is the Land of the Thais') is the only nation in this region never colonized by a foreign power, and is quite proud of the distinction. Even today foreigners are legally forbidden from owning land, may only have minority ownership of a local business, and are required to obtain a work permit for any kind of labor (even voluntary, unpaid service) through a long and frequently expensive screening process.
There is even a (minority) political movement to rid the country of foreign labor, residents, and business altogether. In short, Thais are by and large not asking for foreign 'help', and for a 'guest of the Kingdom' to insist that help is needed is highly insulting.
In fact it is the westerner who more often ends up being exploited rather than doing the exploiting. Visit a prostitute? You could easily wake up without your valuables. Buy a fake ID? You just blew $300 on an easily detected souvenir. Drugs? You can look forward to paying a hefty bribe, or spending a few years in a small room with 20 other people and a squat toilet.
I'm first to admit, I know nothing about what Thailand 'needs' to do. There is an expat maxim about Thailand, "When I moved here, I knew nothing. After a year I knew everything. After three years I realized I still didn't know anything and I never would."
What I DO know is that unless you want Thai people telling you how to run YOUR country, you can stick your elitist opinions right where the sun don't shine.
@anonymous #21
Thailand IS my country.
It's time Thais stopped blaming the messenger on these stories and conversations, and started openly saying "WE HAVE A MASSIVE PROBLEM. WE NEED TO FIX IT". In point of fact, that's probably one of the reasons Thaksin is so popular - because the common people making 100 baht or so a day are sick and tired of a life where the entire society is so corrupt and unjust that they have no hope of ever making a better life. These are the people who sell tourists fake ID's and the like - and people like you decry critics of this status quo as "elitist"? If anything you are being elitist by trying to sweep these issues under the carpet, because it might upset the status quo. I'm not saying I have the answers, but I'm really tired of this habit people have of blaming the messenger in these matters.
ไม่เป็นไร is simply not good enough anymore - it's time for Thailand to solve these problems and take its rightful place in the pages of modern history.
Khao San Road is a silly place, but it is worth visiting at least once. A trip to Bangkok without an afternoon on Khao San Road would be like visiting New York and not poking around Times Square for an hour or so.
My wife is Thai and we've been together for more than 20 years, so I've long since graduated from the backpack/guesthouse scene in Bangkok.
I have a tradition, however, whenever I'm in Thailand, of visiting Khao San Road some morning, finding a cool book in one of the used backpacker book stores - then sitting alone with my book at one of the handful of EXCELLENT Indian restaurants in the neighborhood where I can order practically one of everything on the menu to enjoy for pennies on the dollar.
As I write this I am remembering a fish vindaloo that I had the last time I was there... Mmmmm...
There is probably more risk in being caught with one of those fake press passes these days, but I had amazing access to all kinds of forbidden areas and events for a couple of years in Japan thanks to Khao San Roads ID vendors.
@anonymous #22
Up to you. It is YOUR country.
Then again that was my point.
What a wonderful free market in Thailand. All the power to the locals selling fake ID's Especially if you need one if you happen to lose your authentic one or get it stolen. Better yet, use your fake ones and secure your authentic ones. Rock on Khoason Rd.! I'll be going there myself, to secure a few IDs!
I and my Finnish gf use to spend a month or so every year in Thailand, Those counterfeiters in Khao San Road are just a bad joke. I have been attacked for taking pictures in the street of their signs. I answered "mai pen rai" Translates to "never mind" or maybe "fuck off" in Thai, whatever is most appropriate in the situation.
Nothing much they could do about it.