A Tinker in Thailand

After visiting countless Chiang Mai wats (temples) Laura and I finally gave in and hired a driver to see some out-of-town sites. The man was gentle in his sale, and gave us a good rate (150b =$3) for 3 hours of personal taxi service in exchange for our acceptance of a stop at some “handicraft factories,” which if you don’t know is a code word for tourist traps where goods available at rock-bottom prices in markets nation-wide are sold at the same price you’d pay for them retail at home. Our trip was to include two wats, one in the forest and one of Indian style, one handicraft factory stop, and one trip to the hospital to get my stitches out.

After grabbing a quick Thai meal while our driver waited, we got on the road. Our driver spoke good English and we engaged in some small talk. He was a Chiang Mai native and we learned he had three sons – age 27, 12 and two months. That day I had taken a survey being given by an Exeter graduate student to guests at the backpacker hostel we’re staying in on responsible tourism. One of the questions was have you and have you intended to patronize locally owned businesses. I felt good for hiring a local with a family.

When we arrived at our first stop, our driver dropped us off beyond all the info booths and parking lots, door-to-wat service. We went exploring and each time we came near where he was parked, he jumped out to open our doors – only to find we weren’t quite ready, to which he responded with a great big smile.

After our visit to the Indian style wat, he had two cold bottles of water ready for us. Now it was time to go the handicraft factories. On the way I asked him what exactly he got out of taking us to these places. “Gasoline coupons. Good for you, I give you low price, good for me, I get gasoline.” I was amused by this, and he could tell. “You no buy anything here, very expensive. Just look around.” I was game to play along, and he seemed happy to have it out in the open. There were countless potential stops where he could get from one to three one-liter gasoline coupons for bringing us to them. At 38b/liter, with enough stops the gasoline coupons would be worth more to him than the price we were to pay.

The first, a one-coupon stop, was a jewelery factory with a parking lot full of tour buses and white people in preppy clothes. The production facilities we quickly toured with a guide were interesting – even worth seeing. Then we were brought into the showroom, a basketball court-sized jewelery shop with at least a few million dollars worth of gold, silver and precious stones. I got to hold a $10,000 star sapphire ring. There were fish tanks with three foot long sharks. It was impressive. After seeing all the expensive stuff, we got to the end of the showroom, where there were tons of people being sold hard on the affordable items they had to offer – simple silver jewelery, small pieces of jade, knick-knacks one could buy anywhere in Thailand for cheaper, but these tourists were biting.

I saw one man darting back into the depths of the showroom with a fist full of 1000 baht notes. Another at the exit door, bag in hand, had to fend off the salesperson goading him to buy more. We left, and our driver eagerly awaited. “Next we go to Indian silk – they give me three coupons! Don’t stay long, just five minutes, very very expensive!” It was as he said – all overpriced, polite but pushy salesperson, no customers but us, and more importantly no “factory” to make it seem like a tourist attraction.

The next stop was a silk factory, and was actually worth seeing. We saw some silk worms at different stages, thread being extracted, and fabrics being woven. Next was a Kashmir carpet factory, where after going through the intricacies of the carpets and their making, the salesman assured us that there were “very affordable, this one (about three by five feet) is only $3,000.” Right… After this stop our driver gave a shot at taking us to more places, but we’d had enough. By now he had gotten six liters of gas, worth about 220b, and we were ready for the hospital. The smoothness of getting the stitches out made up for the drag of going to tourist traps – in and out in 10 minutes at a cost of 50b.

Having the driver was nice, but now that my stitches were out, we decided to look into hiring a motorcycle. Rental costs 200b/day, just over what we paid for a driver. Time to explore northern Thailand!