Little Thailand Scams To Watch Out For In 2026
Welcome to Bangkok, Thailand. This is the Land of Smiles. Thailand is one of the most visited countries in the world, and Bangkok is consistently the most visited city in the world. And with so many tourists, you’ll also find plenty of scams and hustles.
I hope this post helps you avoid any scams or hustles that you might encounter. I’ll cover transportation scams, sightseeing scams, plain old walking around scams, shopping scams, banking and credit card scams, restaurant scams, tour scams, accommodation scams, nightlife scams, and phone and internet scams.
That’s a lot of scams. But after watching this video, you’ll be able to confidently anticipate all of the scams that you might encounter here in Thailand. And let me know in the comments: have you experienced any scams in Thailand? Did I miss any important scams?
Let’s get started with transportation scams, as these are extremely common and almost impossible to avoid.
Airport Taxi Scam
The first scam that you might encounter occurs when you walk out of the main airport at Suvarnabhumi. From the airport, you’ll have two options for taking a taxi into the city. You can walk directly outside at the second level, and here you’ll have plenty of taxis sitting and waiting, and a tout will come and ask you where you’re going.
I recently returned from a trip and I went to check what the price would be to get back to the Rama 9 area here in Bangkok, and the tout quoted me at 1,000 baht to get to Rama 9. I immediately turned around and went down one floor to Level 1. On Level 1, you’ll find the regulated airport taxis. These taxis use a metered rate plus a 50 baht airport surcharge, and the ride back to Rama 9 cost 150 baht plus the 50 baht airport surcharge.
If you plan to take a taxi from the airport, always take a taxi from the regulated airport stand. Just keep in mind that if you’re driving into the city, normally you will have to pay a toll to take the highway. The driver will ask you to pay it, and you’ll be given a receipt. And of course, you can also take the Airport Rail Link into the city.
The “No-Meter” Taxi Scam
The airport taxi scam that I just described is one example of a very common scam here in Bangkok. This is the “no-meter” taxi scam. In Bangkok, taxis are legally required to use the meter, and the meter is very inexpensive. But this law is often ignored, and you’ll encounter many taxis that refuse to use the meter and demand a set price for a trip and that price is often much higher than the metered rate.
First, you should always avoid taking a taxi that’s waiting by the curb in a popular tourist area. These taxis will almost always demand a set price. You should wave down a taxi that’s driving by on the street, and when you get in, they should turn on the meter. If the driver doesn’t turn on the meter, say “meter krub” this is a polite way of asking them to use the meter. And if they refuse to turn on the meter, simply get out of the taxi and wave down another taxi. It’s quite common to wave down multiple taxis in popular tourist areas before a driver will agree to use the meter.
The Fast Meter Scam
And once you’ve successfully waved down a taxi and they’ve agreed to use the meter, you might encounter our next taxi scam. This one happened to me a few years ago. At the time, I got in the taxi and the driver simply turned on the meter. A journey of 5 kilometers with light traffic will normally cost you about 55 baht, and a 10 kilometer journey will normally cost you about 80 baht. The meter goes up slowly and steadily.
But on this particular journey, the meter started racing at about 5 times the normal rate. This is the fast meter scam a meter that’s rigged to speed up when the driver hits a switch. Just keep an eye on the meter, and if the meter suddenly starts jumping by 2 baht every few seconds, you have a taxi with a fast meter.
But this scam can also occur with a meter that suddenly stops working. When the meter stops working, the driver will use it as an excuse to demand a much higher set fare. If this occurs, it’s best to offer the amount that was on the meter, get out, and get a new taxi.
The Scenic Route Scam
But even if the meter is on and running correctly, you might encounter the scenic route scam. In this situation, the driver takes a much longer route in order to increase the fare. This one can be pretty annoying because it will also add significant time to your journey.
The best way to avoid this scam is to open Google Maps when you get into the taxi and track the route that the driver is taking. When the driver begins to take the wrong direction, normally I will tell them to go the right direction, and if they refuse, I’ll tell them to let me out of the car.
Taxi Driver Commission Scams
During your taxi ride, your driver might also recommend that you check out some different places while you’re in Bangkok. And in this situation, it doesn’t really matter what they recommend you should never go. There are a lot of scams that start this way: overpriced seafood restaurants, overpriced gem shops, overpriced tailors, overpriced tours you get the idea.
Taxi drivers are a little bit like affiliate marketers. They have you in their backseat, and they hit you with a 20-minute sales pitch, and they’ll get a commission for bringing you to any one of these overpriced shops.
But there are also situations where the driver will deliberately bring you to the wrong location. A very common example of this is when you take a taxi to very popular floating markets. Unscrupulous taxi drivers have been known to bring unsuspecting tourists to the wrong pier. And if they bring you to that wrong pier, you’ll be asked to pay 2,000 baht to enter the floating market with a boat ride. You should always keep your Google Maps open and make sure that the driver is taking you to the correct destination.
The Wrong Change Scam
So you managed to wave down a taxi, they turned on the meter which was running normally, and they drove you straight to the correct destination. You notice that you only have a 1,000 baht note, and you ask the driver if he has change for 1,000 baht. He says yes. You hand over the 1,000 baht note, and you can probably guess what happens next.
This is the wrong change scam. Never enter a taxi without carrying smaller bills.
And the wrong change scam can play out in a number of different ways. Some taxi drivers get very creative with this. A friend of mine told me about a taxi ride he had about a year ago. The driver was very friendly and talkative and this can sometimes hint at a potential upcoming scam. The driver eventually asked my friend if he could trade him ten 100 baht notes for a 1,000 baht note. He took out the 100 baht bills, counted out all ten of them, and handed them back to my friend to count as well. My friend counted the bills and everything looked normal, and he said okay. He gave the taxi driver the 1,000 baht note, and about 30 seconds later, the taxi driver held up a 100 baht note and said, “You gave me the wrong bill.” He’d swapped the 1,000 baht note for a 100 baht note and was now trying to get another 1,000 baht. An argument ensued. Ultimately, my friend gave the driver an extra 50 baht to simply end the argument.
There are a couple of lessons that you can take from this encounter. First, you need to ignore any requests that a taxi driver makes. It’s usually a scam or a hustle, and you simply shouldn’t take the risk. This particular scam was a wrong change scam, but it easily could have been a counterfeit money scam. It was a weird request, and any weird request from a taxi driver is almost always a scam or a setup for a scam. And second, if you do find yourself in a scam, the scammer will often accept a deal rather than escalate into an open conflict.
Tuktuks and Motorbike Taxis
We’ve covered a lot here on transportation scams, and you might notice I didn’t even mention tuktuks or motorbike taxis yet. These forms of transportation don’t use meters, so none of the meter scams will apply. Instead, you’ll always need to negotiate a price, and these drivers are known for significantly overcharging tourists.
There’s one simple rule that you need to follow for any non-metered ride: you always need to make sure to agree upon a price before you start the trip. If you don’t agree upon a price, the driver will demand as much money as possible when you arrive. This applies for tuktuks, motorbike drivers, and taxis if you agree not to use the meter.
If you’re in a rush or you’re in a very busy area, it can be much easier to negotiate a fare. The reality is that taxi fares are extremely cheap here in Bangkok, and many drivers will accept a reasonable price if you negotiate. But if you’re new to Bangkok, it can be difficult to know if the price that the driver offers is reasonable. Fortunately, you can find out very easily.
Using Ride-Hailing Apps: Grab vs. Bolt
Before you come to Bangkok, download the ride-hailing apps Grab and Bolt. These are the Ubers of Thailand. You simply put in your location and destination, and the app will give you a set price. This is obviously quite useful for ordering a ride, but it can also be very good for checking prices if you negotiate a set fare.
But not so fast. The ride-hailing apps are great, but the pricing on the Grab app in particular can be very questionable. For example, just last week I was booking a ride from the Asok area around Terminal 21 to Central World it’s a distance of about 3 kilometers. When you open the Grab app, you’ll be given multiple different options. You can order a car, a motorbike, a luxury car, a van. The lowest set fare price given by Grab was the JustGrab option at 193 baht. But you can also select the Grab Taxi option, and with the Grab Taxi option, you’ll pay a normal metered fare plus a 20 baht booking fee to Grab. Rather than a set fare, the app gives you an estimated price, and for my 3km trip, the estimate was 170 to 250 baht plus the 20 baht booking fee. This is very high for a trip that I’ve taken many times that never cost more than 80 baht.
If you’re booking a car on the Grab app, you should always ignore the metered taxi fare estimate. And of course, if you’re planning to negotiate with a taxi for a set fare, you should never use the prices that are quoted on the Grab app.
Use Bolt. Bolt prices are significantly lower and very accurate. For the exact same trip between Terminal 21 and Central World, the Bolt app gave me a very accurate estimate of 60 to 90 baht, and it also gave me the option to book a Bolt car with a set price of 70 baht, which was exactly the same as the metered fare that I paid.
But even if you can’t get a car from Bolt, you can use the price on the app to wave down a taxi and negotiate a reasonable fare, given that the prices on Bolt are almost exactly the same as the metered rates. Keep in mind that the prices on these apps can change, so I recommend that you download both apps and check the prices on both applications before you order a car.
Ride-Hailing App Scams
But even if you get a reasonably priced ride, you still need to be careful with ride-hailing apps. They’ve become very popular, and with popularity you get scams. I experienced a new one a couple of months ago.
If I’m traveling between cities, I often book a car using Bolt for example, to travel between Bangkok and Pattaya, it only costs about 1,200 to 1,400 baht. On a recent trip, I was traveling with a couple of friends and we booked a car to pick us up at Terminal 21 in Pattaya and drop us off in Bangkok. The driver picked us up and drove us to Beach Road in Pattaya. He then asked us to change cars because he had a problem with his car. When we arrived in Bangkok, the driver asked for more money. I took out the app and I showed him the price on the app. Eventually he gave in and he accepted the Bolt price, so we escaped any scam. But there was obviously an attempt to get a little bit of extra money.
My recommendation is to avoid any situation where the car changes this means that you’re no longer taking the car that’s registered on the app.
But you might also encounter drivers that send you messages requesting more money to come pick you up, or once you arrive and get in the car, they will ask for more money. This is much more common in cities like Phuket and Pattaya, but it can occur in Bangkok as well.
In cities like Phuket where there is a very tightly controlled taxi market, there’s likely collusion between the taxi driver cartels and the drivers on the apps. They want to make the apps unusable, and this means that they will randomly cancel at the last minute, they’ll send messages requesting that you cancel, they don’t move for 10 or 20 minutes, and you’ll probably play a game of cat and mouse for a while before you get a legitimate driver.
There’s a second hustle that I encountered about a year ago on Grab. This time I ordered the Grab Taxi this is the metered fare with a 20 baht booking surcharge. When I got in the taxi, the meter was already at 50 baht. He had turned on the meter when he accepted the ride and he was trying to charge me for driving to the location to pick me up. This is not how the Grab Taxi option works. I told this to the driver, and he reset the meter. The Grab driver should only turn on the meter when you get into the car.
Bus and Train Station Scams
Let’s move on to a scam that you might encounter when you’re traveling between cities by train or bus. When you walk up to a train or bus station, you might encounter a tout that asks you where you’re going. When you tell them, they’ll tell you that there are no more seats on the bus or train, but they’ll offer you transportation with a bus or a van, and sometimes claim to work for the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
These are all lies. It’s very easy to walk up to a train or bus station at nearly any time and buy a ticket on the spot. And the Tourism Authority of Thailand is a government agency they don’t run tours, and they definitely don’t employ touts that hover around train and bus stations asking people to get in their van. This is just an attempt to divert business to private bus and van services. These will normally be overpriced, and you can often wait a very long time if you do happen to take one of these vans, as you’ll need to wait for them to fill the van to capacity before they leave.
Motorbike and Jetski Rental Scams
Perhaps you’re looking for your own transportation and you’d rather rent a motorbike. In this scam, I’m going to cover both motorbikes and jetskis the parameters of the scam are almost exactly the same. In this scam, the rental shop will try to blame you for preexisting damages to a motorbike or a jetski.
I’m going to go over 3 steps that you can take to protect yourself from this scam.
First, you can rent a motorbike or a jetski directly from your hotel. Many hotels have rental agencies, and they’re very unlikely to operate any scams it would be very damaging to their hotel as a brand.
This brings us to the second step you can take: check Google Reviews. Bigger shops that have been in existence for a very long period of time with lots of reviews are very unlikely to operate scams.
And third, when you rent a bike or a jetski, make sure to take lots of pictures and videos and document any damages that you notice. However, the worst scammers can use temporary paint to cover up damages that they can later wipe off in order to try to blame you. And for that reason, step 1 and 2 can actually be more important.
And for jetskis in particular, you can take one additional step: just hang out at the beach near the shop. You can observe how the shop interacts with customers, especially when they return the jetski. If everything appears to operate smoothly for the other customers, chances are it will be fine for you too.
And finally, if you rent a motorbike or a jetski, never leave your passport as a deposit. If it’s lost, you’ll have a significant problem. And if the shop is running any scams, they can hold your passport hostage to demand a much larger sum of money.
Walking Around Scams
Let’s talk a little bit about the scams that you’ll encounter simply walking around here in Bangkok. These normally occur in very touristy areas like Khao San Road, the old city around the Grand Palace, and between Asok and Nana in Sukhumvit.
Let’s get started with one that I actually experienced twice just this week. I was walking out of the MRT at MRT Sukhumvit. An Indian guy approached me and he started asking me about the color of Thai money “What color is Thai money?” And then he took out his wallet and opened it. There were a few bills in the wallet, but it wasn’t Thai baht. After showing me his money, he asked me to show him the color of Thai money. I told him that I didn’t have any Thai money. Then he asked me where I’m from. I said that I’m from Canada. He talked about how much he loves Canada and how he plans to visit soon. And you can guess what happened next he asked me to show him Canadian money. Clearly, this guy really wanted to see my money. At this point I had enough, and I simply said no and walked away. He protested; he wanted me to stay.
This is something scammers are very good at. They try to build a connection and build rapport, and they try to make you feel guilty for walking away. When you notice that they’re trying to scam you, they’ll ask you where you’re from, they’ll ask you about your country. These guys study and learn a few things about each country in order to appear authentic, and then they try to create a perception that this was an authentic personal connection during your trip.
Another common scam that you’ll encounter along Sukhumvit is the pseudo fortune-tellers. These guys are normally Indian or Nepalese, and they’ll initiate a conversation with you by saying, “You’re very lucky! Do you want to know why?” But they’re only lucky if they keep on walking. If they stop, these guys will do some half-baked fortune-telling, and then they’ll ask you for money for the privilege of the fortune-telling experience.
Both of these are examples of a very common friendly stranger scam. A friendly stranger approaches you in a tourist area, he tries to build an authentic and genuine connection with you, and then he’ll use that connection to try to scam you. There are many variations to this scam. The number of variations grows every single year as entrepreneurial scammers come up with new methods to try to get money through this friendly stranger approach.
I’ll run through a few of the most popular variations of this scam.
The “Attraction Is Closed” Scam (Grand Palace Scam)
First, we have the popular tourist attraction is closed scam. This is also known as the Grand Palace scam because it occurs very frequently around the Grand Palace, but it can occur around any major tourist attraction. The scammer will approach you before you get to the entrance of the tourist attraction, and he’ll tell you that it’s closed. He might say that it’s a special holiday or that it’s the King’s birthday, and he’ll offer to bring you on his own personal tour. This is a lie. The tourist attraction is almost never closed. If you follow him on his personal tour, you’ll get led into a variety of other scams. Often he’ll bring you to a totally different free attraction where one of his colleagues will be waiting, and they’ll charge you a ticket price to enter.
“Free” Item Scams
Another common scam is when people are standing around in tourist areas and offer you things that seem to be free. The most common variations of this scam are the bird seed scam you’ll have an older man giving birds some birdseed; he’ll offer you some birdseed so that you can join him or you’ll have somebody try to put a bracelet on your wrist. In both these cases, you’ll be asked for money afterwards. You have to remember that nothing is free in very touristy areas.
Tailor and Watch Scams
If you walk around any tourist area, you will notice lots of Nepalese and Indian guys trying to sell you suits and watches. The watches are totally fake, and the prices are very high.
The suit guys are a little bit different. There are actually some excellent tailors in Bangkok where you can buy great, high-quality, inexpensive suits. But the touts are much more likely to bring you into an overpriced shop, and some of them will run outright scams. The most common scam is when a suit tailor uses cheaper material to manufacture the suit after you’ve already paid for it. You can avoid this scam by researching tailors using Google Reviews and avoiding places that employ a lot of touts and try to get tourists to come in off the street.
Tout Discount Scams
Another scam that you might encounter is when a tout offers you a discount for a service or product. This is common if you’re walking around checking out places like massage shops. If you’re standing outside and checking the prices, a tout may approach you and offer to bring you to their shop where they’ll give you a discounted price. They’ll walk you to the shop and ask for payment. The tout normally doesn’t work there he just wanders around on the street pretending to work for shops and pocketing the money.
You can follow one simple rule: you should never follow a tout anywhere. Whatever deal they’re offering is normally a hustle or a scam.
Menu Scams
Most shopkeepers and vendors are good, honest people. But you can occasionally encounter a scam. Always ask for the price or to see a menu before you order, especially in the tourist areas. If you don’t ask for a menu, it’s a little bit similar to getting into a tuktuk without first negotiating the price. You can encounter an unscrupulous vendor who will ask you for a lot of money simply because they know you didn’t see the menu.
Pickpocketing
As you walk around in tourist areas, you also need to be careful about pickpocketing. You can take a few steps to protect yourself here. First, never leave your phone sitting on a table in a popular tourist area. It’s also better to wear shorts or pants with deep pockets or even zippers, and make sure to keep your belongings in front of you. Pickpocketing gangs have also been associated with credit card fraud and theft. If you lose your wallet, you should immediately cancel all your credit cards.
Beggar Scams
If you’re in the Sukhumvit neighborhood, you might notice that there are a lot of beggars. Many are women with young children or people with physical deformities. Recently, you had stories about Chinese beggar gangs moving into Bangkok. But you might also encounter the infamous white begpackers of Asia. These guys take advantage of visa-free travel in order to go beg in significantly poorer countries. These guys could easily work as an English teacher and earn higher than the national average income. If you’re going to donate to somebody in need, is a backpacker who is using that money to finance their travels really the most worthy person of that donation?
It’s also very common to encounter other Westerners who will ask you for money for all kinds of different things. These guys might approach you directly, or they might try to befriend you before they ask for money. If they approach you directly, they’ll often say that they need money for a ticket to return home, or that their wallet was lost or stolen. I actually had one guy ask me for money because he didn’t have money to pay for a tattoo. And there is one very famous old German guy who hangs around Terminal 21. He’s approached me a few times over the years to ask me for money to return home. It’s safe to say that he isn’t using that money to get home.
And there was another German guy with a leg deformity. He used to boast online about how much money he made begging in Bangkok, which he used to finance his partying lifestyle in Pattaya. He was eventually banned from Thailand.
Expat Investment Scams
Among the expat population in Thailand, you have plenty of investment scams and hustles. You should avoid trusting people too easily, and if someone pitches you a new investment or asks you for money very soon after meeting, it’s probably better to find some new friends.
Accommodation Scams
Next up, we’ve got accommodation scams. I recall when I first arrived in Bangkok, I booked a hotel on Booking.com, and on the website it looked quite nice clean, spacious, and new. But when I arrived, it looked dirty, small, and old. The reality is that the hotel was using older pictures that they had shot using a wide-angle camera lens.
You’re probably aware that reading reviews is important before booking a hotel. But Thailand has strict defamation laws, and over the years I’ve noticed a big difference between the reviews on hotel booking websites like Agoda and Booking.com and Google. The reviews on Google are consistently more accurate and balanced, and I always check the Google Reviews before I book a hotel.
Many travelers opt to book with Airbnb instead, and I encountered a scam using Airbnb a few months ago. I booked a large condo on the app, and when I arrived, it simply wasn’t available. Instead, the host had left keys for two much smaller units. In the end, I canceled through Airbnb and I needed to book a much more expensive last-minute condo. This is a bait and switch scam. Some hosts advertise multiple units; if one is unavailable, they’ll simply offer you another one.
Tour Scams
If you’re in Thailand, you might be interested in an organized tour, but you need to be a little bit cautious. There are some unscrupulous companies that don’t include all of the costs of a tour. These companies will bring you to the destination it might be an island excursion or a safari. When you arrive, you’ll be told that you need to pay an additional fee to enter the island or safari, or you’ll be stuck waiting around for the van to bring you back to your hotel. When you book a tour, always ask exactly what’s included in the price and check the tour company using Google Reviews.
Some of these tours aren’t exactly scams, but they can be massively overpriced. Some of the cheaper tours might use crowded hostels that feel more like a prison cell, as well as bus or train tickets that would have only cost about 15 to 100 baht per trip. After all, local travel in Thailand is very inexpensive.
Nightlife Scams
And of course, Thailand is very famous for its nightlife, and with that fame, you’ve got plenty of scams that you’re going to need to watch out for.
I experienced a common scam quite recently. I was at a restaurant in the Sukhumvit neighborhood. I ordered a dinner, I was out with friends, and when my bill arrived, there was a beer added to my bill. When my friends checked their bills, everybody had a beer added to their bill. I called the waitress over to protest the bills, and as soon as I mentioned the beers, she took the bills and brought back new bills with all of the beers removed.
This is the padded bill scam, and it’s very common in nightlife areas here. And while this scam occurs at restaurants, it happens a lot more in the nightlife areas like Soi Cowboy and Nana. In these bars, the waitress will bring you a bill in a cup, and each time that you order a drink, the waitress will take the bill and bring a new bill with your updated drink total. Normally, if you have a few drinks, the waitress might try to sneak an extra drink onto the bill.
The easiest way to avoid this scam is to simply pay for every drink as it comes. And when you pay for drinks, you also should remember the wrong change scam this is also very common in nightlife areas, and it’s much better to carry small bills with you.
The Pingpong Show Scam
While some bars try to scam you by adding a sneaky extra drink onto your bill, there are other bars that are entirely scams. If you’re not careful and you go into the wrong bar, you could find yourself with an absolutely enormous bill. This is often called the pingpong show scam.
If you walk around the busy tourist nightlife districts, you’ll have many people come up to you saying, “Pingpong show! Pingpong show!” They’ll normally lead you to an upstairs, nondescript area with the promise of seeing a free pingpong show. And as I mentioned earlier, nothing in the tourist areas is free. You’ll be given a drinks menu and asked to order, and when you decide to leave, your bill will arrive and it can be absolutely huge. There are stories of 5,000 baht bills, 20,000 baht bills. At this point, large security guards will block the exit, and you’ll be told to pay the bill.
Never follow a tout, and never follow the recommendations from tuktuk and taxi drivers, especially when it comes to nightlife. And if you do want to check out a go-go bar, I highly recommend that you check those Google Reviews first. The reality is that you have plenty of great nightlife options in Bangkok.
Fake Alcohol
But you might encounter another common scam, and this is fake alcohol. If you’ve ever seen the popular buckets at Khao San Road, these are very inexpensive, they taste horrible, and you’ll often get a brutal hangover afterwards. These areas are somewhat notorious for having fake alcohol, which is normally brought in from Malaysia.
Phone and Internet Scams
And lastly, when you’re in Thailand, you’re going to want a phone, a data package, a SIM card. And when you register your SIM card, you may get a phone call or a text message telling you that you have a delivery and you need to pay a fee to release the delivery, or that there is an investigation into some type of fraud. All of these are likely scams. There are a lot of text message and phone scams here in Thailand. If you receive a text message or a phone call, don’t make any payments and don’t provide any personal information. You should automatically assume that it’s a scam.
