Thais using the police to eliminate tourism competition

Thailand isn't a very obtrusive place when it comes to living your life provided that you cause no harm to others. I say this in the way that a lot of people that I know before it was legalized would smoke weed right in front of other people in public places, but since the went to an area that was quite far away from anyone else, they never got into trouble. I say this even though, as you likely know, the smell of that stuff travels and people had to have known. I was always kind of worried about it when I was around them even though I was not partaking.

This is all fine and dandy now because weed is now legal in almost any capacity these days but I feel as though it always should have been that way. Other violations such as playing music too loud, keeping your bar open past mandated closing times, and other such things will mostly go unnoticed and even if they are noticed, you are unlikely to get in trouble for them. But a line gets crossed when Thai people feel as though you are taking something away from them or if they become jealous.

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Sometimes though, the Thais will use the law to eliminate you as a competitor or just to get you out of the way, even when you haven't done anything illegal.

I say this because a recent story popped up in the English language news over here about a Russian man working in the tourism industry selling tours to Russian people. The headline reads "Tourist trap: Russian national caught peddling illegal tours in Phuket." His apprehension was made because he had a Facebook group that was selling tours in Russian language and apparently one of his kiosks that exists in Phuket was quite popular with the Russian tourists, a rather large portion of the overall tourism mix in Phuket.

Some Thai people, and it is rumored they are workers in a competing tourism-oriented business, decided to have his office raided and he was brought in for illegal selling of tours. The news headline implies that what he was doing is illegal. However, inside the very article that they wrote stated that the Russian man has a work permit that was issued in Phuket and it is 100% legitimate. The work permit was issued by a company that has a tourism license and the Russian man in question was hired to be a Russian language sales representative.

So tell me what exactly dictates this as a "tourist trap" as the headline of the article suggests? The Russian man has done nothing wrong.

There are a lot of professions where foreigners are forbidden from working in but the government and various businesses recognize that employing a foreigner that is fluent in a language is going to be a considerable asset to that company. Thai people can learn any language that they want but I know from one of my Russian friends who is friends with a Thai person that has a degree in Russian language that this education is more often bad than it is good. He told me that the Thai friend and coworker BARELY speaks Russian and that customers frequently get impatient with him due to his lack of vocabulary. Russian also just happens to be a very complicated language to learn and it is understandable that anyone, Thai or otherwise, would experience difficulty in speaking it.

So now this Russian guy whose face is blurred out in the picture above has been arrested and is temporarily unable to work because of bogus charges. I have gotten a work permit from multiple places and I know that the process includes proving that there is no suitable Thai person for the job, which would be understandable seeing as how Thailand regularly hands out degrees to people even though they do not actually know the subject matter. This happens frequently with foreign languages. The education system here is "pay to win" in that if you continue to pay your tuition at lower-level universities, you will pass every class simply by turning up for them. I'll write more about this in the future but I have seen it time and time again.

The point of me writing all of this is that I am angered that some people out there would use this tactic just to eliminate or at least temporarily force a competitor into a weaker position and the timing of this false accusation is very convenient for the opposing tourism businesses because soon the "high season" will be upon us. This is just a dirty tactic of eliminating your competition through subterfuge. If it angers you that another business has Russian nationals selling tours to Russian people that would much prefer to speak Russian (which is very widespread) then employ your own Russian national! That seems to me like it would work but I guess it is just easier to bust someone for a crime they didn't actually commit!

I sincerely hope that this dirty trick doesn't work for the other businesses that initiated the police to get involved because the Russian dude and the company he works for have done nothing wrong.