Thai ingenuity
On a free afternoon we went to relax at Mae Rim near the large lake "Huay Thung Tao".
This domain is owned by the state, say the military. The entrance fee is 20 baht per person. When I first came there about 30 years ago you just had to show your passport at the entrance and you could enter for free.
Now, all these years later, a large Buddha statue has also been erected and the lake is surrounded by an asphalt road. There are enough parking spaces and everywhere there are floating houses built in bamboo where you can enjoy a meal.
When I finally found a free place and after ordering the necessary food and drink, I got into a conversation with a number of Thai women who also had a raft next to me.
They asked whether I should have bought an extra ticket to use the raft? I told them that it had not happened to me yet and that it was also new to me. As if the devil had been called, because suddenly a woman was standing with me to collect an extra ticket.
The Thai ladies had a hard time with it and said that their government is very resourceful in finding such taxes and other extra income.
I just said that this sounds familiar to me and that Belgium and the Netherlands always find something to do with it.
The ladies were really annoyed by this behavior and didn't have many good words to say about it. They found it annoying that they also have to dig into their wallets more and more for all kinds of extras in Thailand.
Now the extra 10 baht per person doesn't matter much, but I do understand their frustration and it certainly shows that the locals are becoming increasingly critical of their policy people.
Why two tickets have to be bought and the associated wages is also the question? And why the Military Police is everywhere, something I don't have a good answer to either?
The fact that the Thai authorities charge entrance fees for their parks, etc., seems quite normal to me, but that the price for a foreigner is often 10 times as much, I find downright discriminatory and a social.
What would Thai tourists think if, for example, they had to pay 10 times the entrance fee for a visit to Keukenhof than the Dutch.
Then it would become unaffordable in the Netherlands. However, this is not only the case in Thailand. In India it is also the same and in Brazil you have to pay more for a ride on the sugar hat as a non-carioca (a carioca is a resident of Rio de Janeiro).
By the way, it comes to my mind that in Landgraaf at Mondo Verde you also pay much less as a resident than a visitor from outside. So in Thailand nothing new under the sun. And if the entrance is too expensive, I don't need it either. Usually I do pay and hope that I contribute to the maintenance of the attraction…