Thailand benci Pelancong dari China

Magika

Thailand yang mesra tourist pun tak tahan dengan perangai mainland...



Anti-Chinese feelings in Thailand high as influx of tourists angers locals



                           

•          
  

   
  
        Chinese tourists ride on a cart while touring Chiang Mai University. Photo: AP

  
  
   

The bucolic, once laid-back campus of one of Thailand’s top universities is under a security clampdown. Not against a terrorist threat, but against Chinese tourists.

Thousands have clambered aboard student buses at Chiang Mai University, made a mess in cafeterias and sneaked into classes to attend lectures. Someone even pitched a tent by a picturesque lake. The reason: “Lost in Thailand,” 2012 slapstick comedy partly shot on campus that is China’s highest-grossing homegrown movie ever.

Now visitors are restricted to entering through a single gate manned by Mandarin-speaking volunteers who direct Chinese tourists to a line of vehicles for guided tours. Individual visitors are banned, and a sign in prominent Chinese characters requesting that passports be produced is posted by the gate.

With their economy surging, mainland Chinese have become the world’s most common world traveler, with more than 100 million expected to go abroad this year. In 2012, they overtook the Americans and Germans as the top international spenders, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.

But in Chiang Mai and elsewhere, Chinese tourists have acquired the same sort of reputation for loud, uncouth, culturally unaware behaviour that inspired the term “Ugly Americans” decades ago.

Many in the tourism industry are delighted by the influx, but 80 per cent of 2,200 Chiang Mai residents polled by the university in February said they were highly displeased with Chinese behaviour. The survey and numerous comments on Thai social media blamed Chinese for spitting, littering, cutting into lines, flouting traffic laws and allowing their children to relieve themselves in public pools. Some restaurant owners complained of Chinese filling up doggy bags at buffets.

The low point in local-tourist relations in Thailand’s second-largest city was likely a photograph widely seen on the Internet of a person, purportedly Chinese, defecating in the city’s ancient moat.

“Unfortunately, right now, the feeling is very anti-Chinese. In order to bring out such strong feelings in Chiang Mai people, it must be really bad. Generally, Chiang Mai people are quite tolerant of foreigners,” says Annette Kunigagon, Irish owner of the long-established Eagle Guesthouse.

But she and others point out that much of the inappropriate behaviour applies to tour groups rather than individual travelers who are generally younger, better educated and more attuned to local customs.

Some of the censure smacks of hypocrisy. The Thais themselves are champion litterers and have notched one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world.

Residents of Chiang Mai, a 700-year-old city rich in cultural traditions, may be particularly sensitive to some Chinese ways, priding themselves on refined, gentle manners and soft speech. Perhaps their most common complaint is how loud the visitors tend to talk. There is also anxiety, reflected in the university poll, that in tandem with the tourists an increasing number of Chinese are buying property, setting up businesses and taking jobs from locals.

Thais are far from the only people unhappy. Over the past few years, some hotels and restaurant buffets – where guests have filled doggy bags after eating – have made it clear that Chinese are not welcome. Hong Kong Airlines has trained crew members in kung fu to subdue drunken passengers and a sign in Chinese at Paris’ Louvre requests that visitors not defecate or urinate on the museum grounds. Widely publicised was graffiti etched into Egypt’s ancient Luxor temple reading “Ding Jinhao was here.”

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang last year said negative conduct had “damaged the image of the Chinese people.” The government issued a tourism law mainly to regulate the domestic market but which urges travellers abroad to “abide by the norms of civilized tourist behaviour.” It also produced a 64-page Guidebook for Civilisd Tourism with a long list of “do nots,” includes nose-picking in public, stealing life jackets from airplanes and slurping down noodles.

One of the most virulent critics has been Wang Yunmei, who recently published “Pigs on the Loose: Chinese Tour Groups” after six years of travel abroad. While the book drew mostly “nasty” comments from fellow countrymen, Wang says some told her that the book should have come out years ago.

Some Chinese media commentators say improper behaviour is often an extension of domestic habits. Wang says many Chinese tourists are rural people who recently acquired money through land sales but have little education and speak only their own language. If public toilets don’t exist in their villages, she says, they may not know to look for them when the need arises. She also says education has also not kept pace with the rapid rise of the middle class and its growing wealth.

“It’s going to take some years before they behave better. There has been a campaign in China for some time, but these things are still going on,” she says.

Those who are making money off the influx are looking on the bright side.

“We have talked to many businesses and they are very happy,” says Wisoot Buachoom, director of the Tourism Authority of Thailand in Chiang Mai. The gap between the city’s high and low tourist seasons has been narrowed because of the Chinese influx, he says.

Wisoot says several Chiang Mai agencies are working to regulate some of the Chinese behaviour, like insisting on international driving licenses for car rentals. They have also enlisted movie stars to deliver messages about proper conduct while lauding Thailand’s attractions on Chinese television.

“In the past, we had some of the same problems with Westerners coming to Chiang Mai, but now we see very little of this,” he says.

Even on the campus overwhelmed with Chinese tourists, Chiang Mai University Vice President Rome Chiranukrom calls it “an opportunity, not a threat, a raid.” He says the experience has given his students a “reverse culture shock” that will teach them to behave appropriately in other societies.

“We live in a globalised world and need our students to see the differences with others – and these came right here for us to see,” he says.

Rome notes that 60 per cent of Chinese tourists to Thailand are first-time travellers abroad, coming wide-eyed and generally speaking no foreign language to a place where all signs are in Thai or English.

“We need to learn to communicate and provide information, and then I believe that many will listen, understand our culture and obey our laws and regulations,” he says.

Rome himself has just started Mandarin lessons.

pakweneelofa

mentang2 la dalam sejarah dunia tidak pernah dijajah..bukan main hebat lg orang2 siam ni..teringin aku nk tengok kung fu lawan thai muay..wacaaaaaaaa

Leonarzi

Chinese tourist are not human.. They are pigs that wear clothes... Orang siam ni orang yg soft spoken bila bercakap, bahasanya saje lemah lembut bila dituturkan... Jauh beza dgn cina mainland yg loud and rude

mrsamz

Org thai sangat pembersih banding ngan org cina mainland pengotor

Bedah.Cun

kop kum kapppp.. ting tong ting tong ket katt

Acong

china caprut.........

dani-rox

tingat kisah kebengongan pelancong PRC kat mesir

If it’s not Hong Kongers sniffing at a mainland mother encouraging her young son to urinate into a bottle in the middle of a restaurant, it’s Balinese complaining about brash Chinese tourists making too much noise, or Thai Buddhists offended by immodestly dressed Chinese female visitors to temples.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2013/0529/Move-over-ugly-American-China-s-tourists-are-in-town
caprut to the max
apa gunanya keuntungan kalau cenggini lah pangai pelancong... habis rosak warisan sejarah dan hidupan liar

PEPPERMAN

oarng malaysia suka kot, sebab mereka gebu2 montok, dan boleh dibawa balik jika kena bayarannya...

Voyagers

Leonarzi

Cina prc ni jenis bangsa yg sentiasa ada niatjahat, busuk hati, dengki, tamak, selfish, tak menghormati orang lain, angkuh, garang, self centred, .... The worst nation in the world

MissNigga

teringat iols pi phuket ngan kawan kawan jatey iols ...
tyme lalu depan kedai masssage, ramai ler hanak hanak hayam dan katoey-katoey menunggu dan mencari pelanggan...
deyols kaco ler kawan2 jatey iols...
kawan2 iols pun cakap ler .. kap kun kappp....
then deyols jawab... abang...abang... kang kong kek ...

anony-mous

Semua benci cina.. Nak2 cina mainland.. Entah2 thai pon kesian dgn kita sb ada bgsa2 xbsuh kncing ni duk kt mlaysia

Bedah.Cun

thai pun x bsh pungkok, kat bandar2 diorg tue byk jer cinkies citizen thai

annehuda

byk dah negara complain pasal chinese tourists ni. tak dibagi masuk karang melalak ckp racist. haih...

Mizzsued

Diorang ni mmg kat memana pun bawak perangai lowclass diorang...

Time kat HK Disneyland hari tu kitorang q nak masuk ride, adala bapak ni dok tolak2 anak dia suruh potong kitorang. Sori la nak kasik cann..

Last2 tak tahan Mizz sound je. Pedulik la ko paham ke tak.. Len kali nak pi melawat tempat orang belajo sikit bhs omputeh...!! Borak dgn Hongkies pun depa semua mmg bengang kat mainlanders ni.. Sampai time tu ada big street demo by locals supaya jumlah kemasukan mainlanders ni dihadkan, sikit lagi nak ada riot tu..

R2D2

biarllah Thai benci
Malaysia suka


yg kena serbu tu sebab ada permintaan-penawaran

nazsh

Pi ausralia duk marah2 huduh prangai cina nihh..masuk dewan co cia co cia marah tk abis lagi..xda aadab..dlm tv tadi ada..

munchkin

Kat mana2 pun ado

siputsedut

Limitkan makhluk hazab niiiiiii demi kesejahteraan local tourist dan foreign tourist lain

hanakikan

I vote siam. Byk gogo bar kat sana dah lah cute2 bangattt dancers dia @MissNigga