The series of troubles and embarrassments caused by Chinese tourists over the past few years has continued, but never fails to take me by surprise.
I feel disappointed, but also have pity for those Chinese people who might have behaved improperly due to cultural differences. However, the number of such cases has been increasing to an intolerable level, and I think it is now time for authorities to take action.
The latest spate of problems from certain Chinese tourists occurred over the past week. A Chinese woman threw hot water and noodles in the face of a stewardess, and her companion, a male, threatened to bomb the plane during a flight from Bangkok to Nanjing. Their two friends joined them in causing chaos, forcing the captain to fly back to Don Mueang airport. At the airport, the four were summoned by police and had to pay 50,000 baht in compensation to the injured crew. The woman who threw the hot water was fined an additional 200 baht. The couple were outraged because they had not been assigned seats next to each other.
Although the crew found adjacent seats for them, they remained angry and went berserk.
China's Ministry of Tourism apparently stated the incident badly damaged the reputation of the country and Chinese people in general.
Chinese authorities vowed to punish the couple and the travel agency that arranged the tour for them.
On Sunday, a Chinese man opened the emergency exit of a plane that was about to take off during flight from Hangzhou to Chengdu. He claimed it was "hot" and needed fresh air. Other passengers alerted the crew, who closed the door, warned the man and found an aisle seat for him instead.
Also last week, a Thai Twitter user posted a photo of fallen wooden barricades in front of the mural paintings on the walls of a pavilion around the Temple of the Emerald Buddha's ordination hall. The user wrote that a group of Chinese tourists brought down the barricades, but denied doing so.
However, they went quiet when officials pointed at a CCTV camera that caught them in the act of causing the damage.
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, mainland Chinese tourists have become the world's most frequent travellers, with more than 100 million people going abroad each year. The Chinese have recently overtaken the Americans and Germans as top international spenders.
Due to the bad reputation of Chinese tourists, Beijing this year issued "Guidelines On Civilised Travel Abroad", a 64-page handbook on overseas travel etiquette. In 2013, a Chinese teenager carved "Ding Jinhao was here" onto an ancient wall at the 3,500-year-old ruins at Luxor, Egypt. In the same year, a group of tourists on a South China beach used a dolphin as a prop for pictures, leading to its death.
In Thailand, a Chinese tourist was caught on camera defecating into the city moat at Chiang Mai. Chinese tourists are often seen stopping motorcycles in the middle of the road to take pictures, blocking the road when riding bicycles in a group, being loud in restaurants and wearing student uniforms for photo-ops at Chiang Mai University.
This week, a Facebook user complained that a Chinese tourist defecated in a fitting room of a clothes shop at Siam Paragon. This case reminded me of news that the Louvre in Paris put up a sign in Chinese requesting that visitors do not defecate or urinate in the museum grounds.
Earlier this week, one of my cousins wrote on Facebook that a Chinese man spat over his head from the deck of a boat while he was on a cruise trip in New Zealand. The reputation of Chinese tourists has become so terrible that President Xi Jinping stated during his September visit to the Maldives that his countrymen must keep everywhere they visit clean and refrain from littering and damaging the environment. Despite all these accounts, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) places extreme importance to Chinese tourists and expects to see the arrival of 4.3 million of them in Thailand this year.
According to TAT, the 1,000 baht Thai visa fee-waiving policy for Chinese and Taiwanese citizens during August to October 2014 helped attract about 1.5 million Chinese tourists to Thailand, and allowed TAT to apply marketing strategies more easily. During the political protests, only about 200,000-300,000 Chinese tourists came to Thailand each month. Although I am happy that Thailand is a popular tourist destination, I want to see appropriate official measures taken to tackle the problem of bad-mannered and troublemaking visitors. A good example is Chiang Mai University's initiative of using Chinese-speaking staff and students to organise guided tours of the campus. They also hand out maps and information leaflets to help tourists understand Thai manners and culture.
In my opinion, Thailand should follow the example of Bhutan, which has adopted a policy of "high value-low volume" tourism.
The minimum daily tariff set by Bhutan's Department of Tourism for both cultural tours and treks is US$200 (6,600 baht) for the high season and $165 for low season.
This helps screen the quality of tourists and limits numbers.
I know this is a difficult thing to do, but Thailand can gradually apply this measure to certain types of tourism first.
Pichaya Svasti is a travel writer for the Life section of the Bangkok Post.