“They felt it was not safe here, and tried to persuade us not to come,” the 44-year-old nurse told AFP outside Bangkok’s unusually quiet Grand Palace.
“All my friends said ‘You go first to explore, if it’s ok we will follow’,” she said.
Her family and friends’ concerns were stoked by No More Bets, a high-octane thriller claiming to be based on “real events”, about a computer programmer who ends up in a violent scamming compound in Southeast Asia after being trafficked through an unnamed country remarkably similar to Thailand.
The movie has some basis in reality.
Extensive reporting by AFP and other media has documented thousands of Chinese people lured to centres in Southeast Asia, mainly in Myanmar and Cambodia, to operate online scams fleecing victims for large sums.
But most of those involved are tricked into it with fake offers of lucrative work – not dragged off the streets while on holiday – and so far, no such scam compounds have been found in Thailand.
Despite only being released in August, “No More Bets” has become the third-most-popular film in China this year, raking in 3.8 billion yuan (US$521 million) and super-charging online discussion about the dangers of visiting Thailand.
Beijing student Leanna Qian, 22, told AFP that while she knew some of the stories were “exaggerated”, she was still concerned about travelling to the kingdom.
“I’m worried that we’ll be taken to other places, such as Cambodia or Myanmar,” she said.
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Thailand welcomed a record-breaking 11 million Chinese tourists in 2019 – a quarter of all visitors that year, according to official data.
But since the start of 2023, only 2.3 million Chinese tourists have come, and last week the Thai government announced temporary visa-free travel for Chinese travellers in a bid to restart the flow.
Sisdivachr Cheewarattanaporn, president of the Association of Thai Travel Agents, told AFP that negative online chatter had played a role in the drop.
“Things don’t happen in Thailand but Thailand is targeted,” he said.
Rumours began in March online and spread rapidly, with posts shared and viewed millions of times. Topics about whether travel in Southeast Asia was safe trended on Weibo.
The rumours grew so persistent that earlier this year, the Thai embassy in Beijing released a statement reassuring visitors that officials would “take measures to secure tourists’ safety”.
And across the border, the president of the Cambodia Association of Travel Agents, Chhay Sivlin, told AFP that the situation was worse.
Chhay Sivlin said her company has received no Chinese tour groups so far this year, and feedback highlighted many tourists’ worries about safety.
“If the Chinese government helps, we will receive tourists soon because Chinese people listen to their government,” she said.
Source: CNA
