Visitors to Bangkok who depart by air and who haven’t spent more than 180 days in Thailand during the previous calendar year can apply for a VAT refund on purchases made at approved stores; look for the blue and white VAT Refund sticker. Minimum purchases must add up to 2000B per store in a single day, with a minimum total of 5000B. You must get a VAT Refund form and tax invoice from the shop. Most major malls in Bangkok will direct you to a desk dealing with VAT refunds, where they will organize the appropriate paperwork (takes about five minutes).

At the airport, large items should be declared at the customs desk, which will issue the appropriate paperwork; you can then check them in. Smaller items (such as watches and jeweler) must be hand-carried as they will need to be reinserted once you’ve passed immigration. Either way, you actually get your money at a VAT Refund Tourist Office (0 2272 9384-5), which at Suvarnabhumi are on Level 4 in both the east and west wings. For all the details, see www.rd.go.th/vrt.

Dangers & annoyances
Bangkok is a safe city, and incidents of violence against tourists are rare. However, scams aimed at separating you and your hard-earned are so prevalent that the term ‘gem scam’ has become almost synonymous with ‘Bangkok’. Con artists tend to haunt first-time tourist spots, such as the Grand Palace area, Wat Pho, the Golden Mount and Siam Sq (especially near Jim Thompson’s House).

Most scams begin the same way: a friendly Thai male (or, on rarer occasions, a female) approaches and strikes up a seemingly innocuous conversation. Sometimes the con man says he’s a university student or teacher; at other times he might claim to work for the World Bank or a similarly distinguished organization. If you’re on the way to Wat Pho or Jim Thompson’s House, for example, he may tell you it’s closed for a holiday or repairs. Eventually the conversation works its way around to the subject of the scam – the best fraudsters can actually make it seem as though you initiated the topic. The scammer might spend hours inveigling you into his trust, taking you to an alternative ‘special’ temple, for example, and linking with other seemingly random people, often túk-túk drivers, who are also in on the scam.

The scam itself almost always incorporates gems, tailor shops or card playing. With gems, the victim is invited to a gem and jeweler shop – your new-found friend is picking up some merchandise for him and you’re just along for the ride. Somewhere along the way he usually claims to have a connection in your home country (what a coincidence!) with whom he has a regular gem export-import business. One way or another, the victim is persuaded that they can turn a profit by arranging a gem purchase and reselling the merchandise at home. After all, the jeweler shop just happens to be offering a generous discount today.

There are seemingly infinite variations on the gem scam, almost all of which end up with the victim purchasing small, low-quality sapphires and posting them to their home country. Once you return home, of course, the cheap sapphires turn out to be worth much less than what you paid for them. Many have invested and lost virtually all their savings.

Even if you were able to return your purchase to the gem shop in question, chances are slim to none they’d give a full refund. The con artist who brings the mark into the shop gets a commission of 10% to 50% per sale – the shop takes the rest. The Thai police are usually of no help, believe that merchants are entitled to whatever price they can get. The main victimizers are a handful of shops that get protection from certain high-ranking government officials.

At tailor shops the objective is to get you to pay exorbitant prices for poorly made clothes. The tailor shops that do this are adept at delaying delivery until just before you leave Thailand, so that you don’t have time