Yesterday I pissed off another of the Tourism Authority of Thailand Facebook Pages.  This time it was TAT Pattaya.

Add the Tourism Authority of Thailand Pattaya to the list that includes Amazing Thailand and Sukjai Thailand Facebook pages.

Tourism Authority of Thailand Pattaya

Last night, on the eve of Thailand’s elections, the Tourism Authority of Thailand Pattaya posted something in regard to voting on 3 July.  I checked the graphic and, as usual, discovered that the Tourism Authority of Thailand stole someone else’s image.

If you do an image search in Google, you will see about 44 copies of the same image, so hard to find out who the copyright owner is, not that the Tourism Authority of Thailand cares.

TAT Pattaya Stolen Image

So, I made a 3-word comment – “Image from where?”.  I should have taken a screen shot, but didn’t think it was that nasty.

A couple of hours later, I went to check and see if there was a reply and, lo and behold, the Tourism Authority of Thailand Pattaya is no longer visible on my wall.  It can only mean one thing.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand Pattaya has De-liked, Dis-liked, De-friended, Dis-friended, or deleted me.  I immediately sent out another “friend request” to the Tourism Authority of Thailand Pattaya, which I am sure they will either ignore or reject.  I will still be able to see their Facebook Page, but won’t be able to comment – except here.

This must go back to a couple of weeks ago when the Tourism Authority of Thailand Pattaya put up a storm warning on their Facebook page.  Good use of Social Media?  Nope!

They only put the warning in the Thai Language.  Fortunately, Google Translate did a fair job of translating it and I posted it as a comment to the original Thai language post.  And, got quite a few “Thank You’s” from other people, and ignored by the TAT Pattaya.  Guess I caused them to lose face – a mortal sin in Thailand.

Maybe they read the blog too because I have mentioned this a couple of times in previous posts that TAT Pattaya only wanted to warn Thai people about the storm.  They could have at least thanked me for doing their job for them.

But, it just goes to show that the Tourism Authority of Thailand DOES NOT LIKE foreigners. I am not talking about a “Facebook Like” – I mean that the Tourism Authority of Thailand exists to promote Thailand to Thais.  They don’t give a shit about foreigners – except for their money.

If they really did care about helping foreign tourists, their Facebook pages and web sites would be in more languages than Thai.

Go look at the TAT Contact Center web site.  There are a couple of Tabs in English, but the entire site is in Thai.  This is the site for the kingdom wide call center for tourists!  How many tourists will be able to make use of it? NONE.

ALL the TAT Provincial Facebook pages are in the Thai language.  The only Tourism Authority of Thailand Facebook page in English is the Amazing Thailand page.  Go and ask a question at any of these TAT pages and see if you get an answer, and if you are in the 1% that do get answered, see if it is correct.  Good luck.

So much for freedom of speech (the ability to comment) in a supposedly Democratic country on the eve of a nation-wide election.  Censorship is the answer when you don’t want to deal with the legalities of copyright.  At least, that is what the Tourism Authority of Thailand does.

I wonder how many more of the Tourism Authority of Thailand Facebook pages I can get to ban me?

Tags: facebook foreigners language pattaya TAT tourism authority of thailand