Thailand wisely decides to ditch proposed 1,000 baht "departure fee."

Thailand has been losing badly in the game of tourism in the past couple of years and yet they still do things like this proposed fee on all tourists visiting the Kingdom of 1000 Baht per person. This is like $30 for those of you that don't want to look that up.

There are a lot of countries that charge an admission fee of sorts. I am on my way back from one of them, Nepal. In order to exit the extremely trash airport you have to pay $30 to do so. There's a line, it's orderly (sort of ) and there is no negotiating or bitching. You either do it or you don't get to go hiking.

But Nepal pales in comparison to Thailand as far as all things economic are concerned. They don't really make anything whereas Thailand has a thriving industrial base.

In my experience Thailand has a tough time accepting their place as a "developing nation" that is not ever going to make it out of that position. They just don't have what Korea and Japan or Taiwan has as far as allure, business acumen, or I guess education that is required to make that happen. They absolutely refuse to accept this though and also fail continually to recognize that the reason why they have big tourism numbers is because of their amazing beaches and they especially wont admit that a lot of people enjoy going there because of the easy access to loads and loads of very good-looking prostitutes.

They are aware that a lot of people want to travel there though, and ever couple of years some politicians get dollar signs in their eyes and propose charging some sort of admission fee for people to do so. At times, the proposals pass only to be scrapped after the inevitable backlash from the public.

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Make no mistake though, there still is a departure fee. You maybe didn't notice it because it is hidden inside your itemized expenses on your flight ticket. The increase to 1000 baht would have doubled this though and I guess there are some smart people in the government that looked at Thailand's continually decreasing number of tourists and thought "wont fleecing the remaining people only encourage even more of them to not come here?" And I guess some sensible other politicians listened to that because the notion was scrapped.

Here's the thing about politicians: They really don't seem to understand that plight of everyday people. To them it's *Just $30! Who gives a rip?" not realizing that the average person chooses to come to Thailand because it is a budget destination in the grand scheme of things. There are plenty of other beautiful places in the world, Thailand just happens to be one of the more affordable ones.

The politicians that were pushing for this rate increase aren't giving up though, they are just re-packaging the same notion as something else and then adding it to the arrival side of things instead of the departure side of things. I look at stuff like this and wonder what sort of complete idiots we have running this country - or perhaps all countries. What difference does it make where the fee appears? It's not about its placement, its the fact that it exists at all you numpties.