Do NOT open a business in Thailand - Part 7 (i think)

This will end up being a 2 part series because otherwise it will be too long

This entry is a little more heart-felt because it is (was) my own experience with the 2 businesses that I actually owned and operated for 11 years. I was one of the lucky ones because I was able to sell both of them for right around what i paid for them before the crash. This was just dumb luck, i did not really see the future nor did I try to rip off the people who bought them from me.

phase 1: Copycats

At one point, my original guesthouse was likely the most successful in all of Krabi-town. We found ourselves being featured in Lonely Planet, Frommers Travel Guide, and Footprint Travel Guide (these were all books - remember those things?) However, our success quickly turned into a bad thing, if you can imagine that. It is exceptionally... dare i say... traditional in this country that as soon as someone experiences some level of success that their business is immediately copied by all the other businesses until no one is making any money.

Thankfully, what I had created wasn't terribly easy to copy because of the time period. Wi-Fi was a relatively new concept in those early years and the places that did have it didn't actually know much about it and therefore it rarely worked. Because of my background in IT, I was able to keep ours working not only in the common areas, but in all the guestrooms as well. This sounds pretty commonplace now but trust me when I say this was an extremely complicated task 15 years ago.

This was also during the days of internet cafes that charged by the minute. If you stayed in my guesthouses, you were entitled to use the 6 terminals I had in the coffeeshop for free. I also ran all of these machines off Linux which I had customized to look exactly like Windows XP, so most of my users didn't even realize they weren't using Windows. This was an extremely necessary step because nearly all software in Thailand is pirate software and therefore extremely riddled with viruses. My systems were so stable that people would come to my shop in order to get their external drives sorted out because it seems as though virtually any interaction with a USB drive resulted in an infection back in those days. My desktop environment also prevented people from installing stupid crap because I don't think any of my guests even knew what "sudo" even means.

this saved me so much time upon introducing it to my net cafe

Ok, so I am starting to ramble a bit, so let's get to the fun stuff:

Not only were the businesses all around me offering exactly what i offered, poorly - thus denigrating to offers in general since only my claims were legit, but I was at the dentist one day and looked out the lobby window across the street to discover my exact sign, word-for-word, copied and placed on the front of a competing business. Not only did they copy my "specials" but the NAME OF MY BUSINESS was on their shop. One of the claims on their sign was the "free wifi everywhere" claim. As it turns out, not only was their wifi not free, but they didn't have it at all.

It seems to me that of course you are not allowed to do this, but I actually had to get lawyers involved to force them to take it down. It has my words, my business name, and even my logo on a massive sign on the front of their business. This was a while before Trip Advisor, but as it turns out, some people were staying in that place thinking it was mine, and were writing emails to the various guidebooks to inform them of the claims being made in the guidebooks were wrong and one of the travel guides removed us because of this.

Phase 2: here comes the government!

Once your business has the appearance of being successful, everyone wants a piece of it. This is including and especially the government.

All of our papers were in order, we had all the necessary licenses, he paid taxes and were doing things by the book. This is not good enough for government officials. They would routinely stop by to "audit" us on surprise visits with a team of people that would jump out of a minivan, SWAT team style and start to take pictures of everyone in the place including customers... This is an attempt at intimidation and eventually resulted in me installing CCTV's, which one time they demanded that I turn over the footage and when i refused, police got involved on their behalf.

They would come in with bogus claims of income tax evasion and refused to leave until they received a completely made up arbitrary sum that was on some official looking documents with no financial basis in reality. Upon calling in my lawyer and accountant and the very long meetings that would take place in the middle of my busy restaurant / bar, my lawyer would approach me and tell me that if we don't pay (insert whatever amount here) we will have to go to court and going to court is going to cost me (insert an amount slightly higher than the amount the thieves were looking for.)

Now lots of things were signed and stamped on these official documents that I am quite certain were not filed anywhere. My business has a right to obtain these documents at a later date so on a whim i tried to retrieve them and imagine my shock when i discovered that there were not official records of this raid having ever taken place.

At first, i thought my business was being picked on because we were partially foreigner owned, but as it turns out this is a common practice with 100% Thai owned businesses as well. It is just more difficult at a foreigner because there is a good chance that you don't know what is going on without a translator.

There are a lot of people out there that say "taxation is theft" but this takes that notion to a complete other level. They had no legal claim to this money but they know how much it is going to cost me to go to court... sometimes i think the lawyers are in on it and they split the money in the parking lot. It wouldn't surprise me.

Phase 3: completely made up licenses

There are 3 of these that come to mind and one of them didn't apply to me because we didn't say open late enough.

• The World Cup license: Some government officials made some stickers where the word authorized was spelled wrong and went around to places that were airing the World Cup matches and told the businesses that they needed this license in order to broadcast the games. It was again, some completely made up number and varied depending on which business they went to. The off-duty police officers always came at night during a match when the bar was busy and would force the bar to close if they refused to pay. The reason for approaching at night is simple: your lawyer will not answer the phone and you are going to pay in order to avoid losing money.

• The Music License: Same situation as above. Off duty police officers would come at night and if you refused to pay for a "royalty license" they would confiscate whatever you were using to play the music an put you in jail until the next day when your lawyer (if you have one) would get you out straight away. You would then need to go to court months later and would most likely win because this isn't a real certification in Thailand. The fact that these police officers are not prosecuted is just astounding to me. We were able to avoid getting "pinched" for this one because we got tipped they were making their way up the street. We turned off the music and locked the front gate and refused to open it for them when they arrived. Despite the fact that they were police officers, they know that what they are doing is not legal.... so after a bunch of idle threats, they moved on to the next business. I guess we got lucky

• The computer software license: Everyone knows that almost all software in Thailand is pirate software. It is extremely common to go into a government building that displays some information about whose turn it is in the queue and in the bottom right corner of the screen it says "This copy of Windows is not genuine." But it is not ok for anyone else to do that. They would again, come and confiscate computers until you eventually pay them. I was able to get off the hook on this one because none of my computers had anything other that Linux stuff on them - which as I would imagine some of you know, you don't need a license to use. It took some convincing, but the next day they released all my computers from lockup free of charge.

Let's get something straight here: I don't think that pirate software is cool, at all. Doing so destroys the desire on the part of developers. Therefore I am not going to get on the case of anyone that is trying to enforce genuine software. However, the fact that the government uses pirate software is the ultimate hypocrisy. Also, this license is not a real thing. You can't issue a license to a business that entitles them to use pirate software on behalf of Microsoft or whoever.

The same goes for the other licenses. Do you think the Backstreet Boys received any of that money they collected? I would imagine FIFA didn't receive a single dollar from these corrupt hacks. This money is going straight into their pockets, that is a certainty. The problem with a corrupt government is that you have no where to turn if the authority figures are the ones breaking the "rules."

One more thing before I wrap this up

I don't remember exactly what year it was but the Prime Minister (who was later found guilty of a great deal of corruption as well and will be arrested if he ever returns to Thailand) formed an incorruptible internal affairs of sorts. This much ballyhooed group of principled, ethical, and virtuous individuals were meant to finally end the widespread corruption that runs like a poison in Thailand's veins

It was a mere 2 weeks before this very group was caught on camera taking bribes.

to be continued