BANGKOK: For millions of Chinese tourists, Thailand used to be a happy land of water fights, lantern festivals and delicious food. But thanks to social media rumours and a blockbuster movie, the kingdom's image among many Chinese people is now one of dangerous illegality and seedy scam border compounds - l
"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.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.
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.ACTION CALL11 million Chinese tourists in 2019 - a quarter of all visitors that year, according to official data. And across the border, the president of the Cambodia Association of Travel Agents, Chhay Sivlin, told AFP that the situation was worse.
Business is also suffering the after-effects of Beijing's draconian COVID-19 control measures, which saw around 1.2 billion people unable to leave China after its borders were shut in 2020. Meanwhile, domestic travel is booming - especially for younger people, who view it as an on-trend alternative to flying abroad, Bowerman explained.
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