Teething Troubles For Chinese Tourists

[Flashermac]

CHIANG MAI — The bucolic, once laid-back campus of one of Thailand's top universities is under a security clampdown. Not against a terrorist threat, but against Chinese tourists.

 

Thousands have clambered aboard student buses at Chiang Mai University, made a mess in cafeterias and sneaked into classes to attend lectures. Someone even pitched a tent by a picturesque lake. The reason: Lost in Thailand, a 2012 slapstick comedy partly shot on campus that is China's highest-grossing homegrown movie ever.

 

Now visitors are restricted to entering through a single gate manned by Mandarin-speaking volunteers who direct Chinese tourists to a line of vehicles for guided tours. Individual visitors are banned, and a sign in prominent Chinese characters requesting that passports be produced is posted by the gate.

 

With their economy surging, mainland Chinese have become the world's most common world traveller, with more than 100 million expected to go abroad this year. In 2012, they overtook the Americans and Germans as the top international spenders, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

 

But in Chiang Mai and elsewhere, Chinese tourists have acquired the same sort of reputation for loud, uncouth, culturally unaware behaviour that inspired the term "Ugly Americans" decades ago.

 

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http://www.bangkokpost.com/travel/travel-feature/405082/teething-troubles-for-chinese-tourists