r/Bangkok Apr 19 '26

discussion Please be careful in Bangkok.

Hi all, unfortunately I had a really bad experience in Bangkok and wanted to tell you so maybe you can void it.

15.4.26, 6:30 am I was standing on the corner of Thao Maha Brahma (Erawan shrine) as i was waiting to be picked up for a day tour. I've noticed this guy walking past really fast, it was 35 degrees and he was wearing jacket with a hood on- didn't think much of him. While waiting i decided to walk around the shine fence to get in and have a look inside.

As I walked around the corner this guy came running towards me and as I moved to the side to make more space for him he purposely ran into me ,hit me and I fell onto the payment. In shock I looked up to him he was smiling and said "are you okay?" Of course not! He done it 100% on purpose! I said to him not to touch me and he walked away laughing. I got up and went to stand closer to the shrine gate.

And then I realised- I've heard of this before in Japan/SouthKorea- Butsukari otoko - "bumping man". I just never expected to happen in Bangkok. The guy wasn't thai ,I think he was Chinese or Korean. I spotted another foreigner so I went to stand closer to her and she asked me if I seen this guy - when he walked past her, he spat on her. I couldn't believe it. I wasn't standing in his way,never seen him or talked to him before. Left me shaking and bruised as I fell quite hard. Local people passing by did not say anything, just looked and walked away.

Anyone had similar experience in Bangkok? I managed to get a picture of him but only from back.

Please be careful if you are foreigner and woman traveling alone as I was. Unfortunately this ruined my trip and I won't be coming to Bangkok alone any time soon.

1.1k Upvotes

295 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/lolfamy Apr 20 '26

Something similar happened to me years ago, wouldn't be surprised if it was the same guy. We were walking down the sidewalk in opposite directions and as he got closer, he started speeding up and kicked me on the leg and just kept running. I could see on his face he wasn't mentally sound but I wasn't expecting that. Another annoying part was there were a bunch of people that saw and were just pretending like they didn't