LETTER: Daylight Robbery!

I’VE just returned from a visit to the MBK shopping mall and I felt that I had to write to you to make my feelings known about the robbers on the mall’s fifth floor posing as shopkeepers.
 
On a recent trip to Vietnam, I dropped and broke my digital camera. As there was no chance of fixing it, I planned to visit the MBK to buy a new Lumix DMC-TZ10. Before I went, though, I checked the prices online.
 
In Dubai I can get the camera for £167, and in the UK prices vary from £178 to £240. But in the store on the fifth floor of MBK the cost of this camera is a whopping £333. When I asked the assistant why it was so expensive, she would not answer me.
  
Is this an example of how Bangkok is putting itself across as a great shopping location? I don’t think soooo…I was surprised to see that the staff in this particular shop were not wearing masks; they were nothing but a bunch of robbers, and certainly not a good advertisement for the “Land of Smiles.”
 
My other moan for the day is about Bangkok taxi drivers. So many drivers these days will ask you where you where you want to go, and, if it does not suit them, they just drive off. Surely if they have a licence to drive a taxi, they should drive any customer wherever they want to go? Just another bunch of greedy people who are tarnishing the “Land of Smiles” image.

John Pettigrew, Sukhumvit 14