Hotel with "secret" doors the site of mystery thefts

Imagine having several thousand dollars stolen from your hotel room.

Then discovering that your hotel has secret doors disguised as mirrors that allow direct access into hotel rooms.

Imagine the hotel owner coming up with a totally weird excuse for the secret doors.

And then discovering that the local police have made "no progress" three months after the theft.

The excuse from the un-named hotel owners is wonderfully Thai, too, especially with the doors being locked on the outside.

His version was that the secret doors enabled "mistresses" to escape. Which would not be possible with the doors shut from the outside.

This is a story from Kanchanburi in central Thailand (pictured above) - two hours from Bangkok - and the media is too scared to name the hotel involved.

Which means that all the hotels in the Kanchanaburi region - where the Khwae Noi and Khwae Yai rivers meet and form the Mae Klong River - are under suspicion.

Stranger and stranger.

The victims were two families who checked in and stayed at the hotel on April 26 of this year.

They filed a complaint with the officers at the Meaung Kanchanaburi Police Staion but there was zero progress, so they shared their story with the Thai media with the English language paper The Thaiger splashing the report.

Now, unfortunately for the Thai tourism industry, the story has gone global.

The victims helped each other in checking inside their rooms, doors, and windows until they discovered the secret doors hidden behind mirrors.

The hotel owner has argued that the victims could not prove the existence of their assets and he could not be responsible for their losses if they left their belongings in their rooms.

Our Thai correspondent reports that the hotel isn't named because a Thai business can sue for damages their business. So beware of leaving anything of value in a Thai hotel room - and don't expect much help if valuables do go missing.