WHILE holidaying in Thailand in March, Mr Wong lent $180 to a man who seemed like a fellow Singaporean.

The borrower promised Mr Wong to meet him at Changi Airport when Mr Wong returned three days later, but never did.

Frustrated, Mr Wong, a supplies planner, 30, told my paper about his experience, hoping that the same fate would not befall others.

A night market in Chiang Mai

It all started when Mr Wong was at a night market in Chiang Mai with his mother and aunt on Mar 29.

A man, who looked like he was in his 60s or 70s, approached them, saying that his wife's bag had gone missing while shopping and asked to borrow $80 for a train ticket back to Bangkok.

The man, switching between Cantonese and Mandarin, introduced himself as 'Tang', and assured them that he was not a conman but a retiree, said Mr Wong.

He also showed Mr Wong his Singaporean passport and identity card.

After Mr Wong agreed to lend him $80, the man then said he needed to buy the train tickets for his wife as well.

He eventually took $180 from Mr Wong, of which $160 was allegedly for the train tickets and $20 for meals.

The man took down Mr Wong's mobile phone number and gave Mr Wong his address and phone number in return.

He promised to meet Mr Wong at the airport when Mr Wong returned the following Tuesday.

However, Tang did not show up.

Mr Wong made repeated calls to his mobile phone number, and each time, he encountered a message saying that the M1 customer was unavailable.

The address Tang had given was also invalid because the street name - Stiring Street - did not exist.

When my paper went looking for the block on Stirling Road, which bears a resemblance to Stiring Street, we discovered that it did not exist.

What bothered Mr Wong was not the money, which he said he 'still can afford', but that Tang had been 'insincere'.

However, he did not make a police report as he 'willingly lent it'.

The police said it did not have records of similar cases.

Said Mr Wong: "It is now very obvious that Mr Tang's story was not genuine. I would like to share this encounter with others so that they would not fall into the same trap as I did."