Thailand is known as the Land of Smiles, but there can have been few people in the Thai Kingdom with a bigger smile than Mr. Darren Jesmitt, an Australian schoolteacher, who left nearly Bt. 200,000 ($US 5,500) in a Bangkok taxi and had it returned to him by the honest taxi driver.

Khun Khamron Thongnum, a Bangkok taxi driver from Suphanburi Province, said that he had picked up Mr. Jesmitt, a science teacher and his friends at the New International School of Thailand on Sukhumwit Soi 17 and had dropped them off at the Carrefour Superstore on Rama IV Road.

It was not until the foreign customers had left the taxi, which by now was cruising along Rama IX Road, that Khamron Thongnum noticed that a rucksack had been left on the front passenger seat. He immediately drove back to where he had dropped off his customers, but they were no longer there. So he took the money, a total of Bt163,440 (4,000 US$), to the "Sor Wor Phor 91" radio station.

Soon there were smiles all round, with the money back in Mr. Jesmitt's hands, minus Bt5,000 (121 US$), which he gave to the taxi driver as a reward. The honest Bangkok taxi driver also pocketed a further Bt5,000 from the radio station's "Good Taxi Driver" program, sponsored by "Easy Insure".

Khamron Thongnum told the radio program that during his 20 years as a taxi driver he had often discovered that customers had left their belongings in his taxi, and had always returned them to their rightful owners, even when he himself was short of cash.