Shutterbugs can give TAT a reality check

TAT is inviting visitors to share their Thai-holiday photos via Google+ and tag them “#ThailandOnly”. What a great opportunity for us all to portray the real Thailand and lend TAT a helping hand. 

Let’s send in our photographs of the polluted beaches, the stagnant, garbage-filled klongs and rivers, the roadside and railway litter, the deforestation of large areas of virgin forest and the packs of diseased and often aggressive feral soi dogs. We can portray the jumble of tangled power lines precariously hung along our streets, the oversized billboards and roadside hoardings, the factories and industrial plants belching their toxic fumes into the atmosphere, the ill-maintained buses, trucks and pick-ups sending out clouds of exhaust gases and the kilometre-long traffic jams on Bangkok’s roads and expressways. Then there’s the slash-and-burn season in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, tourists being threatened by jet-ski scam artists and taxi con men, hour-long queues at Suvarnabhumi Airport, the crippled beggers slithering in the dust or mud of Chatuchak Market, the young children sitting in midday heat on footbridges begging for our loose change, and the neon overkill of the go-go bars of Soi Cowboy, Patpong, Pattaya and Phuket.

Come on, everyone! We have until December 10 to help TAT get into the record books.

David Brown

Rayong