Welcome to the Land of Smells
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My daughter and her two children are coming to Thailand for a holiday. We will be staying at a resort on Mae Ram Phueng Beach that I booked several weeks ago. This is the first time the kids have been here, so naturally they are very excited.
I had warned my daughter that, like most beaches in Rayong, this one is unsightly, with accumulations of garbage and rubbish, but I assured her the water was nevertheless safe for swimming. Not anymore, however.
Daily for more than a week, a grey-green scum has been washing ashore from end to end. In places it accumulates in puddles and in others dries in dark stains on the sand. Instead of a bracing, salty smell, there is the acrid stink of chemicals. I do not know what this scum is, but it is not natural. I suspect it comes from oil tankers flushing their bilges with no thought for the environmental consequences.
The kids will now be restricted to swimming in the resort’s pool, which takes the gloss of it because they have a pool at home. And I suspect that, when their friends ask them about their holiday, they will say, “Thailand stinks”.
David Brown
Rayong
