Falling behind for lack of imagination
Thailand might well soon appear to disappear, or become just a couple of Southeast Asian "landing zones" for international tourists and businessmen to change planes and go on to their destinations.
I say this because the nine other Asean members make announcements, sometimes daily, of their progress in “cutting themselves a bigger piece of the Asean pie”. Tourism everywhere has changed. It isn’t about culture, temples, Asian crafts (how many woven baskets does one need?), buffalo races or pageantry, costumes and native dances. Sure, a few want or need these things, but the emphasis for tourists is now on having fun – their kind of fun, not Thailand’s. Travel is expensive, and they want every dollar’s worth.
Thailand has already become a 4- to 7-day visit because it really doesn’t offer much to fun-loving holiday travellers. There are bans on smoking in many areas, bans on drinking hours/days, bans on gambling, frequent business closures for national holidays, bogged-down traffic, crumbling infrastructure, a rise in street crime, almost no public facilities, flooding (sinkholes sometimes right under your feet), limited English, and eroded, unclean beaches.
Yes, major hotels and foreign companies have built beautiful new edifices and offer decent shopping, etc, but upon leaving their premises, we are faced with what officials have allowed to happen to what were once-admired cities. Since January, nine of my expat colleagues have relocated to Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos. Now South Korea has announced plans to build a casino four times the size of Macau’s and pour truckloads of money into state-of-the-art tourist attractions. Other countries with foreign interests will engineer decades-long money-“extraction” methods that will not be limited to just casinos but include a wide array of entertainment venues and promotions that boggle the mind.
Meanwhile, Thailand has announced plans to have meetings to set up other meetings to make plans. It’s not surprising to note that a number of Thai businessmen are or will be involved financially in other countries’ advances. Follow the money. Soon no one in Thailand will need a rear-view mirror, since all the world’s traffic will be up in front.
D Aleman
Bangkok
