Opinion
The Thaiger Opinion Columns.
-
Phuket Opinion: Through the revolving door
PHUKET: After eight months serving as Phuket’s top-ranking police officer, Chonasit Wattanvrangkul will be transferred out of the province to continue his career elsewhere. At the same, at the end of this month, Phuket Governor Tri Augkaradacha will retire. While Col Chonasit’s replacement will be Narathiwat Provincial Police Commander Maj Gen Chote Chawanwiwat, a replacement for Governor Tri has yet…
-
Phuket Opinion: Time to roll on traffic law enforcement
PHUKET: Any serious effort to improve road safety in Phuket will need a major shift away from the existing “police checkpoint” method of enforcing traffic law and instead move towards catching violators in the act. Results of a recent Phuket Gazette online poll revealed that three-quarters of those taking part had never been fined for a moving violation of traffic…
-
Phuket Opinion: There’s no place like home
PHUKET: The low turnout for the Phuket Provincial Administration Organization (PPAO) council election last weekend highlighted yet again the problems the island faces due to the fact that so many migrant workers who live here continue to maintain house registrations in their “home” provinces, in some cases despite having lived and worked on the island for over a decade. The…
-
Phuket Opinion: More disasters guaranteed
PHUKET: The Tiger Discotheque tragedy on August 17 demonstrates yet again that when it comes to “disaster preparedness” Phuket seems to be battling invisible demons, continually hit in the back of the head by obvious threats we had somehow managed to either ignore or even identify as a possibility. The latter is of course best exemplified by the 2004 tsunami.…
-
PHUKET OPINION: Football thugs lose face in the name of the game
PHUKET: The recent threat of violence against Phuket FC fans who made the journey to Krabi Provincial Stadium should serve as a wake-up call to the Thai Premier League (TPL) to ensure that better security measures are in place for future matches in Krabi, especially those involving southern rivals. [See page 47, current issue of the Phuket Gazette. Digital subscribers…
-
PHUKET OPINION: Football hooligans score own goal
PHUKET: The recent threat of violence against Phuket FC fans who made the journey to Krabi Provincial Stadium should serve as a wake-up call to the Thai Premier League (TPL) Co Ltd to ensure that better security measures are in place for future matches in Krabi, especially those involving southern rivals. The TPL leagues have been an undisputed boon to…
-
Phuket Opinion: Police intelligence, deeper ties to community key to cutting the murders
PHUKET: The recent arrest of Belgian murder suspect Marc De Schutter is the latest in a series of events that have kept Phuket in the international spotlight. (See front-page story, current issue of the Phuket Gazette. Digital subscribers click here to download the full newspaper.) The De Schutter arrest also highlights the need for a more savvy approach by authorities…
-
Phuket Opinion: New ‘guide-lines’ needed for tourism
PHUKET: One chronic tourism-related problem that periodically bubbles to the surface of the local media here in Phuket is that of illegal foreign guides conducting tours for fellow countrymen. While the problem was originally mainly centered around illegal Korean guides, its scope has expanded over the past decade due to robust growth in the inbound markets from both Russia and…
-
Phuket Opinion: Journalistic ethics cannot be digitized
PHUKET: One memorable scene from the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz is the moment when Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal that the “mighty and all-powerful Oz” is no more than an ordinary man who, by circumstances beyond his control, finds himself thrust into a position of power that he never sought or wanted. This revelation may come…
-
Phuket Opinion: Beach warnings drowned out, but there’s hope in the sky
PHUKET: A recent poll conducted by the Phuket Gazette reveals that readers are evenly divided on which of six possible approaches would be most effective to minimize the number of lives lost to drownings during the monsoon season every year. For details of the poll and its results, click here. As noted by many who commented in our readers’ forum,…
-
Phuket Opinion: Sloganeering down a silly slope
PHUKET: Days after the brutal stabbing of an Australian travel agent on a “familiarization tour” of Phuket, and the mysterious poisoning deaths of two young Québécoises on Koh Phi Phi, comes an announcement by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) trumpeting the success of its latest promotional campaign slogan: “Discover the Other You”.It’s all part of the TAT’s larger “Creative…
-
Phuket Opinion: Corruption and the duality of man
PHUKET: Every now and then, local officials do things that either stun the Phuket Gazette’s readers or slide right past them. The news stories this week about the push to establish a “Chalong Hospital” and the projected opening of the Patong Tunnel both highlight a phenomenon often overlooked – that sometimes officials do have the public interest at heart. Local…
-
Phuket Opinion: Romanticizing our history dishonors ancestors
PHUKET: Phuket has a long and somewhat checkered history of past industrial development dating back to its tin-mining era, which petered out over the final decades of the last century and finally ended for good in 1992 with the closure of the last mine on the island. [See ‘Riddle of the Sands’, current issue of the Phuket Gazette. Digital subscribers…
-
PHUKET OPINION: Speak loudly, but leave “big stick’ on mainland
PHUKET: As this week passed, the non-event of the Red Shirt rally apparently planned to be held at Nai Yang Beach last Sunday settled in as a near miss. The timing could not be a coincidence. Yesterday, May 19, 2012, marked the second anniversary of the violent confrontations in Bangkok between government security forces and the Red Shirt United Front…
-
PHUKET OPINION: Few winners in war against the sea
PHUKET: Funding for projects to “combat” erosion along the Andaman coast through construction of seawalls, jetties and similar structures would be better deployed on environmentally-sound projects like sand-dune stabilization, mangrove reforestation and enforcement of laws that regulate shoreline construction. Trying to conquer the forces of time and tide is the quintessential exercise in futility. This is especially true along Phuket’s…
-
PHUKET OPINION: Where property speculation meets superstition
PHUKET: There never seems to be a dull moment covering the news in Phuket, and the rumor-mongering that followed the recent seismic activity has been particularly captivating. A basic review of facts: an 8.6-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra on April 11 prompted the National Disaster Warning Center (NDWC) to issue an evacuation of tsunami-risk areas. A total breakdown…
-
Phuket Opinion: Take off the gloves
PHUKET: The recent ban on mixed martial arts (MMA) events by the Sports Authority of Thailand (SAT) is a sad but unsurprising development, and one which will deprive growing numbers of MMA enthusiasts in Thailand from watching these exciting events live, while costing the country millions of baht in lost revenue. (See current issue of the Phuket Gazette.) Thailand is…
-
Phuket Opinion: A tiny price tag for saving the mangroves
PHUKET: It is a pity that regional mass transport issues, and ‘mega-projects’ to whoosh ever-more tourists around the island, trumped the need for more sustainable tourism development during Tuesday’s mobile Cabinet meeting here in Phuket. In the first-ever official visit to the island by a female Thai premier, PM Yingluck Shinawatra performed admirably. She was smiling and charismatic throughout, despite…
-
Phuket Opinion: Phuket land probes “a plus’ for Phuket
PHUKET: Cynics may see the effort by the Office of the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) to investigate officials who allegedly colluded with investors to steal state land in Phuket as just the latest in a series of politically-inspired witch hunts. However, we should hold out hope for any effort to expose corruption, especially when elected officials and “civil servants”…
-
Phuket Opinion: Message in a bottle
PHUKET: It would be difficult to find a country anywhere in the world that has a wider gap than Thailand in terms of its alcohol control laws and their actual enforcement – and no other province suffers as much as Phuket because of it. The Phuket Gazette knows that alcohol use is often associated with fatal and debilitating accidents, violence,…
-
Phuket Opinion: Truth not optional in the media or in public relations
PHUKET: Since Phuket’s emergence as a tourist destination in the 1980s, the island has maintained a remarkable ability to attract foreign visitors, through good times and bad. Apart from the 2004 tsunami disaster, few events – locally, nationally or globally – have been able to buck the trend in any appreciable way. Despite a seemingly endless series of ‘tourism threatening’…
-
Sunday Opinion: Swift actions to regulate Phuket crime
PHUKET: Efforts by the Phuket Provincial Office and related agencies to tackle the problem of unregulated “swiftlet ranching” are admirable in their foresight, but regrettable in approach. (See here to read “Tourism finds swiftlet avaries difficult to swallow”). As many residents of this island are aware, mainland Chinese are one of the largest and most rapidly growing segments of the…
-
Phuket Opinion: Why the muddle with maps?
PHUKET: Over the past century, mankind has made astonishing progress in understanding the nature of the universe, but it seems technological advances have now outstripped the ability of many of us to put them to the best possible use. One good example is in the field of cartography. Maps produced with painstaking effort and considerable risk a century ago, pale…
-
Phuket Opinion: Great news for Phuket and our football team
PHUKET: Phuket football fans received some excellent news last weekend with the revelation that FC Phuket will enjoy financial support from Thai Premier League powerhouse Muangthong United next season. The news also came as a considerable relief to fans, given that the team had been reported “sold” and that its future had been very much in doubt. [See sports pages,…
-
Sunday Opinion: Nesting sustainable development
PHUKET: The Phuket Gazette would like to join the Phuket Governor in wishing all of our readers a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012. [Click here to read the governor’s column in the current issue of our newspaper.] The past 12 months have seen continued growth in the tourism sector, but Phuket’s ongoing transformation into a vibrant, international destination has not…
-
Phuket Opinion: Taking a gamble on cruise ships
PHUKET: With Phuket’s Deep Sea Port being targeted for a huge upgrade, the island has great untapped potential in the global cruise ship industry – not just as a port of call but also as a port to call home. (See page 5, current issue of the Phuket Gazette. Digital subscribers click here to download the full newspaper.) Mention the…
-
Phuket Opinion: Time to rein in the beach cowboys, and those who do not govern them
PHUKET: Given the events that have occurred at Phuket’s beaches in recent weeks, it is difficult to ascertain which is the greater maritime threat: natural phenomena such as the rough monsoon seas that claim the lives of scores of overconfident swimmers every year – or the juvenile carnival that gets underway when the winds subside and the beach business operators…
-
Phuket Opinion: Amid the many bus and van crashes killing tourists in Phuket, it’s time to focus more carefully on responsibility
PHUKET: One of the most startling revelations to arise from the bus crash on Phuket’s Chalong-Kata Hill was a policeman telling the Phuket Gazette that there is no provision in law for police to lay charges against a bus owner and/or management company for vehicle malfunctions, such as brake failure. This is why bus, van and truck drivers who crash…
-
Phuket Opinion: Landslides expose greed, incompetence
PHUKET: There is a Thai idiom, gam dai khrai gaw gam nan yawm sanawng, that has as its English-language equivalent, “You reap what you sow”. Similar maxims no doubt exist in every language because of the universal truths they contain. Local leaders throughout Phuket are grappling for ways to deal with the damage from the floods and landslides that have…
-
Phuket Opinion: Signs of progress against roadside pollution
PHUKET: The Phuket Gazette fully supports the long-overdue effort by the Phuket Highways Office to remove billboards and other unsightly advertising signage from roadsides under its authority, and we would encourage the local Department of Rural Roads and other agencies with similar authority to follow suit as soon as possible. If there is another “tropical island paradise” with roadsides that…
Don't forget to check out some other things to do in Thailand - get help starting a business or finding a job in Thailand, buy Thailand property, rent a yacht or book a medical procedure worldwide.