Opinion
The Thaiger Opinion Columns.
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Opinion: Take it easy, people
PHUKET: Take it easy, people. What our government is trying to do is bring back “The Land of Smiles”. The nation’s leaders are trying to fix all of the problems that have plagued Thailand for decades. I have heard some say that Rome wasn’t built in a day… so, give the government a chance to work out these problems. What…
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Opinion: Always put safety first
Jetsada Chanpen, 27, from Ranong, has been a Kusoldharm Foundation rescue worker for eight years. Last year, he almost lost his life doing what he loves. On March 26, Jetsada was the first to respond to an accident in which four workers had passed out in a sewer in Phuket Town. Wasting no time, he plunged into the sewer to…
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Opinion: Promote the sport of jet-skiing in Phuket
PHUKET: Jet-skiing is a sport. It’s a real sport that deserves a great deal more respect than it is given in Phuket. Banning Phuket as a water-sport tourism destination for jet-skiing is ridiculous. Banning the current operations and tourist hooligans allowed on them, however, is understandable. Given the history of violence, death and extortion via the well-protected jet-ski operators it…
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Opinion: Phuket defining boating culture
Erwin Bamps is CEO of Gulf Craft, listed among the world’s top 10 superyacht builders as per the 2014 Global Order Book, a report issued annually by the Boat International Group. Before his appointment to CEO in June 2014, Mr Bamps had been the chief operating officer of the company since 2009, during which the company grew from a few…
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Opinion: Making Phuket’s roads safe one step at a time
Dr Wiwat Seetamanotch, 57, from Yala, has been living in Phuket since 1987. He worked as director of Thalang Hospital for 17 years, followed by 10 years as deputy director for the Phuket Provincial Health Office. Now retired, Dr Wiwat has been working on road safety campaigns for the past six years, as well as running a clinic in Thalang.…
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Opinion: Ban anything, ban tourists – just be clear
PHUKET: The issue isn’t the beach management plan. It’s the lack of a plan or, at the very least, the lack of communicating the plan clearly and concisely. Phuket can junk up or freshen up its beaches as much as the government wants, but it won’t really matter – there are tourists suitable for each kind of beach. Of course,…
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Opinion: Great balls of fire – sky lanterns a hazard over Phuket
PHUKET: Among the many recent edicts that have been issued by the government to bring some order to Phuket’s beach tourism industry, one that the Gazette hopes can be comprehensively enforced is the ban on the sale of khom loi, or sky lanterns, at public beaches (story here). The Gazette concedes that the sight of khom loi slowly rising after…
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Opinion: Working together to win the war on drugs
Lt Col Somkid Boonrat, from Songkhla province, is chief of the investigation department at the Phuket Provincial Police Station. After graduating from the Royal Thai Police Cadet Academy, he continued on to earn a bachelor’s degree in law from Ramkhamhaeng University and a master’s degree in business administration from Prince of Songkhla University. Lt Col Somkid has been head of…
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Chinese New Year is for all islanders
Dr Kosol Tang-Uthai is the deputy mayor of Phuket City and president of the Thai Peranakan Association, a group dedicated to preserving and promoting the history of Phuket’s unique Chinese culture. Dr Kosol earned his doctorate from Mahidol University, and has been serving as president of the association since 2007. Here, he explains the importance of the Chinese New Year…
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Opinion: High time for high-tide building rule enforcement
PHUKET: There is reason to be cautiously optimistic that the unprecedented involvement of the Administrative Court system in a controversial real-estate development case in Rawai (story here) could mark the emergence of a powerful new tool to ensure that local administrative bodies do a better job approving and overseeing work on future projects on the island, thus bolstering investor confidence.…
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Opinion: “Thainess’ falls short of ecologically sustainable tourism
PHUKET: In the past 20 years, Thailand’s tourism industry has grown in leaps and bounds due to the hard work of the industry’s private-sector and effective campaigns created by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT). One of the TAT’s most successful ever was its “Amazing Thailand” campaign launched in 1998, which aimed to bolster the country’s tourism income after the…
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Opinion: Taking surf safety seriously
PHUKET: Kudos to Phuket Tourist Police volunteer Simon Luttrell for providing lifeguards with multi-language warning cards to help keep foreign tourists out of the surf in dangerous conditions. His generous action, though, raises the question of why local authorities and tourism agencies did not take similar action years ago. The cards (story here) address one of the key reasons why…
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Opinion: Jet-skis: a hazard for everyone
PHUKET: This letter goes out to Lt Col Chatchai Sakdee of the Phuket Marine Police. Dear Col Chatchai: My wife and I have been visiting Thailand on our yacht on and off now for the last four years and generally love it. There is one matter, though, that I would like to draw to your attention: jet-ski hazards to anchored…
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Opinion: Co-operation is key to keeping us safe
Phuriphat Theerakulpisut, 47, originally from Trang province, is chief of the Phuket Marine Office. He graduated from the Merchant Marine Training Center in 1986. Here, he talks about the duties of the Phuket Marine Office, and the changes and problems he has seen and encountered during his time as chief. PHUKET: It could be said that the Phuket Marine Office…
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Opinion: This isn’t a game of musical chairs
PHUKET: Comfortably nestled into a computer chair in front of a screen, it is hard to fathom why so many people appear to care so deeply about chairs on Phuket’s beaches. Chairs seem to be such a strange household item to polarize a community – except for maybe musical chairs. Nonetheless, the number of people engaged on the Gazette Facebook…
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Opinion: Phuket teens can booze, thanks to local shops
PHUKET: The recent order by Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha confirming that the basic terms of the controversial Alcohol Control Act of 2008 will remain unchanged comes as great news for “mom-and-pop” store operators across the nation, as it ensures that they will maintain their most important competitive advantage over increasingly powerful chain store competitors: the ability to sell alcohol…
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Aussie Amb wishes Phuket happy Australia Day
Paul Robilliard has been the Australian Ambassador to Thailand since his appointment in October last year. A senior career officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and currently First Assistant Secretary, South and West Asia Division, Amb Robilliard has served twice as Head of the United Nations Security Council Taskforce (July – Oct 2013 and Nov 2012…
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Opinion: The future of the Andaman’s coral reefs is in the hands of Phuket tourists
PHUKET: A recent comment made by a high-ranking government official that seawalking tourists should be allowed to continue hand-feeding bread crumbs to reef fish is a serious cause for concern. Ministry of Tourism and Sports Phuket Office Director Santi Pawai recently went on a fact-finding mission to investigate claims that a marine tourism operator’s seawalker tours off the coast of…
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Tackling drug use among Phuket’s Muslim youths
Pol Sen Sgt Maj Komon Dumluck, president of Narcotics Protection and Suppression of the Central Islamic Committee of Thailand, was born in Phuket on April 5, 1967. He graduated from Ramkhamhaeng University in Bangkok with a BA and MA from the Faculty of Political Science. He then want on to secure a PhD from Bangkok’s Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University in…
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Phuket transport saga: A long, strange trip
PHUKET: Even as my bus was drawing into the new Phuket bus terminal, predators were circling the bus full of unsuspecting, defenceless, bus-lagged tourists who were dying for a fresh shower or a chance to jump straight into the sea. Little did they know that their short remaining journeys would cost them half as much – if not the full…
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Opinion: Phuket prejudice against the law
PHUKET: The fatal shot fired by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, was not heard around the world, but the repercussions of slaying an unarmed black man, Michael Brown, were. The shooting, trial and subsequent similar situation in New York, focused all major American and international media on issues that economically depressed black communities face in the US. The war of…
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Letter from the Governor: Let your children know you care
Nisit Jansomwong, 52, from Ratchaburi, landed on the island in October to take up the position of Phuket Governor. He has a master’s degree in administration from Chulalongkorn University, where he graduated with honors. Before coming to Phuket, Governor Nisit was governor of Ratchaburi province for one year. PHUKET: Children’s Day gives us the chance to show children just how…
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Opinion: Time to tackle Phuket’s ever-growing trash dumps
PHUKET: We started 2015 with breaking news of a “private” dump site in coastal Kamala (story here), which is still serving as a pungent reminder that Phuket’s waste disposal problems remain a dire threat to the island’s future. Now, as everyone returns to work and the year begins in earnest, we must face the fact that current strategies are not…
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Hotel compulsory buffets are hard to swallow
PHUKET: There are some things we take for granted in life as being inherently part of it. Death and taxes are two of the most obvious examples, but there are again certain givens foisted on us that have absolutely no right to be there, yet we blithely accept them as being part and parcel of existence. Tourists in foreign climes…
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Opinion: Phuket’s AEC success hangs in the balance
PHUKET: While the past year brought unprecedented developments in reclaiming public beaches from the hands of corrupt local politicians, the fact remains that the days of Phuket getting by solely on its merits as a beach-tourism destination have gone. The terms of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) are set to come into effect in 2015, in theory transforming its 10…
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Opinion: Phuket, an island haven lost
PHUKET: A couple of weeks ago, I joined some work colleagues for lunch at a Cherng Talay restaurant. The restaurant is Australian-owned and caters mainly to expats who are homesick for stodgy meat pies and other Western fare. While waiting to be served I noticed, among the restaurant memorabilia, an old black-and-white photograph on the wall. It depicted a group…
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Russian expert finds investment paradise in Phuket
An outstanding representative of Phuket’s international community, Sergey Nesterenko – who has a doctorate in business law and an MA in finance – has travelled the world searching for an earthly paradise to invest in property. At a unique Phuket location on secluded Naithon Beach, he is building the exclusive Vista del Mar villas with breathtaking sea and mountain views.…
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The Iermakov affair: Where the Thai police and the Army make strange bedfellows
PHUKET: The arrest of five soldiers by police for the abduction of Ukrainian businessman Igor Iermakov last week demonstrates the need for better cooperation between the Royal Thai Police and the military in international crime cases while the nation remains under martial law (story here). Cases involving international fugitives who opt for Phuket as a safe haven are certainly nothing…
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Opinion: Future cloudy for 2015 AEC
Robert Virasin, a licenced US attorney, has served as a legal manager of Siam Legal International since June 2014. Prior to joining the firm, he received his Masters of Law in International Business from Chulalongkorn University, a bachelor’s degree from University of California and his Juris Doctorate from the University of Houston Law Center. Here, Mr Virasin discusses the future…
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Opinion: No more umbrellas, no more Phuket
PHUKET: My family, together with two other families, have travelled together to enjoy our holidays in Phuket, and Karon Beach in particular, every Swedish winter for the past 13 years. But now it’s over. We are able to see Karon Beach from a web camera that broadcasts video online from a resort beside the beach – and because there are…
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