Opinion

The Thaiger Opinion Columns

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  • Phuket Opinion: Sloganeering down a silly slope

    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 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: English language skills in urgent need of honest assessment

    Phuket Opinion: English language skills in urgent need of honest assessment

    PHUKET: The results of last week’s online readers’ poll indicate stark differences in perception among foreigners and Thais about the level of English-language proficiency among local people working in the tourism industry. Most people who identified themselves as Thai thought these skills were good or excellent, while tourists and local foreign residents rated them quite poorly. [See story, page 8,…

  • Phuket Opinion: Romanticizing our history dishonors ancestors

    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…