Opinion
The Thaiger Opinion Columns
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Promoting sustainable tourism at Blue Tree Phuket: Initiatives and impact
Blue Tree Phuket has been offering experiences that are both fun and environmentally conscious for many years. The comprehensive entertainment hub and waterpark has implemented numerous programs to enhance the sustainability of its practices, with its most recent endeavour being...
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PHUKET OPINION: Let’s kill the ignorance on the roads
PHUKET: Phuket City Police are to be commended for not giving up in their effort to get all motorbike riders in their district to wear safety helmets. Unfortunately, the entrenched carelessness that has persisted on Phuket roads for at least two decades means they face a long, uphill battle against a notoriously stubborn opponent: ignorance. Despite a two-month public relations…
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OPINION: IT could help to clean up Phuket
PHUKET: Most private firms in Phuket realize that keeping up with developments in information technology is a difficult and never-ending effort, but one vital to competitiveness. Talk of Phuket’s designation as an ‘IT hub’ has been a recurring theme in the news over the past decade. This IT optimism reached its zenith in during the first Thaksin administration, when we…
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Phuket Opinion: New hope for mangroves?
PHUKET: Despite the real and obvious need to improve Phuket’s road network, local leaders must refrain from taking part in unauthorized efforts to push through high-priority projects, or allowing or encouraging others to do so. The latest example came on June 19, when hundreds of people assembled on the dead-end Sakdidet Rd Soi 7 intending to bring in heavy equipment…
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Phuket opinion: lax standards led to mudslide deaths
PHUKET: Like so many accidents in Phuket, the fatal mudslide at a building site in Patong earlier this month could have been prevented if any of the parties involved – developer, contractor and local officials – had done their jobs professionally. (See front page story in the June 12-19 issue of the Phuket Gazette. Digital subscribers click here.) If the…
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PHUKET OPINION: Thanks, but more airport taxis not needed
PHUKET: The compromise agreement ending the latest dispute between rival taxi concessionaires at Phuket International Airport (PIA) may appease both sides in the short term, but allowing 60 more vans and ‘limousine’ taxis onto airport grounds as the low season sets in will only worsen conditions at the airport in upcoming months. Airports of Thailand (AOT), which runs the airport,…
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OPINION: Crackdown on cracked heads in Phuket
PHUKET: Phuket Provincial Police Commander Pekad Tantipong’s order for a crackdown on riding as a passenger (pillion) on a motorbike without a helmet is laudable, but won’t be easy to enforce. Under the plan, police will be responsible for ensuring compliance with an existing law that allows them to issue fines of up to 500 baht for anyone caught on…
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OPINION: A Phuket Perspective on the ‘Protests’
PHUKET: The ‘peaceful’ chaos ruling in Bangkok today cannot mask the kaleidoscope of tumbling loyalties or the withering away of any potentially credible justification that this is any longer (if it ever was) about a need for social change or the defense of democracy. The risk is that the gathering acrimony from all sides is superceding ‘protest’ as the event…
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PHUKET OPINION: Learn to live with the gridlock
PHUKET: A plan by Kathu Police to reverse the flow along one-way roads in Patong is a good first step toward reducing traffic chaos in the town, but much more needs to be done to provide the millions of people who visit Phuket annually with the safe and affordable transport they deserve.. Put in place early in 2007, the one-way…
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OPINION: In defense of Phuket Town
PHUKET: What’s the name of the administrative capital of this island of ours? If you answered ‘Phuket City’, you are technically correct. The Thai government raised the status of the town to ‘thesaban nakhon’ – which can be translated as ‘city municipality’ – on February 13, 2004. According to the government’s definition, a municipality needs a population of at least…
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OPINION: Reports of My Death
PHUKET: One of history’s great lines, (which is often misquoted), is Samuel Clemens’ (Mark Twain’s) “Reports of my death have been exaggerated.” As it turned out, the quote itself was an exaggeration, as the true story was a case of transmogrified news about Clemens’ relative James Ross Clemens. In fact, the line is, “The report of my death was an…
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OPINION: Lack of lifeguards intolerable
PHUKET: When it comes to showing visitors a good time, Phuket is hard to beat. But when it comes to keeping them safe, the verdict has to be: ‘Must try harder’. Much has been written recently about the ongoing carnage on the island’s roads, but during the high season now ending we’ve heard less about Phuket’s second most prolific killer,…
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OPINION: Why lose face over public works?
PHUKET: Thailand has a long history of public works projects that are fully completed and ready to serve the people, but then stand idle while the various forces involved squabble over division of the associated spoils. Here in Phuket, we have two important projects that fall into this category, even though authorities in both cases had plenty of time to…
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OPINION: In defense of Phuket tourism
PHUKET: There is widespread support in Phuket for Governor Wichai Phraisa-ngop’s idea to fit all taxis and tuk-tuks on the island with meters. It is not possible to quantify the economic damage the tourism industry in Phuket has suffered from the notorious patchwork of transport syndicates that continue to operate in defiance of the law, colluding to keep passenger fares…
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PHUKET OPINION: Stop ‘zero fare tours’ before they start in Phuket
PHUKET: Plans by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) and three tourism business associations to stop ‘zero tour fare’ operators from setting up in Phuket are laudable, especially given the damage such outfits have already done to the inbound Chinese market in places like Chiang Mai and Pattaya. (See story here.) Often run out of Bangkok, zero fare tour operators…
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OPINION: Phuket battered by Baroque booze ‘controls’
PHUKET: After more than a year in power, it’s time for the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to rethink the confusing and ineffectual regulations that apply to the retail sale of alcohol products in Thailand. First to go should be the regulation that limits the sale of alcohol at retail outlets to the hours of 11am to 2pm and…
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OPINION: CCTV expansion in Phuket: Is it warranted?
PHUKET: On the face of it, the Phuket Provincial Administration Organization’s (PPAO’s) funding of 53 more closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras at a cost of 17 million baht seems a wise use of taxpayer money, which could provide a needed boost in security, albeit initially to Phuket Town residents only. Numbers alone justify the increased use of ever-improving CCTV technologies in…
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OPINION: Phuket looking ahead to 2010
PHUKET: As 2009 draws to a close, it would be easy – very easy – to highlight issues which remain thorns in the sides of Phuket’s expatriates. Negatives almost always trump the positives in the world of news. However, it is encouraging to see that Phuket has made progress toward the island’s continued development not only as an international tourist…
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PHUKET OPINION: What constitutes a crisis?
PHUKET: I expected some backlash for my support for a provincial plan to implement a charge for plastic bags, and it came the weekend before last in the form of a strongly-worded open letter to the Phuket Energy Office with the heading: ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’, after the 1975 Supertramp album by the same name. The letter, by a Canadian who…
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OPINION: Phuket not yet ready for another tsunami
PHUKET CITY: With the fifth anniversary of the tsunami approaching, now is a good time to reflect on how well prepared Phuket might be should a similar disaster befall us in the future. The sad truth is that we are still a long way from where we should be, even though public awareness of the threat of tsunamis is understandably…
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OPINION: A tough time for Phuket police
PHUKET: The past week has seen a real change in the weather in Phuket, literally and figuratively. The monsoon season appears to finally be drawing to a close and with temperatures dropping in colder northern climes, high season is upon us. Hotel occupancy rates are rising and the island’s population continues to swell. By some estimates Phuket’s actual population is…
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OPINION: Good news at long last
PHUKET CITY: Developments in the aviation industry bode well for Phuket and its tourism industry going into the high season. The most important of these is Thai AirAsia’s decision to establish Phuket as a second ‘aviation hub’ for its growing operations in Southeast Asia. Since entering the Phuket market in 2003, Thai AirAsia has been a consistent performer in an…
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OPINION: Roy the right word for Phuket music fest
Phuket likes to think of itself as the island that offers something for everyone.But the major events that take place here tell us a lot about the sort of tourists the island is best at attracting.The Blues Festival, the Old Town Festival, the King’s Cup: all perfectly respectable, but much more appealing to the old than the young.While Phuket is…
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OPINION: Let computers deal with Phuket’s jet-skis
PHUKET: Wouldn’t it be better if Phuket’s government were turned over to computers? Surely an application exists whereby, having keyed in the facts, viable results emerge. As it is, local government tends to tip-toe around decision-making until matters are manifestly out-of-hand. Let’s take as a case in point the current eruption involving jet-skis precipitated by a YouTube video-clip showing a…
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OPINION: Is Phuket ready for welfarism?
PHUKET: Thailand’s leading think tank has proposed a “survival strategy” for the nation: an exit from the current economic and political distress by transforming the country into a “welfare state” that would help bridge wealth and income disparity. The Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI), led by its chairman, Dr Nipon Poapongsakorn, says the group’s research has found that disparities in…
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OPINION: Is xenophobia damaging Phuket’s prosperity?
A recent front page story in the Bangkok Post claiming foreigners control 90 percent of Phuket’s beach land through Thai nominees stopped many expats in their tracks.The truth of the claim – by the authors of a new study into foreign land ownership in Thailand – is difficult to verify.The authors of the research, a team from Sukhothai Thammathirat Open…
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OPINION: Do foreigners really own 90% of Phuket’s beach front?
PHUKET: The front page story in today’s Bangkok Post which quotes a leading research body as saying foreigners own 90% of Phuket’s beach front land has certainly struck a sour note against foreign ownership of land in Thailand. The study, which was put together by the Thailand Research Fund, quotes a professor from Sukhothai Thammathirat University who says these holdings…
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OPINION: Thaksin’s plea rang hollow in Phuket
PHUKET: Here in Thailand’s ‘Solid South’, a bastion of support for the Democrat party, Phuket people were unlikely to have been impressed with former premier Thaksin Shinawatra’s emotional plea to His Majesty The King in Bangkok yesterday. Under the backdrop of the red-shirt rally seeking a royal pardon for him, Thaksin made an emotional plea – like a closing statement…
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