Marital Bliss Imperiled In Paradise

PHUKET: If you want a marriage that’s going to last, don’t marry in Phuket, and definitely don’t marry someone from either the hotel or entertainment industry – it could all end in tears. That, at least appears to be the message from Phuket’s latest marriage and divorce statistics. It seems that couples getting hitched in Phuket are more likely to divorce than couples marrying elsewhere in Thailand. In 1997, divorces were equivalent to 15.7 percent of marriages registered in Thailand, whereas in Phuket the break-up rate was 21 percent. Last year, Phuket’s divorce rate rose to 25.5 percent. (Figures for the country as a whole have not been compiled as yet.) This year, through March 8, the Phuket percentage has dropped back to a more respectable 18.3 percent. Khun Wiengsak Khamchoochart, assistant district officer of Talang, told the Gazette today that half of the divorces recorded in his district last year occurred in marriages where one or both partners worked in the hotel industry, while another 40 percent involved one or both partners being in entertainment. And the biggest causes of divorce? Khun Wiengsak said that No 1 was the husband or wife getting involved with a third person. Second was lack of understanding or vanishing mutual interest. Also looming large were financial problems and the detection of HIV in a spouse.