Thais prepare for tourism boom

Press, 4 August 1981, Page 18

Thais prepare for tourism boom

By

NAYLOR HILLARY,

who recently visited Thailand as a

guest of the Tourism Authority of Thailand and Thai Airways

International.

Tourism is Thailand’s second biggest source of foreign exchange — after rice exports — and the Tourism Authority of Thailand is determined to make tourism Number One. Last year 1,860,000 people visited Thailand. The biggest group — 335,000 — came from neighbouring Malaysia, with Japan and Hong Kong next on the list. In all, the visitors spent about SNZ9OO million. Australia was eighth on the list of tourists’ home countries with 67,000 visitors

to Thailand. New Zealand, which supplied 8500 visitors, was well down the list. This could change if Thai Airways International pursues a tentative plan to extend its present route to Noumea, in New Caledonia, on to Auckland. At present New Zealanders cannot travel to Thailand without changing flights in Australia or Singapore. As well as seeking more visitors, the Thais want to persuade people to stay longer and spend more. Thailand is frequently included

as a brief stop-over on a trip to Europe; or visitors spend a few days there as part of a South-East Asian package tour. The tourism authority, T.A.T., with vigorous support from Thai Airways International, wants to see Thailand become a single destination for holidaymakers. Through its Royal Orchid Tours programme, Thai International is offering access, over a period of days or even weeks, to a wide variety of Thai attractions.

The United States had its bicentennial in 1976. Australia celebrates its bicentennial in 1988. Not to be outdone, the Thais are holding a bicentennial celebration next year for their capital city, Bangkok. King Rama I of Thailand, the first king of the present Chakri dynasty, founded Bangkok, under the name of Ratanakosin, in April .1782. Next April the Thais are promising a month of fairs, feasts, and festivities.

These will be piled on top of Bangkok's more familiar attractions of floating markets. Thai dancing and boxing, exotic architecture, and an overwhelming nightlife.

The prospect of even larger crowds jamming Bangkok’s wide boulevards and narrow alleys seems daunting. But visitors prepared to spend time (and money) will quickly find that Thailand has more to offer than the spectacular temples, luxurious shops, and frustrating traffic jams of Bangkok.

Already, about one-third of visitors from New Zealand add Thailand's second city, Chiang Mai, to their itinerary. Chiang Mai is an hour by air from Bangkok. It often takes longer to get to Bangkok Airport from the city centre than it does to fly to Chiang Mai in a Boeing 737. Alternatively, the trip takes 12 hours from city centre to city centre by overnight train with comfortable sleeper accommodation.

Chiang Mai, on the edge of the Golden Triangle, has a mixed reputation. To cynics it is “the city that drugs built.” To the Thais it is “the Rose of the North,” a name justified by the profusion of flowers and by the splendid rose-gardens round the Thai royal family’s winter palace set high in the hills above Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai is an old medieval walled town, still with moats and part of its walls, and home to an imposing array of local handicrafts.

Visitors are encouraged to see silverwork, laquerwork, silk cloth, teak furniture, mulberry umbrellas, and delicate pottery being made in a variety of factories. They are also encouraged strenuously to buy. Chiang Mai has more than 40 hotels including several, such as the Rincome and the new Hyatt Orchid, of world class. The pace is leisurely and the climate pleasant, especially after Bangkok, but the city has spread far beyond the limits

of the old walls and lost much of its glamour in the process.

As well as the local handicrafts, Chiang Mai offers easy access to hill tribes in carefully preserved “primitive” villages, camps where logging elephants show their skill, and to the beautiful monastery of Doi Suthep on the hills near the winter palace.

With an eye to the tourist trade, Thailand is also rediscovering its history. The old capital of Ayutthaya, an hour upriver from Bangkok, has been a popular attraction for many years and cruises there from the Oriental Hotel on the bank of the Chao Phya River are probably as popular as cruises through Bangkok's floating markets. Now the Thais are cleaning up the remains of temples and palaces at the even older city of Sukhothai, which dates back' to the days when, on the other side of the world, Richard the Lionheart was going off to the Crusades. Sukhothai is midway between Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Thailand has an imposing variety of ancient buildings, sometimes peeping up in unlikely places from jungle-shrouded hills. To say they have been lost and rediscovered would be unfair. The locals have always known they were there; only in the last few years have the Thais

begun to survey the sites and make access easier.

Now that Cambodia (Kampuchea) is all but closed to tourists, so that the ruins of fabulous Ankor Wat cannot be reached, Thailand has one of the best collections of ancient buildings in South-East Asia. The Thais are determined that the world will know about them and come visiting. Thailand is also recognising that its coastline is a valuable tourist resort. Pattaya, south-east of Bangkok, on the Gulf of Thailand, has been developed to the point where it has many of the vices of the capital city, although it still offers fabulous ’ beaches for those who can afford resort hotel prices. Now the Thais have looked southward to where the long, thin “tail" of their country touches the Indian Ocean. There the city of Phuket, set on an island larger than Singapore, is becoming the centre for a new group of beach resorts and marine attractions.

Phuket is trying to avoid the mistakes of Pattaya where high-rise hotels dominate the waterfront. Phuket’s new hotels, such as the Pearl and the Merlin, are in the centre of town. Shuttle buses run a free service to splendid beaches where no high rise buildings are permitted on the waterfront. So far, Phuket’s beaches retain a sense of unspoilt beauty, even though regular flights from Bangkok, and from nearby Penang in northern Malaysia, are bringing increasing numbers of visitors. For those who want to relax with the slap of waves under their feet, the Phuket Beach Resort spreads its low, rambling buildings and chalet along the shore opposite an appropriately named Coral Island.

The islands of Phang Nga provided the setting for the water chase in the James Bond film “Man With the Golden Gun.” Now the bay sports a “James Bond Island,” a nearby hotel has given its suites “00" numbers, and tourists can travel by boat through the mangroves and round the misty, towering limestone islands featured in the film.

At the other end of the country, in the very far north, the Thais are also using

Vendors with their wares crowd Bangkok’s floating market, a popular tourist attraction.

the' appeal of water. Once they offered boat cruises down the huge Mekong ’ River which forms the border with Laos. ? These days, since tourists have been fired ■ on from the communist Laotian bank, the ? cruises have been shifted to the Mae Kok, a tributary of the Mekong where both ■’ banks are Thai.

Tours start near the town of Fang, , almost on the Burmese border, and end at Chiang Rai. almost on the Mekong. . For sheer thrills, a trip down the valley • of the Mae Kok in a fast Thai “long-tail” . boat, with the propeller sticking out ; behind on a three-metre shaft, takes a lot of beating. -' The Thais have become very sensitive *■ about their reputation in the rest of the world. Treatment of drug offenders is ,• often harsh; visitors may still be offered * marijuana fairly freely, but hard drugs * are less easy to find. * In an attempt to rescue tourists from J their own follies when buying souvenirs j or jewellery, the Tourism Authority of S Thailand has introduced a system of \ recommended shops which display the T.A.T. emblem — a Thai girl with twin J rice baskets. -*

The authority guarantees that such “■ shops will trade fairly and it undertakes ,- to investigate all complaints. T.A.T. is ’J) also working hard to ensure that hotels 1and tour operators, even in more remote ’ places, have staff who speak adequate - English. ' In Bangkok a special Tourist Police has been set up to protect and assist " r visitors. And in spite of unstable politics # and unpleasant neighbours to east, west J and north, Thailand seems outwardly to i be one of the most relaxed countries in ’’ the world.

The Thais say. with pride, that they get * along by never pushing anyone, including themselves, to extremes. Theirs is a ' Buddhist middle way and they assure visitors: “Thailand is one of the safest ' countries in the world to visit.”

On the basis of two weeks spent roaming from Phuket to Chiang Rai, they r could be right. ;