Greetings from coastal Thailand, where I’m writing this as rain pounds down and thunder booms outside my window. It’s a fitting mood for a week that included flooding in several places along with more delays on the country’s long-stay tourism plan and Covid-19 spiraling out of control in neighboring Myanmar. You’ll also find good news, however, in this edition of the Island Wrap.
For later this week I’m working on an article about Ko Adang and Ko Rawi, a pair of magnificent and almost entirely undeveloped islands in the far southwest of the Thai Andaman. They’re both protected by Mu Ko Tarutao, one of many national marine parks that are reopening in Thailand this month.
Over on Couchfish, Stuart wrote about the colors of Southeast Asia and a beach-rimmed peninsula on Cambodia’s portion of the Gulf of Thailand.
Gorgeous Ko Adang, one of many islands on Forra Diving’s radar, reopened to visitors on October 1st.
Pick of the week: BUSINESS
Since 1997, French-managed Forra Diving has set a high bar on Ko Lipe. While the island hosts several quality dive outfits, Forra remains one of the most popular thanks to its expertise and a bunch of extras, including discounted bungalows and happening bars for divers on two different beaches. In addition to day dives around the Adang archipelago, the crew offers a live-aboard trip that includes 21 dives in five different marine parks, from Ko Lipe all the way up to Ko Racha (or Raya) near Phuket.
Weather news
Flooding hit parts of Chonburi province over the weekend, damaging several houses and washing part of Pattaya Beach into the sea. Bangkok also had its share of ankle-deep water on some of its streets.
Minor floods also washed over Phuket, where rough seas sadly knocked a man from Myanmar to his death as he fished off rocks at Kamala Beach. The wind and waves snapped the anchor off a British man’s sailboat and carried the craft all the way from Phuket to Krabi, where it washed up on Noppharat Thara Beach.
Wildlife and environmental news
Though it’s not specifically about Thailand, a special Reuters report by Joe Brock explains how the pandemic has “sparked a rush for plastic.” The oil industry is making up for lost profit on fuels by producing cheap plastic products in abundance, pricing out plastic recyclers around the world. The result is huge amounts of new plastic at a time when we should be relying mainly on recycled products.
This week’s turtle rescue video comes from Phuket, where some boaters clipped a pair of hawksbill sea turtles free from a floating ghost net. The fact that videos like this surface on a weekly basis in Thailand makes me wonder how many turtles never make it out of the discarded fishing debris that blights the region.
Volunteers from the Ko Lipe based Do It BY HEART group remove fishing debris from Ko Hin Ngam last week. (Source: Do It BY HEART Save Koh Lipe Thailand)
Locals are wondering what to do about a wild elephant that stomped two rubber farmers to death over a four-day span in the rural Khao Chamao area of Rayong province. The latest incident was especially gruesome.
After catching a king cobra in a Rawai home, officials on Phuket warned the public that steady precipitation is causing snakes to move around the island more than usual. In Krabi, wranglers managed to remove a four-meter, 50 kg python from a chicken coop in an effort caught on video. A python also popped its head out of a pipe in Pattaya, giving staffers at a Korean restaurant a fright.
Property owners at Bang Niang Beach near Khao Lak are looking for new ways to hold back the sea after concrete and sand-bag barriers failed to stop the erosion that has worsened over the last decade. It’s one of many places in coastal Thailand where beaches have all but disappeared.
Social media corner
Two different travelers have been posting photos and videos from Deep Southern Gulf provinces that few foreigners visit due to an armed conflict between the Thai military and ethnic Malay rebels who seek more autonomy for the region. It’s always good to be reminded that this is such a beautiful area.
One of Steve Booth’s shots shows off a quiet Narathiwat beach:
And Mark Wiens posted drone photos of a sandy cape in Pattani to accompany one of his terrific food exploration videos:
This is a screenshot — click here to go to the original tweet and view the photos at full size.
Tourism industry news
The arrival from China of the first 120 tourists traveling on the new Special Tourist Visa (STV) has been delayed, again, and residents of Phuket are anxious to find out when exactly they will get there. Not surprisingly, some domestic tourists are worried about staying at the nine hotels that have been approved to provide quarantine accommodation for foreign tourists in the island province.
An AFP report takes you inside one of the luxury resorts on Phuket that’s set to welcome foreign tourists for their 14 days in quarantine. The Thai government will only accept tourists from low-risk countries to start with, though authorities have yet to clarify which countries make the cut. Officials are also talking about reducing the quarantine to seven days, but again, nothing has been decided.
Statements by two prominent Thais show opposite viewpoints in the debate on reopening foreign tourism. President of the Association of Thai Travel Agents, Wichit Prakobkosol, is calling for tourists from low-risk countries to be able to visit Thailand with no quarantine by December. On the other side, medical professor Thira Woratanarat of Chulalongkorn University warns that allowing any foreign tourists, even with 14-day quarantine, will be like “opening a Pandora’s box.”
Meanwhile, the head of a key governmental economic panel “urged the government to reopen the country in order to prevent it from collapsing,” reports Chatrudee Theparat for Bangkok Post.
Words can’t describe the stress that Thailand’s tourism operators and workers now face over the likelihood of a high season that’s as empty as Ko Phangan, as seen in this video, has been for more than six months. (Source: #Lontanodaqui)
In other news
Protesters have escalated their resistance to industrial projects planned for Chana district by setting up a rally stage and camp in front of Songkhla provincial hall.
In the Ko Chang “Sea View gate” saga that I got into last week, the resort that filed criminal defamation charges against a former guest wants him to retract the negative reviews when the two parties meet for mediation soon.
Authorities threatened to shut down a pier in Ranong after fishers from Myanmar illegally came ashore. Unauthorized entry is being taken extremely seriously now that Covid-19 cases have spiked to around 1,000 per day in Myanmar.
A meeting attended by the Thai prime minister set tentative plans in motion to build an 80- to 100-km long four-lane bridge across the Upper Gulf. The proposed “Saphan Thai” would reduce travel time between the Eastern and Southern regions dramatically by linking Chonburi and Phetchaburi provinces. Authorities hope to complete the bridge by 2032 as part of a slate of projects that also includes a dual track railway and motorway to connect deep-sea ports in Ranong on the Upper Andaman coast and Chumphon in the Mid-Southern Gulf.
Thai marine parks that close yearly for rainy season are preparing to reopen. Mu Ko Tarutao and the islands overseen by Hat Wanakon opened October 1st; Mu Ko Similan is opening October 15th; and many other marine sites will open November 1st. If you’re in Thailand, see my earlier post on national parks for info on reserving a spot to hit marine parks with extraordinarily thin crowds.
Outraged Cambodians are accusing a Ko Phangan resort of cultural appropriation over a design that mimics ancient Angkor monuments.
Thai Enquirer has more details on the 2,000- to 3,000-year-old paintings and artifacts discovered in a Khao Sam Roi Yot cave that I mentioned last week.
If you’re interested in attending the upcoming Vegetarian Festival, Lana shared the schedule of events on Phuket. Kicking off on October 17th, the festival takes place in various forms throughout much of Thailand and beyond.
Blue View Divers has a blog post on what Ko Phi Phi is like at this stage of the pandemic. And writing for Bangkok Post, Thana Boonlert takes readers on a wild elephant and gaur safari in Kui Buri National Park.
A story by Tom Vater digs into the history of Ko Phangan based on interviews with people who lived on the island as early as the 1940s and photos from the 1980s. It comes from Travelfish’s new “long reads” section.
And finally, thanks to Ian of iamKohChang for pointing out that Laem Sor Beach Disc Golf “has an extra work permit available to anyone who would like to come to Thailand to live on a paradise island and play disc golf between the two courses on Ko Samui year round.” Now that sounds like a good career move. 🌴
Love the newsletter and your stories.. for me it would be even more awesome if you can include more maps or map links so it becomes even more easy to follow where in Thailand it is. This way I could bookmark the places and include them in upcoming travel routes. In any case thanks for Thaiislandtimes and keep up the nice work..