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Rude awakening for Chiang Mai
The booming city in northern Thailand finds progress comes at a price, writes Charlotte Gibson

Tuesday, August 15, 2006


The booming city in northern Thailand finds progress comes at a price, writes Charlotte Gibson
Foreigners who ventured to Thailand's northern city of Chiang Mai in the backpacker heydays of the 1970s found a sleepy city dotted with temples and a handful of homely guesthouses.

Fast forward 30 years and the old temples remain, but sprouting up around them are five-star hotels and extravagant resorts, leaving locals divided over the benefits for the historic city.

Lonely Planet author and long-time Chiang Mai resident Joe Cummings first visited the city in 1977, and recalls a sleepy town with few facilities for the modern tourist.

"It was dead at night. There were some dodgy bars, but there wasn't much entertainment for tourists," says the American. "It has really gone upscale, especially in the last five years."

In 1986, 19,000 international visitors passed through Chiang Mai airport. Last year, the figure was 176,000.

But with the boom comes consequences, and people are concerned about the environmental, social and economic impact on the ancient city.

"The government is pushing too much for tourists when we should preserve our city for the locals," says Duongchan Apavatjrut Charoenmuang, a researcher at Chiang Mai University's Social Research Institute.

"More people means more garbage and more traffic jams."

The first sign of the impending luxury hotel explosion was the opening of a Four Seasons hotel in 1995.

In 2001 Chiang Mai native Thaksin Shinawatra was elected prime minister, and has been keen to promote his home town as a tourist draw, instigating projects including the US$24 million (HK$187.2 million) Night Safari.

Chiang Mai's transformation was confirmed in 2005 with the opening of the Mandarin Oriental Dhara Devi. The US$100 million resort stretches over 24 hectares and contains six restaurants, a cooking school, an art and craft village, and its own market.

Resorts such as these worry local people, who say they encourage tourists to eat, sleep and shop in one location rather than at locally run businesses.

Eleanor Hardy, general manager of Chedi Chiang Mai, a boutique hotel that opened earlier this year, concedes that the bigger hotels can have an impact, but says that at the smaller Chedi, people are keen to experience local culture.

"People want to see authentic Chiang Mai, and we are not. We are a five-star hotel," she says.

Hardy thinks that moneyed travelers are heading to Chiang Mai after tiring of the well-trodden southern beach destinations.

"Chiang Mai is relatively untouched by development and commercialization," she says. "It still has a feeling of old Siam."

Viparwan Chaiprakorb, who works at the popular Maesa elephant camp just outside Chiang Mai, says she too has seen an influx of wealthy tourists searching for a bit of authenticity.

"They get a private jet from the US, stay at the Four Seasons and hire the camp," she says.

"On the one hand they want to see something primitive, but they stay in the Four Seasons and come in their Gucci and Louis Vuitton."

Although Viparwan is glad of the money tourists bring, she also sees a downside to the flourishing luxury sector. The elephants used to play in the river, she says, but now rubbish from new resorts prevents that.

"There is garbage, they have a difficult time getting rid of it," she says. "The quality of water has gone down and we have had floods. The draining system is bad."

Local residents are also concerned that the encroachment of the city into the surrounding forest is destroying natural flood defenses, causing increasing destruction during the rainy season. At the end of July, some 5,900 homes flooded after torrential rains.

But the five-star boom shows no sign of abating. The Chedi and two other high-end hotels have opened in the past year, and a Shangri-La hotel will open in 2007.

Sandy Morowitz, a backpacker from the United States who spent the day at Maesa elephant camp, says she found it difficult to get off the tourist track in Chiang Mai, but believes that change will be for the good.

"Thailand is not only going to be for backpackers, it is going to be for the rich who want spas, five-star treatments, and elephant rides on nice seats," she says.

But Seksan Sutthana, a Chiang Mai local, questions whether tourists will still be drawn to the city when sprawling shopping malls and high-rise buildings dwarf the traditional sights.

There are 300 temples dotted in and around Chiang Mai. Travelers also flock to the ancient city for its relaxing atmosphere, which is a welcome respite from buzzing Bangkok.

"The charm of Chiang Mai is the nice areas, the nice people, everything is natural," says Seksan.

"Now, everywhere tourists go they see American food like KFC and Swensens. Once everything from the US is opened up here, there is no difference between their home town and here. Why would they come?"

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Sunday August 13, 2006


Thai premier: 'One Laptop per Child' project to begin in October

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has announced that an ambitious project to provide low-cost laptop computers to all of Thailand's millions of elementary school students will begin in October.

The U.S.-based "One Laptop per Child'' project aims to deliver up to 30 computers to Thailand in October and 500 more in November, Thaksin said in a nationwide radio broadcast on Saturday.

"If this project is completed, each elementary school child will receive a computer to learn on at school,'' Thaksin said.

"Each elementary school child will receive a computer that the government will buy for them, free of charge, instead of books, because books will be found and can be read on computers,'' he said.

He said the first batch of laptops - costing around US$100 (euro79) each - will be distributed to children in rural areas where access to technology is limited. Those children will test the computers before the government proceeds with the project nationwide. The laptops are not yet in production.

The Thai government adopted the project a year ago after Thaksin met the "One Laptop Per Child'' project's founder, Nicholas Negroponte, the state Thai News Agency reported Sunday.

Some critics say the project misallocates resources and that governments in developing countries would do better to invest in providing for more basic needs. Other countries that have shown interest in the project - which has been endorsed by the United Nations - include China and Brazil, Thaksin said.

The machines are being designed to be cheap and sturdy, and have minimum running costs.

They will use the free Linux operating system, flash memory instead of a hard drive, and according to Thaksin will be able to run on an outboard electricity generator that is pumped by hand.

Thaksin entered business as an agent for IBM computer systems, and later built a telecommunications empire that made him one of Thailand's richest men.

The prime minister last week launched his campaign for re-election at polls scheduled for Oct. 15.- AP

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Baht drops on hint it's too strong

Thailand's baht dropped, reversing a gain, after central bank governor Pridiyathorn Devakula said he acted to weaken the currency because it is "too strong."

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Thailand's baht dropped, reversing a gain, after central bank governor Pridiyathorn Devakula said he acted to weaken the currency because it is "too strong."
The baht fell 0.1 percent to 37.44 per dollar, reversing a gain of as much as 0.3 percent to 37.32.

The baht had strengthened on speculation investors overseas would add to purchases of the nation's shares. Funds based outside Thailand bought more shares than they sold every day last week, contributing to the currency's 1.3 percent gain, the biggest increase since the five days ended April 7.

The Philippine peso declined for a second day, extending a slide, after a chart some traders use to predict price changes suggested the peso's gain may reverse.

The peso dropped 0.2 percent to 51.460 against the dollar, according to the Bankers Association of the Philippines. Remittances from Filipinos overseas decreased 3.3 percent to US$1.1 billion in June, the central bank said Tuesday. Money sent back to the country accounts for about 10 percent of the nation's economy.

Taiwan's dollar slipped for a third day before the release of a report that may show growth slowed in the second quarter. It fell 0.03 percent to NT$32.756 against its US counterpart, after falling as low as NT$32.783.

The Indonesian rupiah was little changed at 9,092 against the dollar. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono may announce plans in an Independence Day speech tomorrow to boost employment and attract more overseas investment to spur growth.

The Malaysian ringgit rose 0.1 percent to 3.6770 while the Singapore dollar rose 0.1 percent to S$1.5799.

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meaning hor...Golden Mile now changing rate at SGD1.00 - THB23.60

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Prostitutes stand outside a nightclub in Bangkok, Thailand, last week. Sex is a cheap commodity in the country

Six-year-old Sor looks for a handout in a poor neighborhood of Bangkok on Thursday. It is the lure of money that draws many children to the rampant sex industry.

A tourist checks out a prostitute in Bangkok. The city s sex districts are said to be under the thumb of organized crime, and police tend to look the other way

Bangkok, Thailand - When John Mark Karr landed in Thailand for the first time in October, he stepped into a country where sex is a cheap commodity, access to children is easy for an English-speaker and a gender change costs less than a laptop computer.

"Anything you want, you can find here," said Italian businessman Alberto Pintonato, buying an imitation designer watch in the Patpong section of the city, which is filled with strip bars, prostitutes and bizarre sex shows.

It's unclear exactly what brought Karr, the suspect in JonBenét Ramsey's killing, to Thailand on his global journey that started in 2001 when he fled the United States to avoid prosecution on child-pornography charges.

But if Karr is proved to be a murderous pedophile, he came to the perfect place to disappear, a capital city of 6.4 million where few things raise eyebrows, said Supang Chantavanich, a professor of migration at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

"It is easy to hide himself here and continue his habit," she said.

Bangkok is a mash of unplanned neighborhoods, incessant traffic jams and choking air pollution. It's also a cosmopolitan metropolis with upscale shopping malls, towering buildings, Buddhist temples and a thriving sex industry.

Thais have a wink-and-smirk reaction to the sex trade, a billion-dollar industry that draws tourists from around the world. Thais have had a long- standing appreciation for foreigners, even giving Europeans a special name, "Farang." The accommodating style also gave birth to the sex industry during the Vietnam War, when go-go bars first sprouted up in the Patpong district to service the American military.

Today, the bars have popped up in several other districts and have become a huge part of Bangkok's lore.

Every night the Farang fill the city's sex districts of Patpong, Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy. In the bars, girls for hire wear numbers for easy ordering and dance naked on Plexiglas floors above drinking customers. One section of town caters only to the Japanese. Other bars are filled with "lady boys," or transsexuals. Countless after-hours clubs and spas offer limitless possibilities.

"Many people come here for the prostitution," said Francois van Hintum, a 37-year-old Dutch traveler who visits Bangkok every few months and finds a different girl every time. This time, he had his arm around his new 20-year-old "girlfriend."

Hintum is what the girls all dream about, said Kwanjai Wetcharat, a 23- year-old who has worked in the bars for six years. Most of the women such as Wetcharat are from poorer regions of Thailand, drawn into the sex trade to help out their impoverished families.

Wetcharat got her first job when she was a 17-year-old virgin. A Thai man paid $2,000 to be her first experience.

"It hurt," she said Friday night, wearing a schoolgirl's uniform outside a Soi Cowboy go-go bar.

Now, Wetcharat is slightly overweight and no longer a lithe teenager. The club's mamasan won't allow her on stage with the others, who range in age from 17 to the early 20s. Instead, the cheery Wetcharat serves drinks, flirts with customers and sets up dates for the others. She makes about $200 a month and sends most of it home to her parents, who don't know she works in the sex business. If she finds a "date," Wetcharat can earn $200 for one night.

Others don't seem to think about the future, Wetcharat said; they just live day to day, hoping a rich foreigner will enter the club and take them away. Wetcharat hopes to marry, have children and own a restaurant.

Friday, before the club opened, girls knelt around the stage and folded their hands in prayer, hoping for a night of good fortune and for the answer to their dreams to come through the door.

Sex is a means of survival in Bangkok, said a 42-year-old masseuse in a four- star Bangkok hotel. The woman, who wouldn't say her name out of fear of losing her job, works from the hotel's beauty shop and is summoned to guests' rooms for massages.
She doesn't earn a salary and makes just $2.50 a massage. Sometimes she gets only one customer a night. But for sex, she can make up to $160 a session. It's not something she likes to do.

"I wait for Superman to pick me up and take me away," she said.

Most disturbing about Bangkok's sex culture is that it has snared children into prostitution and pornography.

On a recent night in the Soi Cowboy district, several street children wandered among the gawkers and tourists, selling flowers and gum. One 10-year-old boy stopped an American in the street and pleaded for him to buy a flower. Then he offered something else - oral sex for 20 baht, or about 50 cents. While waiting for an answer, the boy rolled his tongue at the foreigner.

"Thailand has had a reputation for being an adult-sex tourism destination, but children are on the margins," said Mark Capaldi, deputy director for ECPAT, a nongovernmental organization seeking to stop child prostitution. Its acronym originally stood for End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism, but the group's mission has expanded into pornography and other areas of sex trade.

A portion of the estimated 200,000 to 300,000 sex workers in Thailand are either underage or in involuntary servitude or debt bondage, according to a U.S. State Department report. Homeless street children are the most vulnerable, Capaldi said.

At an underpass in central Bangkok, a group of children waited for a red light to stop traffic. Rats the size of cats scuttled from the bushes, and the boys in tattered shorts and sandals bolted into the street when the cars stopped. They donned sad expressions and pressed their faces on the car windows, seeking change.

One boy, 10-year-old "Ice," said three times a month someone offers to pay him for sex. He always declines. But social workers fear the lure of money will someday change his mind. Ice and his brother sleep on the floor in his grandmother's one-room shack in a shantytown. She makes money by scavenging for scraps of metal while he begs.

While prostitution is illegal, sex tourism is a big draw for Thailand. The sex districts are said to be under the thumb of organized crime, and police tend to turn a blind eye to the obvious lawlessness. During two nights of visits to the district by a reporter, police were never seen. Nevertheless, the government has been working to protect children. Ten years ago, penalties were increased for people caught having sex with children. Changes have helped, Capaldi said.

Some fear pedophiles now seek kids in other ways - by easily becoming teachers in Thai schools.

"It's easy to get a teaching job," said Luc Ferran, program officer for combating child-sex tourism for ECPAT. "Anyone who doesn't want their background to impede on their work, they can come to Bangkok without having their background checked. Even if you're not looking for children in Bangkok, it's a hub. It's an easy hop to Cambodia or Vietnam."