Around Thailand

Royalty Returns to Wieng Kum Kam

By | January 19th, 2003 | Category: Archaeological Sites, History of Lan Na, News Reports, Tourism | No Comments »

Royalty Returns to Wieng Kum Kam
HM Queen Sirikit opens new Visitor’s Centre

WIENG KUM KAM, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 19 Jan 2003 – Almost 700 hundred years after King Mengrai moved from the Royal City he built before Chiangmai, Royalty returned to visit amid celebrations and festivities.

HM Queen Sirikit, the Crown Prince, and Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra presided over the closing night of the “Enchanted Wieng Kum Kam” Sound & Light show, which ran from 17th to 19th January, the start of a major promotional push to bring the recovered archaeological park into mainstream tourism.



Voiceless in the Night

By | June 27th, 2002 | Category: Business, Feature Articles, Government, Hill Tribes, Tourism | 3 comments
Voiceless in the Night

Published in Chiangmai City Life Magazine – September 2002

Re-uniting Lan Na – Part 2
CHIANG MAI, Thailand – 27 June 2002

Decades ago, HM King Bhumipol realised that there were crops more profitable to the growers than opium. Beginning with, “Small peaches are expensive and bigger ones more expensive”, the Royal Projects encouraged the Hill Tribe peoples to change their agriculture from opium to other cash crops. To date, the success rate has been impressive, but now it may be under threat from current government policies in Thailand. Hill Tribe income growth, of the last twenty years, may be reversing through an over-reliance on the sustainability of tourism. For the Tai Hill Tribe peoples there is uncertainty coming from ongoing tourism successes…



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