CHIANGMAI, Thailand – 1 January 2005

Welcome to 2005.

January is a time when both broadcast and printed press often have retrospectives concerning the year just finished. Yet why stop with just one year? Why not roll back the clock a little further?

According to (western) regulators and bureaucrats, we who were kids in the 1960′s, 70′s, and early 80′s, probably shouldn’t have survived into this century. The following are a few reasons for this, from friends now scattered around the world, and from me. How many can you relate to?

We’d spend hours building go-carts (soap box carts) out of scraps, and then went at top speed down hills; only to find we’d forgotten to add brakes. After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem, and got hell from our parents for destroying the toes and heels of our school shoes. We’d leave home after breakfast, and disappear all day. As long as we were back before dark, no one worried…

Abridged & Published in Chiang Mai CityLife Magazine – June 2004

CHIANGMAI, Thailand – 14 May 2004

Photographs in travel guides led me to Chiangmai expecting a city filled with monuments to its 700-year history and vistas of uniquely Asian architecture. The reality was somewhat different, and when the initial long-distance travel euphoria wore off, acute disappointment set in for the first two years of my tenure in Thailand’s northern capital city.

It’s the nature of travel industry information that only the good and the beautiful of destinations are portrayed. Tight holiday schedules need filled with pleasure and excitement, while writers and editors often overlook the needs of longer stay visitors.

The Thai government has in the last few years begun initiatives to capture long stay tourists and retiree expatriates, recognising them as significant contributors to foreign currency earnings, but what is on offer to entice them into remaining?

Published in Chiang Mai CityLife Magazine – December 2003

CHIANGMAI, Thailand – 14 October 2003

Inexpensive Progress became one of Sir John Betjeman’s most famous statements in support of his passions. Written in the 1960s, during Britain’s post-war reconstruction, after years of rationing and austerity, the poem became a required text for high school “graduation” in the Cambridge series of GCE exams during the mid-1970s. In a BBC documentary commemorating his life, it was stated that from that study requirement the environmentalist and conservationist movements of the 1980s and 90s evolved. The activists, thirty-somethings educated in the 1970s, remembered with fondness Sir John’s words, and many (like myself) claim this poem is the only one they can still recite from their school days…

COMMENTARY – Shot in the Foot

Xenophobia & Nationalism Retard Tourism Growth in Northern Thailand

CHIANG MAI, Thailand – 28 January 2003 - Recent national and regional press coverage has printed conflicting reports concerning the tourist arrivals dilemma in Northern Thailand. The Aviation Department has released detailed statistics showing exponential growth in the number of airlines and flights bringing people into the kingdom, but admits that Chiangmai is having difficulties increasing its passenger load due to slow growth of inbound flights.

In this respect, the Prime Minister’s aim to promote his home city as a regional hub may be more suitable than the inaccurate mass interpretation that it is to become a global hub. Private tourism industry leaders have complained that returnees are dropping, as they don’t want to see the same, degraded, sights each trip.