Thai Changes Thailand Is Embracing Environmental Improvement And Realizing The Benefits
Three faces of Thailand:
A former environmental wasteland, an abandoned tin mine, today is a resort and 18-hole championship golf course where guests with necklaces of fragrant jasmine are transported by gondola above indigo saltwater lagoons ringed with casuarina and palm trees.
A pair of captive gibbons rescued from a bar, their whiterimmed faces accenting enormous eyes, cling to each other in a park reserve in southern Thailand awaiting return to a jungle life they have forgotten.
An inflatable canoe filled with adventurers floats through a twisting network of low caves, past stalactites glistening in the rays of a flashlight, to reach a hidden room in the center of a craggy Andaman Sea island, an experience in ecology-sensitive tourism.
A new wind is blowing across Thailand. This country’s old goals for exploitation of natural resources at any cost are slowly changing to embrace environmental improvement projects.
It’s happening simultaneously with a building boom featuring state-ofthe-art factories, hotels and office complexes from Malaysia to the Golden Triangle where Burma, Laos and Thailand meet.
Among new hotels in Bangkok, by the Chao Phraya - “River of the Kings” - is the Royal Garden Riverside resort and its adjacent shopping mall, flagship of a chain of Thailand Royal Gardens. It boasts three water treatment plants and recycles water to fill its lily ponds and pools, and to supply irrigation. The hotel opening included a fundraiser honoring Queen Sirikit that raised nearly $1 million for the Wildlife Fund of Thailand.
Thailand is in transition, facing both a 21st-century role as a major Asian commercial center and the challenge of a new breed of travelers seeking ecotourism and recreational adventure in lands where industrial development is in harmony with the environment.
There are labor pains. Little so far has been done to improve Bangkok’s air, heavy with pollution, or the horrendous traffic mix of trucks, cars, tuk tuks (open-sided, three-wheel taxis) and other vehicles. That will take time.
Meanwhile, traditional tourists still delight to a dreamy kaleidoscope of gilded temples, floating markets, colorful festivals, exotic cuisine, handicraft treasures, ancient city ruins, archeological relics, elephant roundups, monks in saffron robes and a graceful, handsome melting pot of citizens with contrasting customs and reverence for a king who is a classical composer, jazz player and photographer.
Tourism is Thailand’s largest earner of foreign exchange with almost 6 million of its visitors from overseas. The United States is sixth - behind Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore - as a source of tourists.
Another new hotel is the Sheraton Grande Laguna Beach Resort in the old tin mine at Phuket Island’s Bang Thao Bay. The cratered landscape with its piles of blackened, chemically poisoned earth was leveled, and fresh, fertilized topsoil was brought in for landscaping. The white sand beaches were restored. Bay lagoons were replenished with native fish, tiger prawns and crabs. Birds and other wildlife have returned.
Other international hotels planned for the rehabilitated area include the Dusit Laguna, Pacific Islands Club and Banyan Tree, plus a private marina, health spa, tennis and additional sporting facilities.
Something unique on Phuket is the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project at Bang Pae Waterfall Park. There, volunteers Len de Leuw van Weenen, a veterinarian from Holland, and his biologist wife, Jeanette, are preparing gibbons removed from captivity in Thai bars or private homes for return to a jungle environment.
The animals are captured as babies by shooting their mothers out of trees in the rain forest, a practice banned by Thailand two years ago but not halted by black marketeers. Most of the babies, clinging to their mothers, are killed in the fall, but those that survive are sold for sums equalling six months’ wages for a Thai laborer.
The gibbons are cute until adulthood, but then they become aggressive and undesirable as pets. If turned loose, they are prey for dogs or victims of traffic or starvation.
“We have to teach them they are gibbons,” says van Weenen. “They tend to be very scared of other gibbons because they have lived for years with humans. And we have to hope they will bond with a mate, for that is the best chance to keep gibbons on Earth.”
Overlogging of the rain forest has depleted natural habitat, and the traffic in capturing the animals for pets has so seriously reduced their numbers that they now are on the endangered species list.
The rehabilitation project is allied with the Wild Animals Rescue Foundation of Thailand and the Europe Conservation Organization. Financing is mainly through tourist donations.
A 70-minute boat ride from Phuket Island to Krabi is the Dusit Rayavadee, a resort village of 100 individual pavilions opened in 1993 in a park by Phra Nang headland overlooking the Andaman Sea. It’s luxury in a paradisiacal setting, accessible only from the waters where the James Bond movie, “Man with the Golden Gun” was filmed.
Navigable sea tunnels in the limestone stack islands of the Andaman are a new adventure, available when the tide is right. Sea Canoe Thailand, a Thai-owned company founded by American John “Caveman” Gray, takes limited numbers of passengers in rubber canoes or kayaks to newly discovered lagoons inside the islands.
The lagoons, called “hongs” for rooms, are surrounded by giant cliffs festooned with limestone drapery and jungle foliage. Sea eagles and osprey dart about and monkeys play in some of the hongs. It’s a mystery how the monkeys got there.
“This is a precious national treasure and we are careful not to disturb the environment,” says Gray. “We do nothing to leave the mark of man. We enter the hongs only to visually enjoy their wonder and capture on film some of the magic. Truly environmental tourism can help protect such resources because it will prove it is economically worthwhile to do so.” Three Color Photos
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