Thailand: Deadly Destination

John Stapleton

Nov 2014 · A Sense Of Place Publishing

About this ebook

The daily robbing, bashing, drugging, extortion and murder of foreign tourists on Thai soil, along with numerous scandals involving unsafe facilities and well established scams, has led to frequent predictions that Thailand's multi-billion dollar tourist industry will self-destruct. Instead tourist numbers more than doubled in the decade to 2014. The world might not have come to the hometowns of the many visitors fascinated by Thailand, but it certainly came to the Land of Smiles.

While the Thai media is heavily censored, and bad news stories about tourists suppressed, nonetheless there is more than enough evidence to demonstrate that something has gone seriously awry with the nation's tourist industry.

In 2014, just as in the years preceding it, there were train, bus, ferry, speedboat, motorbike and car accidents, murders, knifings, unexplained deaths, numerous suicides, diving accidents, robberies gone wrong, anonymous bodies washing up on the shores and a string of alcohol and drug related incidents.

Thailand had a dying king and serious succession problems, weak democratic institutions, an economy slipping into recession, faced issues of corruption across many of its key services and was host to international crime syndicates, awash with despised foreigners and drifting perilously towards civil war.

Tourists choose one destination over another for a number of reasons, most of which Thailand scores highly on. But on the core issue of tourist safety, Thailand scores very badly indeed.

About the author

The first money John Stapleton ever made out of writing was in 1972 when he was co‐winner of a short story competition held by what was then Australia's leading cultural celebration, the Adelaide Arts Festival. He graduated from Macquarie University in Sydney in 1975 with a double major in philosophy and anthropology and did post- graduate work with the Sociology Department at Flinders University. His articles and fiction have appeared in a wide range of magazines, newspapers and anthologies. Stapleton was a staff news reporter on The Sydney Morning Herald from 1986 to 1994 and The Australian from 1994 to 2009. Other books include Chaos at the Crossroads and Hunting the Famous.