tourist 'trap'

or not . . . bangkok, koh tao, and koh phangan

Thailand is a Western traveler’s dream. In my 9 days there, I flirted between city and island, cheap street tastes and stunning underwater sights, museums, and viewpoints. 

Thailand is also a proper initiation for a solo backpacker. The path through the country is almost too well-worn. Most folks from international locations land in Bangkok (given its status as an international hub of travel), and they either travel north or south. It is feasible, as I experienced for myself, to arrive in Bangkok with zero semblance of a plan, and be swept by the wind toward whatever is more fashionable to the backpacker community. In my case, this resulted in a 6-day escapade to Koh Tao, where I got scuba certified, and Koh Phangan, where I watched some Muay Thai fighting. 

My last day, I ordered a motorbike ride to the Bangkok National Museum. When my rider arrived, I asked him if he had an extra helmet. In response, he took off the one he was wearing and offered it to him. I bowed extra hard when I disembarked 10 minutes later — the guilt shadowing my face apparent to him as he bowed back.

I couldn’t really focus on the material in the museum, because I couldn’t stop thinking about that interaction. I wanted to share some of those thoughts, loosely organized around Thailand’s complicated relationship with tourism.

For all the tourist discourse about the tourist traps, it was ironic to me to hear conversation painting tourists as the victims of locals.

And yes, there’s a lot of irony and hypocrisy in writing this as a tourist. This piece is as much as a cope for me as it is (hopefully) interesting for you.

“Sin”

Thailand is one of the holiest countries in the world. As a point of national pride, the country boasts 40,000 temples nationwide. My first full day in Bangkok I visited the Grand Palace and the adjacent Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Even on a random day during low season, the buildings were absolutely packed, and supervisors were forced to constantly enforce a ‘no-photo’ rule inside the places of worship.

If you walk past one of the city-center temples at night and eventually reach Khao San Road, you’ll be blanketed with the smell of weed. Weed stalls intersperse with food stalls, and in classic Southeast Asian style vendors battle for your attention (because they are really all selling the same thing). At Khao San I also noticed several laughing gas vendors, which confused me at first because I thought those were just used as sedatives for medical procedures. As it goes, they have also found recreational use amongst the tourists in Thailand.

Vendors also look out for men who walk alone at night and proposition them with pictures of prostitutes, often adjacent to the weed and laughing gas vendors. 

Beyond Bangkok, Pattaya has also long garnered a reputation for sex tourism, which has created a self-fulfilling prophecy — as this reputation becomes stronger it convinces more to flock to the city in search of these services, etc.

Thailand’s rising presence as a country of “sin” complicates its historical reputation of deep religiosity. While Thai temples were obviously constructed to serve a religion’s members, it seems that the policy change to legalize weed was specifically directed toward tourists. The natural tension between these two audiences is drawn out temporally, as at dusk tourists flock toward the famous roads and past the temples in search of their next hit.

Take this headline by the Associated Press that states the obvious:

High times in Thailand: New weed laws draw tourists from across Asia

This isn’t to say that smoking weed or having sex makes you a bad Buddhist, but institutions of the religion (like the Sangha Supreme Council) have passed bans on weed for their members, overriding the more general countrywide legalization effort. These inconsistencies might begin to explain a dissonance that I felt in only a short time in Bangkok, as the country asks itself whether it can bear a tourism population with multifaceted preferences.

Sinking city

Bangkok is sinking:

"Considering the rise in sea level in local waters near Bangkok is about 1.2 centimetres per year, if nothing is done to protect Bangkok's shoreline, the waterline will slowly creep further inland by about...

"Eventually, it is likely that most of Bangkok Metropolitan will sink beneath sea level within the next 100 years — some professor on the Bangkok Post

What’s the solution here? This is a discussion about climate resilience infrastructure whose technicalities I’m not really prepared to discuss here.

A country like Thailand, which is ostensibly a term-limited functioning democracy, is not systematically likely to elect leaders who can afford to worry about the sinking of Bangkok in one century or other “long term” problems aggravated by the West (but which punish locals) ahead of more immediately tenable questions like “how to please the western tourist.”

Either way, most comprehensive and long-term solutions require some sacrifice to tourism because they must disrupt the conveniences of daily life to some extent (think as a small example, a construction project on water reclamation). This is “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) but instead, “not in my tourist destination.”

To zoom out, tourism was always a sacrifice to tourism to begin with. As one small example — motorcycles pick you up with spare change on an app’s command and their emissions heat up the ground to unbearable levels and heighten a smoke pollution that, alongside the annual smoke season, makes the weather unbearable.

“Murder island”

To beat the heat, I decided to head south to Koh Tao (an island where the ambient ocean cooled down the island) instead of north to Chang Mai (I was not feeling the smoke and the high heat).

In 2014, this island became famous for the high-profile targeted murder of two British tourists, in the process garnering the nickname “murder island.” Here are some headlines from a quick Google search:

Koh Tao Murders: Is Koh Tao Safe in 2024?

Koh Tao safe? (Murder Island) : r/ThailandTourism

This sole incident has probably become overextended to stain the reputation of the island — the more appropriate danger to tourists is self-inflicted: motorbikes.

In Koh Tao and the other islands in Southern Thailand, tourists without helmets and licenses roam the streets, sometimes with alcohol in their bodies. It is commonplace to rent out motorbikes with a cash deposit because taxis charge exorbitant prices for even the smallest of trips. This becomes a danger to the locals who by and large work in the service of tourists, who may not be completely removed of culpability but who nonetheless must coexist with consistently unqualified and oftentimes reckless drivers.

I couldn’t find much online about the statistics of tourist-caused motorbike accidents in the islands, but on the mainland, with much cheaper Taxi/Grab rates, I see less of an issue.

I admit my own bias here. On my first night in Koh Tao I sat with some folks who were talking about an accident they had suffered two weeks ago on the same island. I could see the cast, and some of the accident photos they showed — they weren’t pretty.

Muay Thai

I went to two separate Muay Thai events while in Thailand. One of them was professional and free, and the other was amateur and definitely not free.

The first was broadcast on live TV, and our hostel manager had established a relationship with the media company which apparently wanted as many foreigners in attendance (in view of the TV) as possible. Hence, we all attended without charge, 1-hour transportation to-and-from the venue included.

When we arrived, it was clear that we were the main audience of the event, even within the venue itself (a huge stadium that had only recently been constructed and specifically programmed Muay Thai). Before the game, western party music blared across the stadium. The announcer spoke English and was accompanied by a Thai translator. As he described the different weight classes, he even used pounds (used by the US/UK) instead of kilograms.

Muay Thai has always been an instrument of cultural capital and pride in Thailand — as a place to be, a thing to do, that is bound up with “Thai-ness.” And yet its commercialized version felt designed for the foreign gaze.

The second event was a pay-to-attend event that was widely advertised around Koh Phangan. We’d hear large trucks pass by with loudspeakers blaring out the time and place of the fight.

Most of the matches involved a European facing off against a Thai. During intermission, a 4-year-old took the stage and performed the traditional dance that prequels a fight, afterward asking for people to throw money onto the stage. Many obliged.

I didn’t see it during my time in Thailand, but child fighting isn’t so uncommon, although it has faced stricter scrutiny recently. Here’s a Forbes piece that sums up the ethical dilemma well:

Muay Thai is a tradition kept alive because it is a business. The child boxers are there to bring prize money back to their families. And Chai’s village and trainers, yelling advice and pushing up against the barricades of the ring, did not come just to cheer for him. They came to bet on him.

The tradition of child boxing has brought Thailand the ire of tourists and human rights activists, who see the practice as dangerous for the children. But in Isaan, the North Eastern and poorest region of Thailand, child boxing is a community business. It provides income to families that would otherwise have to rely on their rice paddies, and a way out of poverty for some children with few options. Child boxers can earn as much in a night as their parents can farming rice in a year.

The financial reality of this debate adds complexity to an otherwise standard debate about sport safety for kids often analogously found in American football circles. But the entire conversation is hidden from us foreigners. I only knew about Muay Thai’s “dark underbelly” from a class I am taking this semester on martial arts in SE Asia, but this certainly wasn’t part of the brochure on the hostel. I don’t have a more developed vocabulary describe this situation, though, more than it just made me feel uncomfortable throughout. How profitable really is our ignorance?

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I don’t think I’ve felt more “perceived” anywhere I’ve traveled than in Thailand. Any intention I had of avoiding the “touristy” parts of Thailand became infeasible pretty quickly.

I should note generally that none of this is an argument against visiting Thailand (or anywhere I’ve written on) if it is your dream destination. This isn’t a travel blog — more so a vehicle for reflection as I frame my takes on travel with my surrounding exchange community. I am a more appreciative and in-the-moment traveler when I compartmentalize my discomfort and intentionally leave time to reflect on the ugly after my return.

Next: a long piece about drug policy/rehabilitation in Singapore. Coming soon!