Re: New Airport is a HORROR !(sandy was right !)

Tchiowa wrote:
On May 30, 10:11 pm, Nisciuno <nisci...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
then you've seen little of thailand...
Actually, so far, I only stayed in Nong Khai. All the other places I just
drove through or visited a single day. But I remember what others told me
Thailand was like in the 60's, I could also watch some 8mm movies (no
audio) shot in Bangkok in the late sixties. Just another world.

If you look at movies from the 60s shot in the US you'll see huge
differences now.
In the way of life? In the values the people shared? In the culture they
called their own? What changed other than the technology and the fashion?

ah... so really you're just talking about how tourists must be feeling
when the country doesn't match the brochures...
I'm just talking of the people who remember or knew what Thailand used toi
be like AND who also read tourism brochures. Why do you thing travel
authorities and agencies represent Thailand that way? Because that's what
people like and wish to find when they get there. If they wished to land
in another concrete-steel-and-glass town, I thing LoS wouyld lose much of
it's attractive. And it's not just the tourists, many people I know regret
so much of the land they knew when they where children is gone.

Thailand has a thriving tourist business.
Undeniably.

But you can't expect Thailand to "be put on hold" so that tourists can
continue to see the same sights every time they come here.
I'm not suggesting this should be attempted. And I'm not concerned about
what tourists are seeing, I'm primarilly concerned with what Thailand and
the Thai people have been losing of their culture, lifestyle and landscape
because of the consumerism they are pursuing so precipitously without
having any structure - social and technological - capable of dealing with
the adverse consequences.

Thailand is moving and changing.
All the world is. And we're beginning to see the most dreadful
consequences affecting everyone.

While I agree with you that the airport is ugly and drab
(that's just a personal view, art is in the mind of the beholder) your
apparent view that Thailand should stand still for tourists is simply
wrong.
I don't mean Thailand shoud stand still in order to make tourists happy.
I lament the consequences the far too quick change in the lifestyle of the
Thai people have wrought both to society and environment. People used to
have a safe net in the mini-community that each family used to be. Now
increasingly women who move to town to work find themselves alone and
helpless when things go wrong, like: * husband abandons his family and
leaves his wife alone with her child; * the factory shuts down; * basic
commodities' price goes up and the pay become unsufficient; * a sickness
develops and there's no money for the necessary cures etc. There's an
increasing number of such cases happening in the large towns
and cities, where people, no matter they live next to million other
people, cannot find any help. It was not like this in the village, where
everyone knew every other person as they where often relatives or had many
more chances to meet and stay together much more often than people living
in the same condo do today.

Thailand is not the 3rd World Country it was a few decades ago.
However, many more of it's people are now destitute. There is now much
more money and technology around, but also poverty (relative to the
contemporary economical and social conditions) is at an all time high.
It's like this everywhere in the world, I know. I just lament such a
beautiful country and people like the Thai had to go the same way as the
more "advanced" societies in their quest to become as rich as those.

It is growing economically.
However the wealth the economy is producing goes to benefit a tiny
fraction of the society: the industrialists, the finance gurus, the
politicians, the military top brass... and Thailand is becoming less and
less a place "of the free" and "of smiles", increasingly like any other
place on earth where modern economics dictate how people must live.

Parts of Bangkok would fit well in any major US or European city.
Right, just what I loath. What good is it traveling 6,000 miles to find
what you can find in Chicago or London or Johannesburg? Cheaper prices on
MP3 players?

You can't expect them to stay poor and Third World just so tourists
could reminisce.
Again, I care about the Thai people and culture much more than about tourists.
I love the poorer Thailand I met in Nong Khai peasant's villages and have
no interest in staying in Krung Thep. And it makes me sad listening to
people in those villages asking me how much people in my country earn and
wishing they could emigrate to work abroad to earn that much money.
Because I know some of them will eventually do, and they will be as many
fewer Thai people in the world, no matter their ethic traits.

.

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