Four months on, the fires have been put out and tempers have cooled, but do foreign tourists now feel safe here?
Published: 16/09/2010 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Horizons
On trips abroad even a few decades ago, it was rare for a Thai citizen to meet anyone with more than the vaguest idea about the whereabouts of this country. ‘‘Thailand? Isn’t that near Taiwan?’’ being an all-too-common response.
These days, however, Thai nationals travelling overseas often run into people who’ve visited the Kingdom on more than one occasion. Due to our high international profile as a tourist destination and the blanket media coverage on the red-shirt protest and its violent denouement, the question we are now most likely to be asked is: ‘‘I heard all about the riots in Bangkok … so is it safe to visit Thailand at the moment?’’
While coverage of the red-shirt occupation of central Bangkok by certain foreign media outlets may have given a false impression of the reasons for the protest and the extent of the risk, it was hardly surprising that some countries would issue warnings to their citizens against travelling to Thailand at that time.
Four months on, however, tourist arrivals are on the rise again. The State of Emergency, initially imposed on a large swathe of the nation, has now been revoked in many provinces. While still in force in the greater Bangkok metropolitan area, these regulations do not, in any case, create major difficulties for locals and expats as they go about their everyday lives and have virtually no effect on tourists.
Things are not yet back to normal, of course. Some masterminds of the arson and mayhem are still at large. There’s the odd bomb or grenade attacks but they seem designed more to make a political point than to kill or maim.
So is the Kingdom a truly safe place for tourists again? Even if all 64 million of us Thais were to bellow ‘‘yes!’’ in unison, would we sound truly convincing? The folks who can best answer this question are foreign visitors themselves. So we ventured out onto the streets of our capital to gauge their sentiments.