BBC: The shocking truth about tourism in Thailand

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BBC: The shocking truth about tourism in Thailand
Published by Andrew Drummondon March 29, 2011in General News.

I am not sure whether the BBC bothered to get all the required permissions but as Thailand this year is being promoted as a foreign film hub perhaps the boys and girls from the corporation managed to slip in under the counter during the celebrations.

Living the agony: Stacey working in a sweat shop: Credit BBC Press office

Last night in Britain the BBC brought us: Thailand: Tourism and the Truth – Stacey Dooley Investigates!

This is one film which will not be promoted by the Tourist Authority of Thailand or the Thai Film Board.
Stacey of course first rose to fame as part of the series ‘Blood Sweat and T-shirts’*  a look at clothing sweat shops and sister series to ‘Blood, Sweat and Take-aways’ - a look at where ‘our’ food comes from which reduced some Brits to shaking wrecks after working a week in a Thai rice paddy…a programme which has raised a few eyebrows due to its ‘production values’.

More recently Stacey did a programme on child prostitution in Cambodia. Stacey, 22, is a likeable child of nature, or as the BBC says, a typical girl next door, who used to work behind a cosmetics counter, until the Beeb picked up on her natural charm.  She cries on camera when she is upset and equally when she is happy she shows it too.

Continuing her investigations into the Third World: BBC Press Office

While sometimes she shows great naivety, using Stacey is not a bad approach to tackling old but on-going stories. After all, many of us are so used to exploitation and abuse in the region that it needs someone with a thinner skin to take a fresh look.
Anyway said the BBC pre-broadcast blurb: “This time Stacey is travelling to one of our favourite holiday destinations, Thailand, to explore the darker side of tourism that the average holiday maker doesn’t see.

“Stacey begins her trip in Phuket, where she stays as a tourist before swapping roles and becoming a hotel worker. She works as a chambermaid and struggles with the hard work and incredibly high standards, having to clean 14 rooms a day for just four pounds. She also discovers what it’s like to live on such low wages and the sacrifices that some hotel workers have to make. Many live in slum conditions or in hotel dormitories, separated from their children for months.”

Well what Tracey found was, according to the Guardian, ‘brutal working conditions Mickey Mouse wages, rats. And locals being forced away from the homes they’ve always lived in by the inexorable spread of tourism.”

The young flippitygibbet even got an advisor to the Prime Minister to promise to take care of the sea gypsies, many of whom said they had their land taken from them  on Rawai Beach, Phuket by a businessman who is building a hotel there.

Sorted, said the PM’s advisor, in a round about sort of way.

“I’ll be coming back to check,” says the young Tracey.

We should send Tracey out after the jet-ski scammers, the tuk tuk and taxi drivers et all. Well, er maybe not. No I don’t know. If JJ reduced her to tears she could pick up a lot of votes.

But will this bring down hotel prices on this holiday island to be more commensurate with the owners’ wage bills?  Let’s not bet on it.

Or more to the point, will the sea gypsies or ‘Moken’  in fact get their land back?

The producer/director of ‘Big trouble in Tourist Thailand’ must be wondering why he had such a hard time from the Thai authorities.

He exposed ‘JJ’ the jet ski mafia man in Phuket while the BBC have exposed virtual slave labour and land theft, and the BBC get tea and biscuits in Government house.

I guess Abhisit was not around, but it would have been a good PR call to have attended that one….but not so good if the hotel owner was a Democrat, which is a good possibility down that way.

* Tracy cried during ‘Blood, Sweat and T-shirts’.  This subject has also brought tears to my eyes. Couple of years back I bought a shirt in a Robinson store half price sale here at about ten pounds.  Went to the UK a couple of months later and saw the same shirt at Primark for 3 pounds.  I hasten to add it was the first time I had been at a Primark store, just wanted to see what they looked like.

Source:
http://www.andrew-drummond.com/2011/03/29/bbc-the-shocking-truth-about-tourism-on-thailand/