So today I have a special podcast—a near hour–long chat with David Luekens—the founder of the best email newsletter on Thailand’s coast and islands, Thai Island Times. We talk about Covid in Thailand, sustainable tourism, David’s newsletter, and, of course, his pick of the crop.
Enjoy!
Peak hour on a southern Ko Lanta beach. Photo: David Luekens.
Stuart
OK, so I’m here with David Luekens and if you’ve ever traveled in Thailand on the back of Travelfish, it’s most likely you’ve been traveling on the back of his research. He’s been living in Thailand for almost a decade, although the first time he was in the region was 2005, which is what, like about 15 years ago.
After he got into the region, he traveled using Travelfish for a while and then he ended up working with us on the site and he’s done some incredible research, not just on the islands, although that’s what we’re going to be primarily talking about, but particularly also in Thailand’s Northeast, Isaan, as some people know it, and it’s one of the more under touristed parts of the country.
Now, earlier today I sent David an email with a couple of pre–interview questions, like where was home back in the States and that kind of thing, and one of the questions was how many islands has he stepped foot on? So David came back and said to me, well, it depends, it’s somewhere between 55 and 80 Thai islands. Depending on how you classify them, you know if you’ve got like a pair of islands like Ko Rok where there’s two islands, does that count as one or two?
It’s a bit like counting countries, but most people I know, like I thought I was doing alright with, I don’t know, I think I’m in the mid 30s, I think I’ve been to as many Thai islands as I’ve been to countries, but 55 to 80 is sort of pushing the envelope.
So anyway, David and I are gonna have a bit of a chat, about, well, we’ll get to the Thai islands, but we’re also going to talk about what’s on everybody’s lips, which is Covid and what’s happening in Thailand, and how Thailand is trying to open up and how it’s managing it. Then we’re gonna switch over to a bit of a chat about responsible tourism and sustainable tourism, and this is something I’ve been writing about on Couchfish a lot, about perhaps the silver lining to this whole s**t sandwich of Covid is how can we reinvent tourism, like how can tourism be done better? So we’ll talk about that.
And then we’re going to get to what, I guess everybody really wants to hear about, which is when you’ve been to up to 80 Thai islands, which is your favourite Thai island?
So before we get into this, David is in Bangkok at the moment, I’m in Bali, and David, what did you eat yesterday? What was a good meal you had to have?
David
Uh, som tam gai yang khao neow just at a new place opened up down the street from our little apartment here out in West Bangkok and we tried it out. It’s actually been packed, they have all kinds of Isaan food, like hot pot and it is really good, so we’re happy to have that.
There is more to the Thai islands than beaches. Panang seafood, Ko Jum. Photo: David Luekens.
Stuart
So what what made it so good?
David
Well the som tam was well balanced, you know it was spicy, it was sour, we got the Lao—style som tam with the fermented fish sauce and, I like it when it’s a little bit extra sour, nice taste of fresh lime juice, and I mean the gai yang was great, and the atmosphere was good it was kind of lively, so a classic Northeastern Thai restaurant in Bangkok.
Stuart
And this is in Thonburi, correct?
David
Yeah, pretty far out near in Bangla area of Bangkok, which is pretty close to like the far west end of the of the BTS Skytrain system, we actually live down the street from Bangla BTS Station, so it’s kinda out in the suburbs I guess you’d say.
Stuart
So when you say like the place is quite new and it’s busy like it sounds like it was teeming with people, in this age of Covid, how is it in Bangkok at the moment?
David
People really just are going about their business. You know, in the back in the first few months of the pandemic there was a lot of fear, and I mean back in like April of 2020 last year, half the city kind of shut down, malls were closed except for restaurants except for takeout and all the bars closed, and even interprovincial transport was really limited.
But you know gradually, I mean, we were lucky here to have like a solid six months of, basically no, or very very few known Covid infections, in the whole country. And that ended in December, when there was a big outbreak in Samut Sakhon, southwest of Bangkok. Since then it’s been kind of touch and go, but I think people are more used to the threat of it, people aren’t quite, I shouldn’t say everyone but it seems like a lot of people, especially younger people, are out in Bangkok. Everyone wears a mask and pretty much well I mean, almost everyone, at least you have to wear a mask like going on the Skytrain and stuff like that.
At that Isaan restaurant, it’s like you wouldn’t even know there was a pandemic really going on. People were crowding in there, which is, now we have another outbreak, and it’s been kind of like the numbers will go down to just maybe five or ten cases reported in a single day in Bangkok and then, now they’re back up again. I think 100 or something yesterday, and today in Bangkok and also in some of the provinces surrounding here so, it’s just the way it is, we’re still lucky compared to a lot of countries.
Stuart
So with your day to day life, if you look back to say like April last year and, we’re a year later so it’s early April this year we’re in just before Songkran, what’s a big difference between now and a year ago for you, like in day-to-day life?
David
I was actually thinking today how I was thinking back on a year ago at this time, Thailand had jumped to around 200 cases in a day and everyone was kind of freaking out, and they closed a lot of shops and restaurants and everything like Phuket was completely closed down, you couldn’t go on the beach same in places like Pattaya and some other places like Cha–Am, you weren’t allowed to go on the beach even.
Ao Si, Ko Jum. Photo: David Luekens.
There was an alcohol ban, there was 20 days, I think April 10th to May 1st, you weren’t allowed to buy any alcohol anywhere, even at like a convenience store or 7–eleven. There was a nationwide curfew where you had to be inside by 8:00 o’clock at night, so it’s far less drastic now in terms of the prevention measures.
I mean, if you really look at it, I was thinking how the situation then compared to now is really not that different, it’s about the same number of cases, being imported and very few people are vaccinated in Thailand, so yeah, so it’s kind of been a slow and tedious year, and I think that that’s going to continue.
Stuart
So do you know anybody personally, or know of anybody personally, in Thailand, who has come down with Covid?
David
I don’t no, not in Thailand. I know several back in the US but not in Thailand.
Stuart
Through this year, like a lot of travel has been shut down and it was very difficult to travel for a period, and obviously Thailand is largely closed for international tourism coming in, but I know you have done a little bit of travel, even if not by public transport, in the country, across this period, how is it different?
David
It depends on where you go. We took a trip up to Isaan in the Northeast, the northeastern region back in August, and it was like going back to normal again. Isaan has had very few cases relative to the rest of the country, which I mean the country has had, you know, a few cases relative to most other countries.
In Isaan, we did a long trip along the Mekong River, it’s beautiful, and I mean Isaan is a region that doesn’t get many foreign travellers, even when there’s not a pandemic going on. So it really felt like normal up there. We were in provinces that still haven’t reported a single case of Covid. Life was kind of going on more as normal there and that was kind of refreshing to get a taste of that, except that of course you’re seeing Laos across the border and knowing that you can’t use any of the border crossings to pop over there. That was the one big difference.
But then, for touristy areas like Ko Samui and Ko Chang is little bit better off compared to, Ko Samui, Phuket, places like that, are devastated. In some places like 90% of businesses are closed. I mean, even 24 hour convenience stores and that kind of thing, are closed.
I was thinking about all the work I’ve done for Travelfish over the years, in the islands and places that are quite touristy and how all that research is going to have to get thrown out after the pandemic. So many places are closed and are never going to come back. Even places, the hotels and other businesses that have stuck it out and are still going, they’re going to have to be looked at again with fresh eyes after the pandemic.
Just the upkeep of a resort and that kind of thing costs money that a lot of people I think don’t have. I think places are getting rundown. Thailand has a very moist, wet rainy season that causes damage to buildings and that kind of thing. Places like Chaweng and Ko Samui—how long is it gonna take? These are so developed and you can’t just get rid of these old these buildings and kind of start from scratch, so there’s going to be kind of a ghost town feel to a lot of these places, I think for several years to come.
Stuart
I totally agree with you about the research angle of things, it’s a complete nightmare, but just coming back to something you said, talking about how long businesses will be able to last, how has it worked in Thailand for government support? Not just businesses in the tourism industry, but in general like is there much sort of money crossing the table?
David
No, not not much, the government put most of their eggs into this tourism stimulus plan. They’re trying to, especially during those six months when there was basically no Covid in the country they were trying to get domestic tourists to travel. They were giving people, I don’t know, like big discounts on flights and you get like 1,000 baht back and that kind of thing.
A Ko Chang hideaway. Photo: David Luekens.
So that did help some businesses, but I think what the government didn’t really take into account and really appreciate was just how Thailand really has two separate tourism industries.
There’s the whole industry and some whole provinces are really geared towards Thai travellers and others domestic travellers and there’s a whole foreign tourism, a place like Phuket is very heavily tilted towards foreign tourism, so the places that are more geared towards foreign tourism were kind of left out, and I mean there’s a lot of overlap of course, between the domestic and foreign tourism.
My partner Chin runs a food tour company here in Bangkok that’s basically all foreign tourists, and she didn’t get any customers from this domestic tourism stimulus.
Stuart
When you were talking about traveling through Isaan, you said that region doesn’t see a tremendous lot of foreign tourists, I remember talking to Joe Cummings a while ago from ex Lonely Planet and he was saying it didn’t matter how much he pushed it, foreigners, most foreign tourists, just didn’t go there. So when you were traveling around there were you seeing a lot of businesses closed and that kind of thing? Or would you say it was business as usual, but a little bit off?
David
Yeah, business as usual, but a little bit off. I mean, we say that we went to Phimai for one night, where there’s some ancient Khmer ruins, there’s a place there called Moon River Resort, which is a nice little bungalow place like 600 baht 800 baht bungalows, right overlooking the Moon River, and that’s a place, and there are other some other guesthouses in Phimai, that you know, it’s probably about half of their business, at least came from foreign travellers who are passing through to see the ruins.
Also in Nong Khai there’s some guest houses that were mainly geared towards foreign travellers, they’re peppered around Isaan. There are guesthouses and other businesses that did cater more to the few foreign tourists who went through there who were travelling through on their way to Laos, or just checking out the region, and so I don’t mean that it’s completely normal there and that it was completely unaffected. Also a lot of people in Isaan go to work in places like Phuket and more touristy places so, there’s been a real kind of natural restructuring of the economy where people are doing whatever they can.
So many islands, so little time. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
Here in Bangkok we know a lot of tour guides, people who have become fortune tellers, or are selling food in front of their their houses or doing street food. One guy opened a coffee shop. Some of these people will come back to th
