Thailand’s budget-airline situation has been in dire straits since One-Two-Go stopped and Nok Air cut its Phuket and Krabi routes. Tourists have been left stranded and fuming in Bangkok, unable to catch flights to Phuket. We’ve had calls and emails from irate travelers who simply can’t get the flights they want.

If nothing else, this highlights the popularity of the Bangkok-Phuket route. Flights are booked solid for the next few days. After several news reports about Nok Air cutting its Phuket route, the airline apparently took note of the situation and has announced it is reintroducing the flight. Nok Air did something similar recently with its flights to Haad Yai.

Of course, this may all have been a massive marketing ploy by Nok Air in order to boost sales during the low season. If it is, then I hope the increased revenue is enough to cover the money lost in between cutting the route and reinstating it.

It’s good PR for Nok Air whichever way you look at it. Nok Air is now the airline the listens, the airline that cares. One-Two-Go is still the airline that can’t and Air Asia is kind of caught in the middle.

I flew Air Asia a couple of times last week. There were no more flights available on one of the days I chose to travel. Despite this, there are still rumors of cutbacks in the pipeline for Air Asia.

As consumers, I think we still have a good thing in terms of domestic flights. It’s anybody’s guess for how long.

You know there’s something wrong with a cover story when its lede is: “The Nai Lert Park annual fair is taking a more fun-filled approach this year, and calling itself the Flower Carnival.” Well yes, that does sound fun. “To advertise the event organisers paraded naked models covered with orchids.” Apparently this is front-page news in Bangkok. It gets better. “Participants this year include leading flower arrangers and top business people.”

I often read Bangkok’s media publications and feel slightly miffed that editors want to break everything down into A-to-Zs, top 100s and Q&A interviews. They do nothing for me. But I digress. Stories about flower carnivals are up there among the least exciting ways you could run a front page.

I don’t want to give Daily Xpress too hard a time because I understand the enormous pressure the publication is under at the moment, but the whole set-up needs a kick up the ass. There was enormous potential to offer a high-quality publication, but it’s just not happening at the moment. I hope that Daily Xpress can come good and sort itself out.

Every time there’s a high-profile case of a crime committed against a foreigner in Thailand, there are calls to boycott the country. We saw it down here in Phuket when Swedish tourist Hanna Backlund was murdered. There were expats and random foreigners being very vocal about the knock-on effect that would be felt in the tourism industry.

The expat crowd in particular is good at rallying together when one of its own is hurt or murdered. It’s like a cycle, though. There’s a major crime, there’s an outcry, people call for a boycott, nobody listens and the whole saga is forgotten in a matter of weeks.

For a time, I thought that such high-profile murders as Hanna Backlund’s might have an impact on tourism, but I stand corrected. I honestly believe that nothing short of a large-scale natural disaster is enough to truly deter tourists from visiting Thailand.

Tourists just don’t care about jeopardizing their holiday plans for anything short of an all-out disaster, as happened with the 2004 tsunami. The latest call for a boycott of Thailand is Canadian Ernie Del Pinto, whose son was shot dead in Thailand about six months ago. A few publications have run this latest development in the story, but nothing will ultimately change. Canadians have been dropping like flies in recent months, so I don’t see what difference this will make.

This is the frustration that families and friends of murder victims in Thailand go through. Crimes go unsolved and there is little resolution. Justice seems so very far away — trapped beneath a pile of paperwork. It’s the families who I really feel for in these stories. They go to great lengths to search for justice, but it rarely comes.

Calling for a boycott of Thailand does little more than catch a few eyes. People say that it’s only a matter of time before tourists see the real Thailand and stop visiting the country, but this is nonsense. People will never stop visiting Thailand.

What would you do if you were in Ernie Del Pinto’s position?

It appears as if some of the larger retailers in Thailand are actually taking positive steps in the battle to rid the country of the excessive number of plastic bags. In Phuket at least, Central Festival, Tesco, Big C, Robinson and a bunch of hotels will on July 9 sign an MOU to offer discounts to shoppers who use their own bags. At the moment, I think the discount is something like 20%. (Gazette)

This is the sort of initiative that casts these larger retailers in a positive light. Goodness knows they need it with all the negativitiy surrounding the expansion in Thailand of large busineses, such as Tesco and Big C. Such a move has the potential to make a big difference.

Last week, the Thai Chamber of Commerce made the strange statement that “small retailers will completely disappear in the near future if the government does not accelerate the implementation of the country’s first-ever retail business law to create a level playing field for small and large players”. (Nation)

Apparently, large retailers are now outnumbering their smaller counterparts by a ratio of 70:30. This all sounds like scaremongering, but the number of large retailers has been increasing recently.

A fact sheet released by the Chamber of Commerce said that Thai consumers will suffer in the long run, which is nonsense — and certainly not a fact. Wholesalers will suffer because their prices are being undercut. Consumers will actually benefit.

This is perhaps demonstrative of xenophobic attitudes in Thailand, but there is no way that a retail business law that adversely affects retail giants such as Tesco and Big C will ever be implemented. On that note, the Chamber of Commerce would have us believe we are all doomed.

Outsourcing work to other countries is nothing new – heck, even I hire people to do odd jobs for me – but when it comes to journalism, you don’t expect a newspaper’s reporters to be working from another country. It isn’t just call centers that are hiring staff in India.

The Los Angeles Times recently hired a $12,000-a-year reporter who lives in Mumbai. Another, who lives in Bangalore, was also hired.

Then there’s the Pasadena website (“All Pasadena, All the Time”) that took on a staffer member from India.

Is this the future of the media, given the enormous pressure that newspapers and magazines are under with sales tumbling and cutbacks being made across the board? At first I thought the whole idea was mad. How can someone write about a place in which they don’t live? Then I remembered that many journalists at some point write about places they haven’t been.

Andrew also wrote about this topic, saying, “Why can’t Thailand grab a share of this business too? The Kingdom has some talented journalists and designers, and costs are low.”

While such a move would be a serious boon for journalism in Thailand, I have reservations about whether those fluent in English would be tempted by this kind of work when there is more money to be made elsewhere. Andrew points out that there are very few media companies who could handle such work, but the way I see it, it doesn’t take entire media companies to make this possible.

If a US company hires someone in Thailand for this kind of work, paying that person about 30,000 baht a month, then surely that person doesn’t need an entire team behind them.

Do you think Thai people would go for this of work?