Well this sucks. As if One-Two-Go being delivered a standing eight-count wasn’t bad enough, Nok Air has reportedly thrown in the towel on its Bangkok-Phuket route, writes Chutima Sidasathian over at Phuket Wan. Flights from Bangkok to Chiang Rai, Ubon Ratchatanee and Krabi have also been axed. This is terrible news. It means that Air Asia is the only low-cost airline serving several of Thailand’s major destinations.

Phuket is a huge boon for tourism in Thailand, but with Nok Air and One-Two-Go out of the picture, you have to wonder what the effect will be.

From Phuket Wan:

A Nok Air spokeswoman blamed the cuts on oil prices and the general economic downturn.

This news comes a day after gasohol pump prices were cut by almost 5 baht a liter, while the price of diesel was slashed by 3.5 baht a liter. It was widely speculated that Nok Air was in trouble.

Air Asia is now in a prime position to jack up its prices on certain routes because it has no other airline to compete with.

Is the era of the Thailand backpacker over? The editor of Luxury Travel Magazine recently said that Thailand is now the destination of choice for people searching boutique hotels and upmarket spas. People have been saying this for a while, calling it the end of backpacking.

Newley wrote an interesting article last year in the NY Times. The title of his article, which is about Khaosan Road, is “A Hippie Haven Goes Upscale”, which I think says it all.

The lede of the article goes like this:

In the 2000 film “The Beach,” Leonardo DiCaprio’s character travels to Thailand, and, like countless backpackers before him, stays in a dingy guesthouse on Bangkok’s legendary Khao San Road. But if the movie were shot today, Mr. DiCaprio would encounter not only rough-and-ready tattoo parlors and street vendors selling cheap banana pancakes, but also up-market amenities: a spa offering body wraps and salt scrubs, for instance, and, inevitably, a Starbucks.

Although this upmarket side is creeping in, it’s in a constant battle with the hippie side of life. I don’t know if it’s Thailand that is changing or the way people travel.

When I first arrived in Thailand, whenever I traveled, be it to Lopburi or Koh Chang, I’d always travel by bus or train and stay in the cheapest places. Having work commitments doesn’t allow me that “luxury” so much any more as the only traveling I do is by motorbike around Phuket. If I were to be carefree and back in Bangkok, I think I’d still travel on a shoestring.

I don’t think backpacking is dying. Friends of mine still come to Thailand on their way to and from half a dozen countries, with limited budgets and backpacks in tow. What is perhaps changing is the type of people Thailand appeals to.

The last time I walked down Khaosan Road was about a month ago. I didn’t feel as if the place had changed much in the three years since I first arrived. I was still able to buy a tray of pad Thai from a street vendor as I was the day I first stepped on that street.

There’s no denying that development has perhaps tainted the hippie trail in Thailand. It is becoming a little more difficult to find those real budget digs and restaurants on the islands, but it’s not so much that you can’t travel the entire country without spending a whole lot of dollar; you just have to look a little harder for the real bargains.

Who knows, in 20 years they may be no such thing as “backpacking”.

It’s hard not to notice that there has been a rather sudden influx of Russian tourists to Thailand. It may be that there are more Russians in Phuket than Bangkok, but this increase is not just my imagination – the Russians are coming.

At the risk of offending my Russian readers – I know that I used to have at least one – I’ve been thinking about these Russian visitors a lot recently because they’re everywhere. You go to any nightclub in Phuket and there will be a group of Russians there dancing until the sun comes up.

They’re an interesting bunch, the Russians, but I worry about the reputation that some of their countrymen are earning. I have now lost track of the number of times that I’ve been told stories about Russian tourists coming to Thailand and wreaking havoc on bars and clubs. Just as Britain and Australia have their lager louts, so Russia has its vodka louts.

Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has made it clear that it is keen to tap into new markets, such as Russia. TAT’s global roadshow touring has already seen an impact on tourism numbers.

One point of interest that I have noticed is that the Russians coming to Thailand have a lot of money. Furthermore, property developers have now cottoned on to this and are beginning to translate their websites into Russian.

I was told by a major property developer that Russians weren’t buying property in Thailand before for the simple fact that they couldn’t read any of the websites. While there have been Russian girls hanging out at Novotel Siam Square for as long as I can remember, there are now more Russians making their way to Thailand than ever before. There are even Russian clubs and bars beginning to surface.

To any Russian readers, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on what is now attracting you to Thailand. As for everyone else, what have your experiences with the Russian masses been like?

I hope I haven’t offended any Russians by writing this.

People have started coming to Phuket in droves. It was as if someone flicked a switch and all these people suddenly appeared. The high season is well underway.

I first noticed something was up when a large number of foreigners materialised where I live on Yaowarat Rd, but these people aren’t tourists – they are teachers. I don’t know how I feel about this invasion of foreigners. I kind of liked my area of town because it was quiet and fairly peaceful, but I can’t leave my apartment without bumping into hordes of teachers carrying bundles of paper and looking for somewhere to eat lunch.

They move in packs, too, which is disconcerting. Term has either started or is imminent. In Patong, the usual throngs of people have begun arriving. It’s great for Phuket because this will be the first full-blown high season since the tsunami. It’s estimated that up to six million people are going to pass through Phuket in the next few months.

As usual, there will be a few undesirables. Last night a group of yobs threw a bottle and smashed a glass panel at a bar in Patong. The manager very coolly told them to pay 4,000 baht and walk away. The yobs, being yobs, caused a scene and the police were called. They ended up paying 4,000 baht to the bar and 2,000 baht to the police. It was priceless.

I can tell it’s high season because a number of friends from the UK have embarked on trips that will inevitably include stays in Thailand. Khaosan Rd will be unbearable at the moment.

I enjoy high season because you get to witness all manner of extraordinary goings on in the areas frequented by tourists. Those tourists can be a funny bunch. Everyone must have seen tourists doing offbeat things at some point, right? Drunks tourists = chaos.

I don’t normally lose my temper, but I came very close yesterday. If I could have rationally directed my frustration towards somebody then I might have done so, but as it was, I was unsure why I was so angry.

I had grossly misjudged how long a van ride from Penang to Phuket would take. Even though I made the trip less than three months ago, for some reason I was convinced it would only be a seven-hour ride. It turned out to be 11 hours of hell.

Bus and van rides across Thailand don’t normally faze me, and if I have enough time I will always take a bus rather than fly, but this journey was a nightmare thanks to Thai song after Thai song after Thai song.

I have nothing against Thai music, but on this particular occasion all the songs fused into one maddening stream of clinking bells, electric guitars, love songs, Carabao singing about poor people… and on it went. If it wasn’t Thai songs it was Thai karaoke VCDs or a concert held in Surat Thani that we watched twice because the CD skipped during the first showing.

All I wanted to do was sleep, but it was made impossible by all the blaring Thai music coming at me from all angles. This, coupled with the fact that Thailand’s roads aren’t flat, made me feel like I wanted to scream. I don’t understand why people in Thailand can’t make a journey on a bus (or in a van) without having to watch karaoke VCDs. It was 8 in the freaking morning, for goodness sake.

It got to me so much that when I went to bed after getting home yesterday, the soundtrack to my dreams was an endless chorus of more Thai songs.

Techno’ tags: Thailand, Phuket, Penang, Travel