We were, however, on weather watch again, with more bad weather forecast for the coming week, but deciding on the best anchorage to hunker down in became the issue. Unfamiliar with many of the anchorages we, at least, knew where we didn’t want to be, so we decided to just stay put. It’s a little frustrating, though, that the actual weather thus far has not been reflected in any of the forecasts we’ve perused, making a decision difficult on whether or not to continue our explorations.
Regardless, yesterday Elaine had an “off day” or until 1400 anyway, so exploring was the last thing she wanted to be doing. So, while she slept the morning away, Roy dinghied ashore to enjoy a nice long walk, then baked Elaine a lovely multi-grain loaf of gluten-free bread. Fortunately, when Elaine surfaced to the smell of the freshly baked bread, she was feeling much better, to the extent she even tackled the latest medical insurance claims; a task she detests. Fortunately she was interrupted by a lovely surprise video call from Justine, who was just getting started on her work day. It was the perfect interlude to an otherwise uneventful day. A beautiful halo around the waxing gibbous last night, however, was a suitable consolation for the absence of a starry night and the Southern Cross.
During our explorations over these past few weeks there has often been talk of the “Phuket Sandbox” initiative and the requirement to get 70% of the islanders vaccinated in preparation for the opening of the island to both foreign and domestic tourists, as a means to restore livelihoods. This has left us feeling a little vulnerable as we haven’t been vaccinated yet, although we eventually managed to get ourselves registered. It came as somewhat of a surprise then when we learnt that many of the residents of the islands scattered around the Phang Nga Bay are not vaccinated yet either, making us wonder how these islands, which are certainly the far more interesting tourist attractions of the area, are going to fit into the initiative to revive their economies too.
That led Elaine to do a bit more research into why there appears to be such a reliance on tourism and an emphasis on bolstering the tourism sector on Phuket Island particularly. However, noting at the same time, there appears to be no diversification initiatives that would create alternative employment in the area, as a backup to the Sandbox initiative, in the event of its failure, especially since we also learnt during our travels that, when the borders closed last year, many of the vendors on Phuket Island just closed up shop and left the island to return to their home towns, cities and villages, leaving “ghost towns” behind and, more importantly, have not returned to participate in the reopening.
Reviewing the economic data of Thailand shed a little more light on the approach, but not much, especially if one considers the impact on economies all over the world due to the pandemic, never mind the constraints foreigners will have in leaving or indeed returning to their own countries after a holiday abroad.
Although Thailand’s economy is a heavily export-dependent one, accounting for more than two-thirds of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and exporting over USD$105 billion worth of goods and services annually, including cars, computers, electrical appliances, rice, textiles and footwear, fishery products, rubber and jewellery, it appears the tourism industry was one of Thailand's main economic sectors, accounting for 6-7% of its GDP. Revenues reached USD$71 billion in 2016 and projections in 2019 indicated that the tourism sector would account for 30% of GDP by 2030. That, of course, was before the pandemic. So, why not diversify now instead, in those areas that have been devastated by the lack of tourism. Well, it may well come down to education.
Apparently, while education in Thailand has seen its greatest progress since 2001, teaching relies heavily on “rote learning”, a “memorisation technique based on repetition, with the idea that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the material the more one repeats it”, rather than on a student-centred methodology. Additionally, “the establishment of reliable and coherent curricula for its primary and secondary schools is subject to such rapid changes that schools and their teachers are not always sure what they are supposed to be teaching and authors and publishers of textbooks are unable to write and print new editions quickly enough to keep up with the volatility”, compounded by the fact that schooling is only compulsory up to the age of 14. Additionally, “issues concerning university entrance has been in constant upheaval for a number of years”; not the ideal circumstance to support the competencies of critical and independent thinking, required to contribute towards ideas for diversification and indeed initiatives that would require a higher skillset!
In essence, it appears tourism was easy income with huge financial returns for Thailand, as with many countries, but, halfway through 2021 and no sign of this pandemic being under control in most parts of the world, it appears it’ll be a while before the tourism dollars coming rolling back in again anywhere, any time, soon!
Today, we stayed onboard expecting the worst of the forecast weather to arrive, but after a rain shower around mid-morning, the skies cleared. By lunchtime, with the continuation of the sunny skies we decided to venture ashore and enjoyed another tasty lunch, followed by a long walk on the beach, stopping for an ice-cream on our way back to the dinghy. What we hadn’t accounted for, though, was the spring low tide, which left the dinghy in the mud at the dinghy dock. After an hour, the tide had risen sufficiently for Roy to traipse over the rocks to get the dinghy back in the water and paddle to the dock to allow Elaine to scoot in. At any other time, waiting another hour until the dinghy was completely floating wouldn’t have been a problem, but today, as luck would have it, Elaine urgently needed the loo and definitely didn’t want to use a public toilet. Just typical!
Anyway, once we were back onboard and the urgent matter taken care off, we enjoyed a refreshing swim off the back of Paw Paw and settled down for our evening, fortunately with all the late afternoon weather passing to the south of us. We’re not altogether sure how all the forecasts could be so far off, but we definitely weren’t complaining; we’d enjoyed a sunny day and avoided the horrible thunderstorms.
