Positive Adaption to Change – Phuket Hits Different

After a visit to the UK during the winter holidays there was some brief opportunity to reflect on the importance of human adaptation to global changes to ensure not only survival, but overall positive development.

Adapting to change applies in context to global, national and local dynamics – including Phuket – which still possesses plenty of charm and ‘rizz’. In my opinion, those that are resistant to change will arguably eventually suffer more from the friction of resistance than those who adapt. There are some topical examples of this as follows:

Travel

Technology has driven changes to travel that, since the disaster of the COVID19 pandemic, have manifested themselves further into the way in which we navigate from one country to the other. Aside from the now embedded use of online travel agents, we now have to use self-service luggage tag and boarding pass printing systems designed to lower airline company expenses – but marketed as making the process more ‘efficient’.

Humans are still needed to assist when the machines fail, bags need to be checked through to more than one destination or if there is an unexpected, but not necessarily ‘unusual’, travel requirement. Travelling with two children, albeit with plenty of evidence they are mine and have parental consent, I was able to navigate most of the journey with digital inputs and avoid ‘brain rot’. As a luggage heavy family, I still needed the additional assistance. However, the good news for Thailand, with a substantial reliance on tourism as a source of revenues, is that technological advances will likely bump up the number of visitors but also the ‘bottom line’.

Driving / Roads

Nobody rational can deny the plight of Phuket and its inhabitants with regards to increased volume of traffic, inexplicably programmed traffic lights with plenty of red light ‘skippers’,  the crazy number of accidents, the rise of adults transporting tiny-framed innocent fragile children on their motorbikes and the increased pressure on parking spaces at events and key destinations.

However, to put this into context, when I planned to take my children to the cinema at the Peter Harrison Planetarium at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London – the concept of driving from what used to be for me 30 minutes away was highly unattractive. Additional fees, zealous parking officials, CCTV designed to catch in 4K any minor traffic violation, all meant that catching the train and walking significant distances through a pretty but very chilly park were much better options.

Phuket will catch up with itself in due course. At all the schools in Phuket there are plenty of opportunities for teachers searching for class ideas to assign students the task of re-imagining the roads in Phuket in an idyllic future. Pretty air-conditioned skywalks with sun rooves above busy highways, spacious moving pavements with bicycle lanes that do not allow sharing with, or the invasion by, motorbikes, cable cars to viewpoint sites instead of polluting pick-ups and… no jet skis!  Paradise, again!

While we wait for that, we must still try to enjoy what we have and understand why Phuket attracts so many visitors and is becoming so busy.

As for the driving standards, I noted in the UK that even with the significantly lower number of fatalities there is still no shortage of morons tailgating, speeding, overtaking unnecessarily, honking horns and flashing lights through an internal fog of impatience and lack of self-control. The same demons here just wear different clothes, angle their legs oddly on their souped-up motorbikes or have 250 speakers loaded into the back of their heavily-stickered pick-up truck.

Amenities

At the risk of ‘glazing’, I can’t praise highly enough the number of choices Phuket now has for things to do, activities and hobbies. In the UK, I had to look hard for any ‘nearby’ Padel courts, mostly outdoor (in such a cold and rainy country!) . In a matter of two years of so, Phuket has a proliferation of Padel, Pickleball, Tennis and other racket sport facilities in almost every pocket where people are concentrated.

Gyms have sprung everywhere to cater for ‘Sigmas’ and and other high performers. Whatever sport or activity you enjoy, Phuket now has a vibrant and growing ‘food scene’ which is not, fortunately for the tee-totaller segment, all centred around drinking – although drinkers also have their fair share of options. Whilst there may be a traffic jam on the way, let’s not forget the shadow of the Phuket-budget controlling Bangkok, where it is possible to spend on a rainy Friday rush hour evening, three hours to crawl a few kilometres from one place to another - if you take a car…

The impressive growth and diversification of amenities in Phuket is directly feeding into the success of real estate, tourism and other services, including home improvement and retail. No wonder Central Group bet so heavily on Phuket’s future success. Simply observing the queues in the telephone and technology stores is sufficient to imagine the cheshire-cat style grins of boardroom executives who supported company investment and expansion into this Province.

Nationalities mix

Something I missed about London, as soon as I arrived in Phuket, was the diversity of people living together, sharing cultures, cuisines, experiences and making social gatherings stimulating, challenging and fun.

There was never any doubt that getting to know Thai culture and society would be fun, but variety is the spice of life. Nowadays, Phuket has visibly changed and that makes the possibilities for its development and direction – very exciting and unique. It is possible to hear the chattering of multiple languages in any given place at a given moment and increasingly it is not appropriate to adopt a ‘my way is better’ philosophy when there are so many different perspectives at the metaphorical ‘dinner table’.

The virtue-signallers protected by the NPCs (Non-Player Characters) in other countries, can’t get away easily these days with too much internet-fueled divisive opinions on which stereotype to use about a visitor or resident in Phuket. It is now increasingly important for nationalities of different backgrounds and expectations to rub along nicely with each other in queues, at supermarkets, at schools, at beaches and beach clubs.

“If You Don’t Like It, Leave”?

This has to be one of the most ‘basic’ lazy and thoughtless online troll comments that can be widely found on forums as a response to a complaint. But, so far as Phuket is concerned, this does have a pretty good ring of truth to it. There are number of long-term residents commuting to Phang Nga at weekends or simply moving there or elsewhere as they feel ‘icky’ about Phuket’s future, and that mini-exodus is simply creating more room for the new ‘delelu’ arrivals.

Instead of just leaving, it is perhaps time to adapt, to plan those journeys to be a bit longer, to buy real estate for convenience and not just the immediate view, to place yourself near to your favourite amenities and activities, to locate on the least obnoxious school-run route and to make sure you are a reasonable distance of the airport to make the occasional getaway.

Parts of Phuket are looking up, ‘glowing up’ to use yet another Gen Z phrase, and we can aim higher than simply ‘tolerating’ the changes, instead actually embracing some of the positive changes and making sure we maximise the opportunities arising from them.

By Desmond Hughes, Senior Partner of Hughes Krupica

Hughes Krupica is a law firm which specialises in Real Estate; Construction; Hospitality; Corporate; Commercial; Tech; Dispute Resolution; and Litigation, operating from Phuket, servicing clients in relation to their business activities in Thailand and in other regions of Asia.