When Will Enough Be Enough?

This holiday season, which is also the peak tourist season for Phuket, has brought reports of traffic jams in the north of the island which are exceeding anything residents or tourists have ever come to expect.

A trip from Layan to Boat Avenue (where a Layan resident is most likely to do their grocery shopping) can now take up to one hour, as opposed to the 10-15 minutes it would take without traffic. 

This is not an isolated example, and it is beginning to go beyond a seasonal inconvenience, entering instead the realm of disruption – forcing some people to readjust their schedules or even their lifestyles.

In this article, we address the development taking place across the island, and the move towards a more diversified economy.  More importantly, we raise the question of how this will affect future generations of Thai and foreign residents alike.

Phuket is the crown jewel of Thailand’s tourism industry and it has certainly earned its monicker, ‘The Jewel of the Andaman Sea’.  Today there is talk of diversifying Phuket’s economy by industrialising the island, which on the surface many sound like a good idea, but just 200 miles to the south there is another island which once did the same thing.

Anyone who has ever flown from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore will have passed over the Malaysian island of Penang, which once carried a similarly flattering title,  ‘The Pearl of the Orient’.  And Penang is a perfect example of what could happen to Phuket in the decades to come if development and industrialisation are left unchecked.

Penang’s population in 1881 was just 190,000. Today Penang State (which includes the mainland part of the state) has a whopping 1.7 million inhabitants, much of it coastal. Penang Island itself is home to approximately 800,000 people, even though it is half the size of Phuket (only 114 square miles).

Malaysia’s road towards post-war industrialization started earlier than Thailand’s, and around Penang it was  prolific.  It was not that long ago that the waters flowing around the island and through the Straits of Penang were similar to those of Koh Turatao, in Southern Thailand, just 93 miles to the north. The oldest generation in Penang can still recall swimming as children and seeing small fish in the shallows of the clear waters of Batu Ferringhi, or even in the sea around mainland

Butterworth, which is today a major industrial area.

Butterworth is renowned for (it has been alleged) illegally dumping toxic materials into the sea, including industrial waste and sewage, toxic metals and microplastics. Urbanisation has also added to the ecological disaster, land clearing and agriculture causing run offs. And this is before considering the oil in the water from the shipping industry, or spills from offshore oil and gas exploration.  

Penang is a culturally rich island, with huge historical significance, but sitting on a plane looking down, it is easy to see that the waters surrounding Penang are now diseased and polluted, having paid the ultimate price of progress.

On a micro level, Patong is a perfect example of what could happen to the rest of Phuket should the massive development currently underway go unabated. In a Phuket News article in 2018, officials were warning tourists and residents not to swim in the waters on the southern edge of Patong due to untreated waste and other contaminants entering the sea through the Pak Bang Canal.

Phytoplankton in a balanced ecosystem, provides nourishment for a wide range of aquatic organisms. But if it grows out of control, harmful algal blooms can form. These produce toxic compounds which have the opposite effect on marine life, while also being a potential health hazard for tourists swimming in the sea.

Snorkeling on the entire west coast was amazing in the year 2000; it is simply not the same today.  Long-term residents of Phuket can see quite clearly. The waters around Phuket may look beautiful today in the November to April periods, however, they are not nearly as pristine as they were even 20 years ago.

Back then, there was but a smattering of squid boats, with their lights shining at night. Today, the entire horizon is full of green lights, overfishing the waters to cater for the ever-growing population of both tourists and residents. And with 20,000 new condo and villa units becoming active, as well as 14,000 new hotel rooms over the next few years, there is no way to predict what the future holds. 

The last tiger was shot on the island in 1974, buffalo pastures are disappearing and even rubber plantations are turning into new villa or condo developments and roads. Can the price the island has to pay for such huge urbanisation projects be justified? Is it all really worth it?

If the Phuket economy is truly destined to diversify, let us hope that it is restricted to urbanisation, rather than mass industrialisation. If the next few decades move Phuket in the wrong direction, the beaches and the water may end up resembling Penang. (It may first transition to something like Langkawi, but that is another southern neighbour of Phuket’s which has lost its once crystal clear waters.)

Pollution and siltation, as well as untreated discharges into the waters of Penang, should be a lesson for us all. The notion that Phuket may one day share Penang’s fate is not unrealistic. The hillside developments over the last 25 years, once restricted and prevented, are creating problems with sedimentation and siltation which should be discussed in more depth.  Not to address this is mind-blowing ignorance.

We write this out of love for Phuket, and a strong desire to see those things preserved which drew most of us here in the first place.  Our words will resonate with people who have lived on the island for a long time, but some people have already moved to other provinces because of this. And we certainly do not want to discourage newcomers, but anyone who stays here for another 20-30 years may see a completely different island. Do they understand what to expect? 

It seems that when it comes to progress and modernisation, there is always the same question: When will enough be enough?

by Thai Residential Phuket Property Guide

This article is from the Thai Residential Phuket Property Guide. To download the 2024/2025 Guide visit ThaiResidential.com