'Time magazine has listed the world's top mega-trendy tourist destinations, and Thailand's on the list. Can you guess which place?"
Those were the words of my friend Jonathon one London morning four weeks ago. We both sat on the outside deck of his house, enjoying a breakfast of coffee and Marmite on toast and Tylenols.
Jonathon had his head in the newspaper. I had my head in my hands; never mix your drinks in a foreign country.
"Tell me," I answered.
"No, guess."
Being a guest and resisting the urge to throw a tantrum, I replied: "Krabi."
"Wrong."
"Chiang Rai."
"Wasn't it wiped out in an earthquake? Wrong."
"I give up."
"It's an island."
Now I was stumped. "Not that hideous one off Rayong everyone goes to? That's worse than Pattaya now."
Jonathon could see I was struggling. He announced: "Koh Tao!"
What a juxtaposition. What tragic irony.
I can pinpoint this conversation to about Sept 11 or 12, which means for three or four short days, the world's English media had given Thailand the best public relations news it could hope for, only to have it dashed on the morning of Sept 15 with the rape and murder of two British tourists.
I was in the UK the day the news broke, getting on a plane to fly to Istanbul. It was the main story on all the TV channels and in the myriad tabloids and broadsheets of London.
The news followed me to Turkey, with Istanbul locals asking about it upon hearing I lived in Bangkok. Military coups are bad for business, but they pale away when compared to rape and murder. Such crimes are tragic and the best one can hope is for the host country to capture the killer quickly and dole out punishment.
That hasn't happened here. Instead, Thailand is floating the idea of wristbanding our tourists.
Relax, world. Tourists will not be getting wristbands on Koh Tao anytime in the near future.
Yes, I know, the Minister of Tourism made the announcement and it sounds like it's really going to happen, but it isn't.
We may as well put up a big sign at the Koh Tao jetty, saying: WARNING. YOU ARE IN DANGER OF BEING MURDERED ON THIS ISLAND.
That is the message mass wristbands would send out. In the future when a foreign tourist is choosing between, say, Bali and Koh Tao, the latter requiring you to wear a wristband to protect you from being raped and murdered, then nobody gets a prize for guessing which place wins out.
(Nor would I like to be a fly on the wall when that farang-weary Thai hotel receptionist throws the wristbands at Western tourists at check in, saying: "You. You wear this. Now! Okay?")
So no, wristbands would help no one other than the relative with the wristband factory who gets the contract to manufacture them.
Here in Thailand we come up with all sorts of weird ideas. A year or so back we had a politician propose a mandatory health insurance charge for all tourists coming to Thailand.
What was his name again? I can't remember either. He, like his idea, was quickly shunted off into obscurity, but the news was big there for a while.
The latest is Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul's suggestion to tag Western tourists coming to Thailand, not unlike the way we tag dogs to avoid them being taken to the pound. Oh … that was my analogy, not Ms Kobkarn's. You see what I mean? The poor lady's being misquoted already!
Ms Kobkarn is not your average lean-and-hungry-looking Thai politician. She's a woman, for a start, and she's smart, with a degree in Fine Arts from Wellesley College, as well as another in architecture. Up until recently she was chairperson of Toshiba Thailand.
So what makes an intelligent woman make such a suggestion? The answer to that is — oh come on! And you've never had a dumb idea?
I would dare to guess that Ms Kobkarn, fighting hoards of reporters and desperate to find a solution to what is perhaps a solution-less problem in the wake of no suspects, came up with the wristband idea quickly.
Why not use technology to protect female tourists? How about GPS? How about … wristbands?
We need to forgive Ms Kobkarn. We all make mistakes, but we all aren't open to the scrutiny of the world media.
It was too late, however. The stable door was locked after the cow had bolted, as the Thai proverb says. The news zipped around the world and by mid-week papers such as The Guardian were giving untold inches of news space to the idea.
This week I was asked, on air, my feelings about the wristband idea. My response was uncharacteristically humanitarian, siding with Ms Kobkarn and saying while the idea may be ridiculous, the intention was good.
And yet it has received some support within the Thai community, not because the Thais want to tag us like dogs, but because of a genuine sadness that foreigners have been raped and murdered on Thai shores, and that something must be done.
It may come as a surprise to many following the story, who think Thais are trying to distance themselves from the crime and are even blaming the victims.
That is not true, although highly unsavoury comments by the prime minister about ugly girls in bikinis did absolutely nothing to help clear the air about that.
Part of the problem was the knee-jerk detainment of foreign friends close to the victims. Then, when DNA proved otherwise, we were quickly informed the culprits were "Asian". Note that it wasn't a "Thai", but Asian.
Koh Tao is a place where fishing boats dock, and again we were quick to be told those fishing boats were full of Myanmar workers, who are Asian.
Get the idea? I've been around long enough to see bucks being passed, but nothing like the frenetic pace with which they were tossed about on Koh Tao in those first few days.
Was that because Thais didn't want to be the reason for the crime? Of course it was, but not in a childish negative sense of not being capable of committing such a crime. A quick scan of page one of the Thai yellow press and you'll see such crimes are committed on fellow Thais on a daily basis here.
No, the real reason is that Thais are genuinely upset by these crimes against foreign guests. Most are aware that one of their compatriots committed it.
There is a subtle difference between that and the "we're not capable of such a crime" attitude, and while I may be accused of siding with the Thais, I believe it is the former that is prevailing. My only wish is that this case does not get botched. The only worse damage to Thailand than a double rape and murder is for the killers to get away.
Wristbands won't help, but an arrest will.
I doubt Koh Tao will ever get back onto that Time list, but tracking down the killers would certainly restore it to being a popular tourist destination again.
As I send this column off to my beloved editors at the Bangkok Post, it has just been announced the assistant police chief is now going to head the investigation. In two to three days, police chief Somyot Pumpanmuang says, we will know the killers' identities.
That was Thursday. For the first time in my life, I pray this column is out of date by the time you read it. n
