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Is all of Thailand polluted now?


Dolphin99

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I see increasing reports of chemical runoff in small cities, cancer rates exploding, and hear that nearly all beaches have regular waves of debris that blanket the beach in rubbish due to the size of the garbage masses in the ocean.

 

Even in tiny islands in less developed areas of asia, I see people complaining about masses of garbage washing ashore and dying coral.

 

Is it becoming so bad that quickly?  My last time in the area was only a couple years ago, but I saw nearly no garbage (but it might have been cleaned) and the coral was only dead in populated areas.

 

My last visit to the Phils, remote areas were completely pristine.  That said, Thailand is much more developed than the Phils.

 

I have been working in China and the pollution is better hidden outside of Beijing than you might think given the coverage it gets.  I hope Thailand isn't turning into China...  I guess we can always flee to Indonesia or the Philippines... but in most other regards Thailand is much more pleasant.  I was planning on settling in Thailand, but the thought of all this getting worse bothers me.  Thoughts?

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Its worse than  you can imagine.  A horror movie.  Garbage on all the beaches and around the resort areas, toxic food in the supermarkets.  Im dreading November to February again, the whole of Asia gets blanketed in a thick smog owing to open burning of agricultural fields.  The education level is terrible.  On the one day a month they have no plastic bags in supermarkets I hear people in lines complain, even though everything else is layered in 3 layers of thick plastic.  Paradise lost.  We holiday in places like Australia now.  Its a shock how clean our own countries are by comparison.

 

https://www.thailand-business-news.com/environment/71453-thailand-ranked-23rd-most-polluted-country.html

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3 minutes ago, Jimbo2014 said:

Im dreading November to February again, the whole of Asia gets blanketed in a thick smog owing to open burning of agricultural fields.

Not the whole of Asia, just Thailand.

I took a trip to Saigon, then Phnom Penh to escape it and they were totally clear.

Flying back into Bangkok, it was as if there was a yellow blanket across the country from BKK to CNX.

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So you believe those countries have no pesticide and herbicide problems? Or farm run off or factory run off?

 

The American president is good at reversing what Reagen did. Wasn't he the one who created the EPA? Anything that's good for business is good for the U.S. Huh?

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1 hour ago, BritManToo said:
1 hour ago, Jimbo2014 said:

Im dreading November to February again, the whole of Asia gets blanketed in a thick smog owing to open burning of agricultural fields.

Not the whole of Asia, just Thailand.

I took a trip to Saigon, then Phnom Penh to escape it and they were totally clear.

Flying back into Bangkok, it was as if there was a yellow blanket across the country from BKK to CNX.

A) Its the hot season for mainland SEA, north of the Thai/Malay/Singapore peninsula. And its February to May, FYI. :thumbsup:

 

You caught a lucky break BM2 as I have seen Haze/Smoke in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. You can make the argument it is worse in Thailand, but it's just an argument.

BTW you can pull up old photos of the French & US troops in Vietnam wars I and II and during inland dry season operations, yep there is the smoke/smog. Lots of people likely think it is bombing, or burning from war, and in some pictures it is, but in many others, nothing but hot season haze/smoke. No mistaking it. And accounts of both wars mention this weather phenomenon.

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Nan (where I live), Phayao and Phrae provinces seem far less polluted than elsewhere in Thailand. Nan in particular is tidy and there is much much less rubbish lying about the place and discarded by the roadside. I noticed this almost immediately on entering the province and Nan city the first time several years ago. However, I would still be concerned with agriculture chemical run-off.

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Virtually all of Thailand's issues can be laid at the door of a very poor education system, right from the early years education, or lack of it, to the abysmal University and post graduate system.  Education  is the key to the development of a modern society and this society is broken, maybe terminally so.  What is not helping is employing many third rate western English teachers, many of them not native English speakers, who seem to be here for an easy life, rather than a love of, or expertise in teaching. Such people compound an already poor level of education. 

Sounds like America


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All Asian countries are not equally polluted. Go to Otres Beach in Cambodia to see paradise turned into a cesspool. Thailand, in my view, is the cleanest country in Southeast Asia. I rarely see people littering and the streets are swept clean every morning. I mean they even have shoes  to put in when you enter the bathroom so you don’t use your street shoes to get the bathroom floors dirty. The rivers are muddy but how they compare to any other agricultural country with pesticide and herbicide run off is anyone’s guess. Where agriculture is done on an industrial scale, like the USA, there is definitely more soil pollution. The most pristine beach I have ever seen is in Thailand. It is getting polluted, as is every country that uses plastic bottles and chemical herbicides and pesticides. Go to India if you want to experience filth. Cow excrement with trash fill every street. Or go to San Francisco Ca and see the filth left by the huge homeless population and the graffiti marring the buildings, the buses, the subways. Or go to Tibet and see the mountains if rubbish Chinese tourists throw from their buses on the way to Mt Everest. 

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7 hours ago, ChipButty said:

Stop complaining go and take a look at Mumbai

I see, Sally's husband only beats her a bit, so she has only one black eye, but Betty's husband (Mumbai) is a real horror, he likes to blacken both her eyes.  Great logic.

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