Agreed. I was first in Phuket in 1976. Few resorts. A few bungalows on the beaches. Beachfront land was 2,000 baht a rai. They could not give it away. Went back in 1986. Had developed alot. Still very nice. Same applied to Samui. Again in 1993. Far more development. Still amazing. Azure seas. Spectacular women everywhere. Great food. Did not return until around 2008. It was degraded, for the most part. But, still decent. Good nightlife. Again around 2014. Nowhere near the place it used to be, with a diminished nightlife, but not awful. Back again in 2023 and there was absolutely no charm left, very few attractive gals and Bangla Road was absolutely horrific, with barely a good looking girl to be found with the exception of just a couple of Go-Go's charging truly stupid money. The primary population of tourists were Arabs, Malaysians, Indians and Russians and most of them felt like low end tourists and expats. The proliferation of Russians was too much to bear. They are SO obnoxious. No need to ever return. The charm is lost. The over development is stunning. The prices were crazy. Yikes. There were countless issues, long before Covid, and NONE of them were being addressed. One administration after another here are regressive, and reactionary, and not the visionary and progressive leadership Thailand desperately needs now. In terms of the vampiric management of tourists, one of the reasons I left Samui, was the attitude of alot of the locals. Back before the Apocalypse many of them were very jaded, and they seemed to be indifferent, and service suffered as a result of that. Less so with the Burmese workers, as they tend to be quite kind and helpful. Also, there is little to no local pride, as most who are from Samui and Phuket left long ago, after selling their land. That hurts. It was hard living in a place where most of the locals just did not seem to care about the island. Sometimes, the place felt like a 2 year old dishrag in a diner kitchen. Most of the people there for the past 20 years are transplants, who do not care about keeping up the island. The ex-pats always seemed more concerned about maintaining the cleanliness, than the locals. Phuket and Samui are finished for those of us who have seen them back in their glory days.
