Casinos In Thailand

[penzman]

I was thinking this morning that we haven't heard any talk for a while about casinos opening in Thailand. Will the subject ever come up again with Thaksin talking about eradicating poverty in Thailand these days?

I give it about 5 months, let's say begining of July, after the Suwanaphum airport has opened...

I am AGAINST the idea by the way.

My prediction: We'll see the first new headline on July 4th.

[nokia]

A good guess. If the US$2 billion Thaksin deal goes through after the security concerns of AIS are sorted out, he would have cemented his status as LOS's richest man, having converted his paper assets into cold hard cash. As a PM, he would have to deal with religious concerns about the evils of a casino in LOS. If he reverts back to his role as LOS's richest businessman, there will be less opposition to the casino idea. While he is likely to serve his 3rd term as PM, with popular mandate, there is likelyhood that his US$2 billion may support his pet projects up north in his hometown,cable car after night safari? Or a casino in future? And some may be funneled to a swiss bank account. Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine.

Edited January 27, 2006 by nokia

[Oishi]

I was thinking this morning that we haven't heard any talk for a while about casinos opening in Thailand. Will the subject ever come up again with Thaksin talking about eradicating poverty in Thailand these days?

I give it about 5 months, let's say begining of July, after the Suwanaphum airport has opened...

I am AGAINST the idea by the way.

My prediction: We'll see the first new headline on July 4th.

I agree!

Reason is that Suwanaphum is an airport and thereby international, once beyond the customs you are in another area of Thailand.

And so much talk about turning the whole area in to a amphor sounds like Las Vegas to me already.

With the upcoming competition from Singapore it is a smart move to build a casino in or at the airport so they won’t loose any tourist to Singapore.

Then after a debate in the senate…for 15 minutes...and some lunch.

They will open one in Phuket because of the lack of revenue on tourism.

Pattaya will be third, because they already have so many “activities”.

Maybe they should also open one in Aranyaprathet since they will loose a lot of traffic.

When they open the casinos I do hope that they will outsource they whole thing because responsible gambling just aren’t words in the Thai dictionary.

And just think about corruption if locals where to run the casinos.

[penzman]

...and the loan sharks.

I just know the idea will pop up again but it will be fun to hear how he intends to fight poverty and introduce casinos at the same time.