Sea Gypsies Halt Rawai Road-widening Project

[george]

Sea gypsies halt Rawai road-widening project

RAWAI: A protest by a group of Sea Gypsies has led to the Rawai road-widening project being halted. The group from Village 2, Rawai, complained about the proposed destruction of four houses to make wa... Read more...

[madmitch]

The article finishes with the amazing comment "In the end we may even have to decrease the road width around the four houses.”

So they spend millions on wideneing the road only to have a bottleneck making the whole project a waste of time and money, not to mention the environmental damage.

Still, this is Thailand and it's probably more likely that either a lot of money will change hands or maybe the houses will mysteriously suffer some accidental structural damage one quiet night.

[slackula]

Still, this is Thailand and it's probably more likely that either a lot of money will change hands or maybe the houses will mysteriously suffer some accidental structural damage one quiet night.

I am guessing fire.

[Sir Burr]

So they spend millions on wideneing the road only to have a bottleneck making the whole project a waste of time and money, not to mention the environmental damage.

You can see examples of this in many places all over Phuket. As Tom Jones says "It's not unusual....".

[khall64au]

Too bad the Rawai locals didn't protest while the road crews cut down all (bar one) of the lovely 100-yr old bohdi trees to make way for the free-way to nowhere. The place now resembles a dusty wild-west town - all that's missing is the tumbleweed.

Most of these trees were marked with large red spray-painted crosses announcing their imminent demise - despite the fact they wore the coloured bands which, I wrongly assumed, meant they were "sacred" trees.