And another incident on Qatar flight Doha to Dublin over Turkey. 12 hurt 6 crew and 6 passengers. By coincidence it was at meal service too.

I can't recall where I read it, but I was reading an article on the Baht and how low confidence is and how poor the outlook is, I was actually quite surprised at the strength of the views expressed. Low productivity was a major negative, but we already know that, lack of a cohesive government and their understanding of economics, and their public fights with BOT was another. If you put all those things together, it's not a picture that can be easily reversed and a new government that is popular with the people, and has economic sense can be installed over night. Facts are the current government, or some derivative thereof, are in it for the long haul.

A second report talked about how Thailand's tourism industry had nosedived in the global rankings since covid. The country has not made any new investment in tourism infrastructure, all it has done is to recycle the same old products but made it easier to obtain visa's to get here. Instead of getting the better class of tourist they so desperately want, the outcome will be a an increase in mass market tourism where the spend per capita is lower than before.

Debt was another headline topic, both private and government. It was said that the government is using consumer consumption to support a flagging economy, all this does is to increase the debt load on the poor. The one things that made Thailand attractive to investors was the low government debt levels which the current PM now wants to destroy with this stupid wallet scheme.  

All in all, not a good picture but it did that the som tam and chicken rice can be nice.

Thailand falls by more than 10 places in tourism ranking

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We found a khao Soi restaurant here that is out of this world, owned and operated by a Japanese/Thai couple who worked as chef's in the US for many years, a real wow of a place.

Economy in need of revival
While the overall economy remains lacklustre, the private sector is not entirely bleak about Thailand's growth prospects

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A very good article. I especially liked this:

"One palpable weakness of the private sector is that though the number of small and medium-sized enterprises are 97 per cent, their combined revenue represents just a little over 10 per cent and their revenue is on a declining trend, said Somprawin Manprasert, chief economist at the SCB Economic Intelligence Center".

SME's are the vast majority of businesses' (97%) but their combined revenue totals only 10% of the total, AND revenue is declining. SME's have become the defacto alternative for consumer spending/consumption. So this is where tourism fills the void. Meanwhile, the real economy is operating based solely on the 3 per cent of large firms that have a combined revenue of over 80 per cent. Remove those 3%, the big businesses, and there's nothing left except a black hole full of poor people, which is why the elite is so powerful.

Thailand and Japan are main target destinations for the Chinese who are starting to travel once again.

Oh good!

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-21/japan-thailand-are-most-popular-summer-destination-for-china-tourists?srnd=homepage-asia