Paradise regained

Horizons News - Thursday December 20, 2007

Paradise regained

Seventeen years ago a modest boat operator sparked an environmental revolution that has grown in size and bearing fruit today

THANIN WEERADET

Humble and down-to-earth Ampean Theanthin looks like any other southerner.

A boat operator in his younger days when Phuket was less commercialised and less crowded, his job was to ferry tourists who came snorkelling.

But 17 years ago he set in motion something that has caught on the mood only recently and presented this island paradise with a modicum of respite from the ravages of tourism.

Phuket even then was famous for its underwater beauty boasting several pristine snorkelling spots. But rising tourist numbers also meant more garbage and waste that in time found their way to the bottom of the sea. It wasn't just beer cans and plastic bottles but also damaged fishing nets that trawlers dumped on coral reef as they scoured the seabed for fish and other marine life forms.

"It's a shame leading tourists and finding that the world down there was littered with waste," he lamented. "I felt really bad."

Back then Ampean, now 61, didn't know what to do. The scale of the problem was too much for a single man to handle. That was 17 years ago. That is when he met a friend, an officer in employment of the Patong municipality or sukhaphiban who was in charge of organising a festival to mark the start of the annual tourist season in Phuket. He asked Ampean to come up with a gimmick or activity to entertain visitors.

Diving was a good option but it still didn't seem challenging enough. That is when the idea of diving to collect garbage hit him and better still if it could be turned into a competition of sorts to add some fun to the proceedings.

The idea, as things have tuned out, was a smashing success. It's been held every year since. In the first year divers collected three tonnes of garbage. These days it has become a bigger event with Patong municipality, Patong Long Tail Boat Club and Marine & Coastal Resource Conservation Volunteers, Sea and Coastal Resource Conservation Centre, volunteers, police, Phuket Vachira Hospital and others joining in the fun.

Every November the beach on Patong and its surroundings covering an area of two square kilometres kilometres get cleaned up. This year 76 dive volunteers representing 19 teams retrieved over a tonne of garbage from the seabed. Most of the trash was left by trawlers, but tourist boats and residential properties along the coast also had their fair share. Most of the trash comprised beer cans, soda and soft drink bottles. The clean-up was followed by release of sea turtles that were picked up sick, nursed back to health and returned to the sea.

Ampean wants the clean-up expanded to other beaches for which cooperation and participation from more tourism businesses is required. "I feel great that these days people have more awareness about environmental protection. You can see it from a large number of volunteers joining the clean-ups.

Next year the event will take place on December 5 and he wishes to turn it into an annual feature of Phuket's tourism. It is a showcase of how Phuket people can unite to protect its environment.

Ampean is a native of Patong. He runs a restaurant on a plot he owns on Paradise Beach that attracts mostly European travellers who enjoy sunbathing and relaxing under the shade of coconut trees dotting the shoreline.

"We're a big community. There are so many hotels, resorts and tourism service operators in Phuket. If each of us just help in taking care of the environment, Phuket can be Thailand's everlasting jewel," he noted.

He has three sons. "My home is here. I cannot move. When our home is here, it's like a pier. Therefore, we need to protect our environment. Visitors are like boats that come and go," he said.

He pleaded with visitors to help keep Phuket clean. After all, its people will be relying on tourism for years to come.

He has owned the land on which his restaurant sits for 27 years now. Visitors from crowded Patong are surprised when they visit Paradise Beach, although it is just a 15-minute drive on a road that rolls up past a lush strip of banana, durian and other orchards before descending to the private and peaceful beach.

This is an oasis free of tourism development. The only structures in sight are the restaurant and his home. The rest is a 100-metre strip of sandy beach, sundecks, playground and coconut trees. It is hard to imagine that Patong Beach is just on the other side of the hill. It is no surprise that Ampean is frequently approached by hotel investors to sell his property.

But he is neither greedy nor overly ambitious. Those who have been to Paradise Beach and met him never fail to ask why he didn't invest in a big resort.

"If I had been ambitious, I would have had a resort long time ago. I would now have headaches finding tourists to come to my resort," he related. "If this land was developed and turned into a tourist resort, it'd be no different from elsewhere. Why do tourists have to come here? Phuket has so many quality resorts already," he said.

And he pledged that his sons will continue to toe his line.

Bangkok Post