South Thailand / Basic Information
To the foreign and Thai visitor, southern Thailand has a lot to offer: lush tropical islands, dazzling palm-fringed beaches, coral reefs teeming with colorful marine life, picturesque fishing villages with distinctive hand-painted boats, steep but not necessarily high hills that could be defined as enormous rocks, often more than 100 meters high spread through plains of rice fields, numerous caves (many of them of religious significance), waterfalls, remote National Parks (16 all in all), scenic wildlife sanctuaries, historic cities and the juxtaposition of Buddhist temples and Islamic mosques.
By far the most famous destination is the island of Phuket, with a well developed touristic infrastructure and its own international airport. For the more hippie type of travelers, Ko Samui has long been a favorite destination. But more and more other destinations, such as Krabi Province, have been discovered in recent years by those visitors to the Kingdom who like places where tourists are not as massed as on Phuket. For visitors from Malaysia and Singapore, Hat Yai is a well established destination though traditionally not for the (non-existent) beauty of the place but rather the nightlife.
Geographically, southern Thailand extends through the Kra Isthmus from Chumphon, 460km south of Bangkok, to the Thai-Malaysian border. To the east is the Gulf of Thailand, to the west the Andaman Sea of the Indian Ocean.
Economy
The South is rich in a number of important mineral resources including tin (the most important one), monazite (a phosphate of cerium and lanthanum, the principal ore of thorium), barite, lignite (brown coal) and gypsum.
Fishing is a major occupation of the South because of the close proximity to the sea on both sides. Fish farming along the seashore, particularly shrimp farming, has grown rapidly in recent years and offers good prospects for long-term development.
The economic structure of the South is mainly based on the agricultural sector, whose production depends on fishing and a few important economic crops such as rubber, rice, coconuts, coffee, and palm oil.
As the southern region is also extremely well-endowed with beautiful natural attractions (sea above), tourism related industries are a major activity.
According to the Thai Board of Investments, existing infrastructure facilities to cater for industrial and urban development are adequate and well maintained. As far as air transport is concerned, there are two international airports at Phuket and Hat Yai and two deep sea ports at Songkhla and Phuket.
The government has launched the Southern Seaboard Development Program which will essentially involve the construction of a land bridge joining the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea between Khanom and Krabi. The land bridge south of Surat Thani that will connect the two ports will consist of a highway, a railway, and a crude oil pipeline, cutting some 800km (500mi) of the route for cargoes at present shipped through the crowded Straits of Malacca.
The plan calls for the construction of oil refineries and storage facilities at Krabi and a natural gas petrochemical complex and container repacking facilities at Khanom. Tankers from the Middle East will be able to unload crude oil at Krabi for refining, or piping overland to the Gulf of Thailand for further shipment on connecting vessels to the Far East.
Essentially, the program is an infrastructure-led development based on the provision of key facilities and the utilization of key resources such as agricultural raw materials and minerals, combined with the concurrent development of natural gas-related upstream and downstream industries.
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