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Rivals, rain and rising costs: Thailand’s tourism crown slips
As a border war with Cambodia flares and Malaysian tourism surges ahead, Thailand battles to save its holiday image
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As the windows rattled from distant explosions, British tourist Brian* sat sleepless in a dim hotel room in Thailand’s Trat province, waiting out a curfew he had not known existed.
With artillery ringing out from across the border with Cambodia, his dreams of reaching the island of Koh Kood seemed to dissolve into the darkness.
“The police said the road was closed and I’d have to find accommodation overnight,” Brian told This Week in Asia, offering only his first name. “I heard explosions all through the night, but I got out first thing in the morning.”
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By dawn, he had escaped by speedboat towards Koh Kood, one of Thailand’s easternmost islands roughly 40km (25 miles) from the Cambodian mainland – his earlier worries quickly forgotten in the postcard calm of its powdery white sand and turquoise waters.
Thai authorities have since lifted the nighttime curfew that trapped him, hoping to contain both the border skirmish and its reputational aftershocks.
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Yet the fighting with Cambodia, revived again this month at the height of tourist season after first flaring up this summer, is another bruise on the image of a country where tourism makes up almost one-eighth of the economy and sustains millions of livelihoods.
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