Urgent missive from Camberley this week, enquiring whether or not we had sunk beneath the waves. Apparently this week’s New Scientist features an article claiming that the Gulf of Thailand is rising by 4mm every year; much more than the average for the area.
Camberley could impart this information because he reads the New Scientist, and I don’t mean he just looks at the pictures. He actually understands it. He certainly could, and maybe has, contributed to the journal. For all I know he may be the managing editor; he just has that sort of brain. And I am not just saying this because there is a real chance he might complete all the Trainyard levels before me.
Anyway, the rising Gulf of Doom scenario seems to have gathered pace this week with a report published by a local university claiming that Pattaya beach will disappear within 5 years. The local media, who don’t read the New Scientist but do enjoy “shock, horror, disaster” wordbites from universities were hot onto the story and it made some headlines; enough for the local politicians to wake up and pretend to care for five minutes.
So a tour of the beach was conducted and some beach vendors were instructed to move out of the way so that some areas could be fortified and trees strengthened. This won’t work, for two reasons. Firstly, beach vendors won’t leave their pitches unless driven out by teargas and small arms fire, and secondly because shoring up the area with a few sandbags or concrete ain’t going to stop nature.
So, the beach is doomed and we better be prepared. In anticipation of the event, Pattaya Days commissioned an environmental impact assessment study into an “Oh dear, Pattaya has no beach” scenario; and I am pleased to present a summary of the findings to you here:
The negative aspects of having no beach:
- There is nowhere sandy for people to sit.
The positive aspects of having no beach:
- There is nowhere sandy for people to sit. This means they will bugger off to where they came from. Nobody who lives here sits on the beach. If we wanted to spend our time surrounded by used sanitary towels and decomposing poisoned fish we’d……….. actually I suppose we would be locked away for wanting to do that.
- No beach means no beach chairs and umbrellas taking up what little space there is. No vendors hawking shitty wooden elephants and three day old squid. No Cambodians pretending to be Karen and attempting to sell those stupid wooden frogs that are meant to sound like frogs when you hit them on the back with a stick, but don’t.
- No customers for the jetskis, rented by the scum of the earth who daily scam tourists out of thousands of baht for “damage” they didn’t cause under the eyes of the police who do nothing because they get a cut.
- All the used sanitary towels, dead fish and assorted crap that comes in on the tide will now end up flowing out again; or ending up on pavements where it can disposed of (i.e. thrown back into the sea) more easily.
Report recommendation: Please god, can you make it rise 8mm a year?
Comments 🔗
2011-01-28| genuinej says“All the used sanitary towels,” I’m no expert in this area, but I thought sanitary towels were things of the past. Surely all today’s females use tampons.