Trang Sea Tours Co., Ltd.
136/2 Sathani Road
Amphur Muang
Trang, Thailand 92000
(01) 979-5194
sales@trangseatour.com
TAT License No. 42-0104
| • Cleaning up Koh Mook
THE NATION, Published on Jan 30, 2005 Visitors are only trickling in though the damage has been minimal |
| • Trang Awaits Visitor's Return
THE NATION, Published on Jan 30, 2005 The scenes of ravaged tourist areas on the west coast of the Thai South have shocked the world. But the area is recovering quickly, and many parts of the Andaman coast were hardly affected at all. |
| • Visitors Welcome Around the South
THE BANGKOK POST, Published on Jan 13, 2005 The scenes of ravaged tourist areas on the west coast of the Thai South have shocked the world. But the area is recovering quickly, and many parts of the Andaman coast were hardly affected at all. |
| • Lucky to Be Alive
THE BANGKOK POST, Published on Jan 13, 2005 When you've survived the tsunami, losing your home and computer is no big deal. |
| • Dugong Conservation
THE NATION, Published on Jun 9, 2004 The Marine and Coastal Resources Department is cooperating with a Japanese university to study how dugongs make sounds in a bid to save the endangered species. |
| • Sanctuary Set Up to Protect Dugongs
by: Pennapa Hongthong, THE NATION, Published on Mar 23, 2004 The country's first dugong sanctuary has been established in the Andaman Sea in Trang province in a bid to stem the aquatic mammal's declining numbers. |
| • For Love Of Trang
by: Vipasai Niyamabha, THE NATION, Published on Feb 8, 2003 Businessman Surin Tohtabtiang wants you to visit his beautiful province. It may only be a matter of time before tourists get tired of overdeveloped Phuket and Krabi and move southward to Trang. |
| Trang awaits visitors’ return
THE NATION Published on Jan 30, 2005 |
| There used to be masses of tourists queuing outside pristine Emerald Cave, one of Trang province’s most popular attractions. Now, it’s an abandoned beauty. |
| Although Trang was least affected among the southern provinces by the December 26 tsunami, most holidaymakers are keeping their distance. “Tourists are scared,” says Yatimaporn Winothai, office manager at World Travel Service. “They’re keeping their distance from the Andaman Sea and its attractions, including Emerald Cave.” |
| Travel agencies in Trang still offer boat tours to Emerald Cave, but there are few takers. A tour boat with just five passengers visited the 80-metre-long grotto last week. |
| “The hush is so unusual,” says Wijai Thoytong, general manager of nearby Koh Mook Charlie Beach Resort, as her guests begin their swim from the azure waters in front of the cave into its darkness. They are stunned by the shimmering water they encounter on the other side. Life jackets are a must for every visitor to the cave. The tour leader carries a torch, and having your own is a good idea, as are a pair of fins. Since light and underwater visibility is limited, there’s no need for a snorkel or mask. Following the leader, swimmers soon see the sunlight on the other side of the cave, and then a sandy beach below the hollow limestone hill. You have to believe your eyes: the once crowded beach has rediscovered solitude. It’s once again like a private stretch of sand. |
| The downside is that Emerald Cave’s popularity seems like a barometer for Trang tourism. Visitors have definitely been scared off by the disaster, which claimed two tourists’ lives at the cave; 80 others were quickly rescued. Trang’s tourist arrivals has tumbled as much as 90 per cent since the tsunami. Hotel occupancy for January on every island along the Trang coast, and on much of the mainland, has plummeted to as little as 10 per cent. |
| It’s the local people who are taking the biggest beating from the disaster’s aftershocks. They can only hope that tourism will revive soon. Most embassies have withdrawn their post-tsunami travel advisories, but tourists have yet to take heed. To lure them, beach resorts and travel agencies in Trang town are introducing attractive packages daily. |
| There are 46 scenic islands and islets to explore off the coast. They feature shallow water that’s excellent for snorkelling and, of course, they have the dramatic limestone hills. All are sitting vacant during the best season of the year. |
| Vipasai Niyamabha |
| The Nation |
| [Back to Top] |
| Cleaning up Koh Mook
THE NATION Published on Jan 30, 2005 |
| Wijai Thoytong stood beneath a tree on a pristine sandy beach on Koh Mook in Trang province. A month ago the beach was piled with garbage and driftwood left behind by the tsunami. “Many of our staff and guests even ran to the beach to see what was happening that day,” she recalls. |
| No one was killed by the tsunami on Koh Mook, but the waves hit hard on the other side of the island at Phang Ga Bay, destroying 10 stilt houses near the water. The villagers retreated to makeshift camps on higher ground. Phang Ga village now has a relief centre to support victims of the tsunami and new sites are being prepared to house to homeless fishing families. “On the following day, many guests joined our resort staff to clean up the whole beach and restore it to its original beauty,” says Wijai, the petite, tanned general manager of Koh Mook Charlie Beach Resort. She moved from Koh Phi Phi to Koh Mohk a year ago. |
| “On the day of the disaster I tried to call all my friends’ numbers on Koh Phi Phi and couldn’t contact any of them. I was in tears,” says Wijai. She lost 49 good friends on Phi Phi. At least she and everyone on Koh Mook are lucky to be alive. All 80 bungalows at her resort are in good shape. “But the next day 30 rooms emptied as guests cancelled their stay with us, and the rest gradually left the island. The same happened on all the resorts on Koh Mook.” |
| Resorts on the west coast of Koh Mook were almost miraculously untouched, even though they were directly in the path of the tsunami. Wijai believes the beach was blocked by another island just off Mook’s shore. The waves came in only a few metres high. At the resort, the smiling staff attend to the few guests left to serve. Some are building a new barbecue counter. |
| “We’ve got staff to doing different projects at the resort: repainting and renovating old bungalows, building a new fountain, fixing old equipment,” says Wiwat “Aead” Piemjitsakul, tour manager at the resort. He adds that Koh Mook resorts are commonly giving 50-per-cent discounts to attract tourists. |
| He describes Koh Mook as a lovely hideaway gem: no trendy bars, fastfood outlets or paved roads. “But this place isn’t for everyone,” he warns. “If you like great shopping and restaurants, big hotels and a crazy night life, go elsewhere. This is a place for those who willing to slow down and take advantage of the solitude.” |
| Late January is usually the peak of Mook’s annual tourist season when hundreds of tourists stroll along the beaches. |
| Ko Yao and his wife await customers at their small bar on a cliff overlooking Charlie Beach. “I’ll probably have free time to take a nap every day for the rest of the year,” Ko Yao says with a big grin. His place was formerly very popular, attracting tourists who would come to relax every evening and watch the sunset. “By 5pm, all the seats were usually occupied by foreigners coming from nearby resorts.” The best he can do now is to accept the situation and wait for customers to return. “Is it going to take as long as a year?” he wonders. |
| Vipasai Niyamabha |
| The Nation |
| Fast facts |
| Thai Airways International operates daily flights from Bangkok to Trang. Flight time is 90 minutes. Visitors can reach Trang by road from Phuket via Krabi by rental car or regular public bus. Trang is 300 kilometres from Phuket International Airport. A car journey takes four or five hours. Road connections are also good from Surat Thani, (230km) or Hat Yai (160km). For more information, log on to www.thaiairways.com. |
| Trang is 828 kilometres from Bangkok, with daily bus service from the Southern Bus Terminal. Call (02) 434 7192 or (02) 435 1200 for more details. |
| Trang is also a convenient destination by night train, leaving Bangkok daily at 5.05pm. For more details, contact (02) 223 7010 or (02) 223 7020. |
| Getting to Koh Mook is easy from Kuan Tung Ku pier in Trang’s Kantang district. |
| There are not many choices of accommodations on Koh Mook. The best is Koh Mook Charlie Beach Resort, www.kohmook.com or (075) 217 671-2. The resort, with four types of rooms, now offers a big discount, from Bt2,400 down to Bt1,200 a night for an air-conditioned room, plus breakfast. |
| Koh Mook Resort has simple huts at Bt100-300 a night. Tel: (075) 219 499 and (075) 212 613. |
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| Visitors Welcome Around the South
THE BANGKOK POST Compiled by HORIZONS STAFF Published on Jan 13, 2005 |
| The scenes of ravaged tourist areas on the west coast of the Thai South have shocked the world. But the area is recovering quickly, and many parts of the Andaman coast were hardly affected at all. If you have guts, the folks in the South would love to see you. Here is a guide with the details if where to go in the aftermath of the natural catastrophe. |
| TRANG |
| All accommodations totalling 1,125 rooms in Trang provincial town are unaffected. There are 42 rooms available on Ko Sukhon, and 105 rooms on Koh Mook. Amari Trang on Changlang Beach, part of Chao Mai National Park, is open as usual. |
| Ko Ngai: Coco Cottage, Ko Ngai, off Trang, was unaffected. |
| KRABI |
| Ko Lanta: Pimalai Resort, Ko Lanta, Krabi, is in a very good shape. Like most businesses on the island and on Krabi mainland, the resort was lucky and damage was minimal. The slight damage has no affect on operations. |
| Ao Nang has recovered very quickly. Coming back are Ko Lanta Yai, Ko Rok, Ao Nam Mao, Ko Yoong, Ko Phai, Ha islets, Nopparat Thara Beach and Ko Poda. |
| Some bungalows at Lo Ba Kao Bay can accommodate visitors. At the moment, more than 170 resorts with 5,800 rooms are operating. Many resorts on the hill at Ao Nang and in the area of Nopporat Thara were not affected. |
| Sheraton Krabi is open as normal; so are its other properties _ Sheraton Grande Laguna and Sheraton Langkawi Beach Resort, Malaysia. At the Phuket Sheraton property, one of eight restaurants is closed. At Langkawi, the beach has been cleaned up and back to normal. One of six restaurants is closed for renovation. The Sheraton Perdana Resort in Langkawi is also in operation. |
| The Tubkaak, Thabkhaek Beach of Krabi is fine. Thanks to its remote location behind the cave, the waves just flooded the grass lawn briefly. Guests can enjoy excursions to Ko Hong nearby, as before. |
| The Cliff, Ao Nang, Krabi, like most resorts in the area, is high on the hill, and safe and sound. Some resorts at the seaside were inundated. |
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| Lucky to Be Alive
THE BANGKOK POST - CRAIG WINNEKER, This article is from Techcentralstation.com, an Internet weblog. Published on Jan 13, 2005 |
| Trang - Bang lives in a tiny fishing hamlet on the leeward side of this small island, a few kilometers off thecoast of southern Thailand on the Andaman Sea. He works on the other side of the island, at the Charlie Beach Resort, where my wife and I are spending our holiday. |
| "Whasssuuuup!" he says, with a typically Thai grin, when I meet him at the edge of his village and introduce myself as an American. "Whassup!" I reply politely, throwing in a Thai greeting perfected after a week in the country. |
| What is up is that Bang's little village and most of his earthly possessions have been completely washed away by the recent tsunami. Little is left of his house but some sticks, a floor covered in mud, some torn clothes strewn about. Bang's troubles are only a minuscule part of the very big disaster that has caused death and destruction all around south Asia, from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka on the other side of the Indian Ocean, to Malaysia and Indonesia, just south of here. |
| Bang is lucky. He is alive, and so are his wife and children. In fact, except for four people everyone on this island is safe and the damage to property is minimal; aside from the one small village most of the buildings are intact. The Charlie Beach Resort, where I'd pre-booked my stay weeks ago (we were up north, away from the coast, when the wave hit), is almost miraculously untouched _ even though it sits on the western side of the island, perched on a pristine cove, directly in the path of the tsunami. |
| The same enormous wave that consumed resorts directly to the north of here in Phuket and Krabi, killing hundreds of western tourists and reducing luxury hotels to rubble, was blocked by another island just off of Koh Mook's coast. When it got to Charlie's beach, guests here say, it was only a few metres high _ scary enough but not catastrophic. Its main force, however, was deflected by the other island and swept around to the mainland-facing side of Koh Mook. It turned Bang's bamboo and wood house, and a dozen others around it, into piles of garbage and driftwood sinking into a low-tide mud flat. The villagers had now retreated to makeshift camps on higher ground. |
| So even though life is pretty much back to its idyllic normal state here on Koh Mook and at the Charlie Beach Resort, my wife and I decided to try to help the island's residents to recover. We hiked through rubber tree plantations to the other side of the island, where we found Bang standing in front of what remained of his house, chatting happily on his mobile phone. |
| When he finally hung up, we asked what we could do to help. Nothing, he replied. Instead, he asked us to sit down for a cup of cold, sugary coffee, and along with a few of his friends we talked for a while and minded the chickens and goats in the muggy morning heat. But he would not start cleanup work on his house, he said. |
| Not yet. |
| "Government is coming to take pictures," Bang told us. |
| He wanted relief officials to see the full extent of his losses. Of course, he'd lost everything, including a new computer for which he'd spent his life savings, about 40,000 baht, the equivalent of $1,000, only a few months ago. "We have to pray to God," he said. "Pray for a wonderful life." And, of course, wait for the government. We told him we'd come back the next day to see if he needed help then. He was still grinning when I saw him later that day, and he'd even prepared a little joke: |
| "Life is like the ocean," he said. "It has its ups and downs." |
| The government, I expect, is going to take a while to get to Koh Mook, and Bang is going to have to wait several days in his tent up on the mountain. There is plenty of food, shelter and water here. The devastation is far worse elsewhere in Thailand. But officials will eventually get here, for at least this country seems to have an efficient infrastructure and disaster relief system. |
| (That evidently is not the case in other Asian nations hit by the tsunami. The pictures from India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, which we are watching on CNN, via Charlie's satellite TV, tell what must be only part of the horrific story. Tens of thousands are dead in Indonesia's Aceh province, and even days after the tsunami CNN was reporting that relief efforts were minimal to non-existent. Many more deaths will come from disease. A government spokesman denied that Jakarta was taking its time helping out because Aceh is fighting for its independence from the country.) |
| I suspect Bang will have to start rebuilding his house before the government cameras arrive. I'd like to think we could give him a hand _ so far my personal relief effort was to help some fishermen get their longtail boat back across the beach and into the water _ but most likely we'll be long gone by then, lucky to have not had our vacation disrupted in any major way. The tourist ferries are already landing on Charlie's beach several times a day, full of slightly wary vacationers. I hope it won't take Bang too long to save up for another computer. |
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| Dugong Conservation
THE NATION Published on June 9, 2004 |
| Trang - The Marine and Coastal Resources Department is cooperating with a Japanese university to study how dugongs make sounds in a bid to save the endangered species. |
| Udom Patiyasewi said the study in cooperation with Tokyo University was being carried out offshore of Talibong Island in Trang’s Kantang district and offshore of Rayong’s Klaeng district. Ten hydro-phones linked to a data-logger device were used to record sounds under the sea in late February for 10 days off Talibong district. The data is now being analyzed at Tokyo University and results are expected within eight months, he said. |
| Udom said researchers were also recording sounds by lowering a hydro phone from a research boat in areas about two to five kilometers away from the coast. He said the study was aimed at finding out how dugongs communicate with sounds and how to distinguish the mammals in sex and age using their sounds. |
| He said the study might help lower the death rate of dugongs from fishing boats. The boats might one day be equipped with sound monitoring devices so they would know when dugongs were in their area and they could then take precautions not to catch and kill the mammals with their nets. |
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| Sanctuary Set Up to Protect Dugongs
By: Pennapa Hongthong THE NATION Published on Mar 23, 2004 |
| The country's first dugong sanctuary has been established in the Andaman Sea in Trang province in a bid to stem the aquatic mammal's declining numbers. The sanctuary covers about 50 square kilometres of ocean surrounding Jao Mai National Park, non-hunting areas around Libong Island, and Petra National Park. |
| Conservation officials hope the protected waters will keep human activities from disturbing the mammal. Suwan Pitaksinchai, of the National Park, Wildlife and Plant Variety Conservation Department, said it was the first time the country had established a marine-life sanctuary. He said states agencies and non-governmental organisations that conduct dugong conservation work would use their own tools to work together and protect the mammal and its habitat. For example, he said the Department of Fishery would ban all devastating fishing methods in the area, while the National Park Department would protect sea grasses. |
| Suwan said his department had recently allocated Bt700,000 to manage the sanctuary. "It is not a big sum of money. But it's fine for the first step of the project," he said, adding that if the project is successful, it might be expanded to other areas. |
| The sea around Trang is the country's most significant dugong habitat. The latest population survey by the Marine and Coastal Resources Department, conducted in 2001, found about 123 dugongs in Trang's waters. The total dugong population in the Andaman Sea was not more than 200, while less than about 100 dugong were found in the Gulf of Thailand. |
| Kanchana Adulyanukosol, marine biologist from the Institute Marine and Coastal Resources Research and Development, said the dugong's population seemed to be decreasing as nets continue ensnaring them. Earlier this month, a three-month old dugong, trapped in a fishing net, was found on the beach in Phuket province. The institute is caring for the animal. But Kanchana said the situation had improved, pointing out that at least dugongs are no longer hunted for their bones and teeth. |
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|
For Love Of Trang
By: Vipasai Niyamabha THE NATION Published on Feb 8, 2003 |
| Businessman Surin Tohtabtiang wants you to visit his beautiful province. It may only be a matter of time before tourists get tired of overdeveloped Phuket and Krabi and move southward to Trang. But Surin Tohtabtiang, president of the Trang Chamber of Commerce and owner of the Thamrin Hotel Group, knows the fate of tourist destinations varies widely, depending on whether their residents have prepared carefully to handle the incoming hordes. |
| Surin, a wealthy businessman in the province, has fostered various tourism festivals there, including the Underwater Wedding Festival to be held next Friday. The Cake Festival, the Grilled Pork Festival and other local-produce events are held annually. “These events are designed to educate tourists about Trang’s products. The benefits will stay with Trang’s people for a long time,” says Surin. |
| “Events like the underwater weddings take seven years to gain worldwide recognition. Apart from outside support, the unity of local agencies and the public, and efforts to maintain conservation of the environment and a trouble-free atmosphere are all devoted to the Trang festivals.” |
| The province already occupies a solid place on Thailand’s tourism map, with the flow of foreign and domestic tourists increasing furiously. “Seven years ago, Trang had only 50,000 visitors a year,” Surin says. “You may be surprised to know that we now enjoy 450,000 tourists a year!” |
| He notes that there are 3,000 hotel rooms in Trang town itself, and another 1,000 scattered along the shore and on the many islands nearby. It’s a considerably different situation from neighbouring provinces, where resorts are jammed together along a single shorefront. |
| “It’s better this way for tourists to make a day-trip to Trang’s islands. We think it also causes less negative impact on our destinations. “We’re lucky to have one of the most beautiful parts of Thailand. We have the Emerald Cave, the world’s most stunning cave, which is a delight for tourists. Add to this the beautiful mountains, waterfalls, wildlife, all of which are a source of attraction.” |
| Surin says the way of life of Trang people can also be a magnet for tourists, ranging from the province’s unique grilled-pork breakfast and bittersweet coffee to its rubber-tree farming and more. His vision for Trang includes the creation of a theme park to display Trang’s ways to outsiders. The park will be set on 100-rai in Trang town, with construction to begin next year. But he believes Trang will remain relatively unchanged, even amid such tremendous achievements, which are aimed primarily at ensuring a high quality of life for its people. |
| “I always work to ensure that Trang remains a peaceful province. My stress is on conserving the serene atmosphere of the province, as I want to make Trang the best-kept destination in Southern Thailand.” |
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• 136/2 Sathani Road, Talad Klang, Amphur Muang, Trang, Thailand 92000 • (01) 979-5194 •
•sales@trangseatour.com •