You remember the multi-lingual cartoons Oh displayed?
I've offered them to all the companies, and the Harbors department, and the TAT - for free to use in their briefings and display on the piers. It's isn't a brick wall, but the vapors of a mental vacuum that greets the idea. Nobody cares. The other companies have briefings. The only one I've heard was four lines:
"Hey Mister, you go Patong last night?"
"Did your wife enjoy the woman you take?"
"Are you sure that was a woman, and not a Katoy?"
"Don't worry; your children are too young to know the difference!"
Now you know what speedboat owners think of tourists. Can this mentality even understand quiet in the Hong, or environmental quality, or safety training?
I only founded the industry, and on my 20 year anniversary I was actually invited to be a training guide (they kidnapped 12 of my guides at once to break our quality, so I demanded to be a training guide.) I got to go on a trip to James Bond (gag me with a spoon).
There were five other training guides - one a National Geographic Scuba operator - but no kayakers. When they went to James Bond, I asked my guides if the vendors still had the baby gibbon, and if so, did the trainers complain or at least educate the participants? "There wasn't just one gibbon, there were four. Twenty other mothers and babies died before those four survived their fall, but all the trainers just walked by as if it was normal, and never said a word."
There were five other training guides - one a National Geographic Scuba operator - but no kayakers. When they went to James Bond, I asked my guides if the vendors still had the baby gibbon, and if so, did the trainers complain or at least educate the participants? "There wasn't just one gibbon, there were four. Twenty other mothers and babies died before those four survived their fall, but all the trainers just walked by as if it was normal, and never said a word."
The next day when I gave a 3-hour lecture about 200 attended and were riveted. They got the message but have no back-up from their owners. When I talked about how bad it is to feel bananas to the macaques, 50 others walked out en mass, but graduated anyway.
When I came here, I knew it would be tough. In Hawai'i, I made more in a week than I do here in a year. and Phuket's cost of living isn't cheap. I knew I would not see the fruits of my labor in my lifetime, but we have to start somewhere, and if it isn't here, now, we will lose the Planet.
Unfortunately, my 21 year experiment says we aren't going to make it. We truly are nothing but overgrown monkeys, and the speedboat operators of the World prevail because they have no ethics, but a lot of corruption.
So what keeps me going? I've always had the spirit, and the resolve, to make a difference no matter the cost. And I’ve got a friend who works for the World Bank who shares my ethic. He's Ph.D. Economics from Berkeley, I'm academic scholarship UCLA. My friend could be on Wall Street in a cushy office, but he takes on the most difficult assignments. When we met, he was a Sub-Saharan Africa specialist - the garden spots of Chad, Niger, etc. He went to Indonesia, and then managed the Amazon Rain Forest Protection Project. World Bank said five years in that hot seat was enough, so he could take any posting he wanted. He returned to Indonesia, and now he's splitting his time in Haiti.
Sure, I'm trying to change the World with "Natural History By Sea Kayaking Since 1983" but my friend, and thousands more like him, contribute far more than I.
I only wish I could get those volume controls introduced - and get the other companies to stop shouting. They treat the Hongs like they are Patong. Despite their wealth, or perhaps in pursuit of wealth, my Gift to Thailand is merely Pearls Before Swine.
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