Bog the Blog: 1 Park 2 Prices

The National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department has cut the entrance fees for foreigners to national parks countrywide in a bid to lure more overseas tourists, writes the Bangkok Post. (http://www.bangkokpost.com/topstories/topstories.php?id=124283) May this measure turn out successfully, so that the travelers from overseas (as distinct from travelers from adjacent and other Asian countries, mind you) can indulge themselves in the floral and faunal abundance of the Thai national parks – whilst still paying up to 10 times the fee for Thai nationals.

The main argument for this is a simple one: You rich, we poor. You pay more, we less; an explanation widely accepted within the country and often eagerly defended by middle aged gentlemen who have chosen the Kingdom as their domicile for cultural reasons and indifferent to the younger, female population. Get really, mate, or so they go, and benevolently and politically correct add:” Get over it and pay the man,” citing minimum wages of 192฿ .

A logic of its own, one might find. Whilst it is true that the per capita GDP of Thailand, $9,200, is lower than France’s ($ 31,200), it is also a fact that neighboring Singapore’s is yet higher, $ 31,400. On the other hand, Thailand beats Serbia significantly. $ 4,400 was the average share of output per person in the East European country in 2006, less than 50% of the Thai figure. Slight doubts about the lucidity of the main argument for double pricing may arise.

So should the notion of ‘overseas tourists’ and Thai citizens. Who are they, the ‘overseas tourists’? Frenchmen or Serbs? Can the income gap be bridged by such a simplification? And who are “the Thais”? Are they the deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who recently purchased Manchester City for 90 odd million Pound? Or are they the rice farmer in Isaarn who indeed may live on even less than the above mentioned minimum wage ?

The solution? Pay the man! Don’t replace the discriminatory policy of double. All is lost if a Thai family of five in a Lexus SUV doesn’t have to pay less than 50% of what the student from ‘overseas’ in the back of a travel operator’s pick up truck has. May I further suggest a transcontinental task force should be established in order to design a comprehensive study on variations of entrance fees to national parks around the world based on purchasing power parity?

From this, global standards of entrances fees can be deduced and equality will triumph at last. This way, the nation state persists in the form of a determinant of entrance fees and regional identities are protected from globalization’s ghoulish grip - as well as from the reach of reason.

Then again: double pricing could become standard for all transactions. Different prices for gas, CDs, latte macchiato, canned soup – depending on nationality. One Big Mac? That’s 3$ if your are Thai, and 17$ for the folks from Luxembourg.