Well, At Least That's Clear: Phuket Governor Bans Beach Chairs, Restricts BYO Umbrellas


PHUKET: Piling confusion onto chaos, Phuket Governor Nisit Jansomwong told the holiday island's media this afternoon that all beach chairs remain banned at all Phuket beaches.

Tourists are not free to bring their own beach chairs. All chairs are banned at Phuket's beaches.
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However, tourists are free to bring their own beach umbrellas. They may keep their umbrellas furled anywhere on any Phuket beach, if they wish to lie on a mat in the sunshine.

But if the tourist wishes to unfurl his or her umbrella, then it must only be done in the 10 percent of the particular Phuket beach set aside for umbrellas to be unfurled.

So now, all is plain.

Tourists may not bring chairs of any kind to any Phuket beach. But they may bring their own umbrellas, although these may only be unfurled in the 10 percent of the beaches allocated for unfurled umbrellas.

This area, incidentally, is where the BYO umbrella tourists are most likely to face the nasty looks of Phuket's newly-approved umbrella beach hirers.

The crackdown on beach chairs on all Phuket beaches will come soon, the governor intimated. But first, a public relations campaign is to be commenced to give Phuket's resorts the responsibility of explaining the ban on beach chairs to all tourists.

So it is the resort managers who will have to tell the tourists that they may not bring chairs to Phuket beaches, and that if they wish to bring umbrellas, they may only be unfurled in the 10 percent allocated for beach umbrellas.

Governor Nisit made his announcement at a Phuket City resort this afternoon with Phuket's police commander on one side and a senior Royal Thai Navy officer on the other side.

Just who will enforce the new Phuket beach edicts remains to be seen.

It was the governor's idea to compromise with the military's complete clearance of commercialism at all Phuket beaches by setting up 10 percent of space at each of Phuket's beaches where tourists can hire umbrellas and mats, as they once could across all of Phuket's beaches.

Sunbeds remain banned, but with the price of hiring a mat and an umbrella at Patong in the 10 percent zone similar to what it was to hire a sunbed and an umbrella, it may only be a matter of time before someone suggests: ''Hey, let's bring back the sunbeds.''

The whole idea about the military clearing the beaches of Phuket last year appeared to be about getting rid of the commercialism and keeping the tourists.

The latest strategy appears to be about getting rid of the tourists and keeping the commercialism.

It's plain that the police do not want to be the ones who are forced to order tourists not to use the beach chairs they have brought to the beach.

There is still no clarity on whether the beach chairs that the jet-ski operators sit on and the massage nail applicators sit on are also banned.

The police have told the governor that all chairs must be banned because it's not possible for them to tell whether a beach chair has been illegally hired or whether the tourist has brought their own chair.

The likely outcome of the governor's policy of banning all beach chairs and only allowing BYO umbrellas to be unfurled in the 10 percent zone is that fewer tourists from Europe and Australia will return to Phuket from now on.

Governor Nisit has said that this is just an experiment to see what works and it could quickly be replaced by another experiment. But most tourists do not come to Phuket to be part of experiments.

They come to Phuket to relax at the beaches, free from hassles.

They are not keen to be told where they can furl their umbrellas and where they can unfurl their umbrellas, or to not be able to bring a beach chair if they wish to bring a beach chair.

Just how long it will take the authorities to see Phuket's beaches from the perspective of the tourists, not from the perspective of the umbrella and mat hirers, remains to be seen.