Festive hangover
Re: "Tourists head to eastern provinces despite conflict", (Business, Jan 10). Rayong should be in the Guinness Book of Records for holding the world's longest Christmas-New Year celebrations. Christmas decorations were put up, and Christmas carols started playing in supermarkets in early November. A 5km stretch of colourful lights and New Year signs is still on Sukhumvit Road, more than a month after 2026 rolled in.
Perhaps local authorities are leaving the lights up to welcome Songkran, the Thai lunar new year, saving labour costs by not taking them down and putting them up again. Pity about the power costs though!
David Brown
Markets untaught
Re: "Invest, don't trade", (PostBag, Jan 24).
I quite enjoyed Paul Renaud's excellent letter concerning "investment" and "speculation" not being the same thing, but often mistakenly thought of as the same by today's stock market-obsessed general public. (Bad idea; remember numerous crashes?)
It's actually quite surprising that speculation is still doing so well, given the situation in Ukraine and significant over-leveraging in some markets.
Be that as it may, I would add to Mr Renaud's comments that financial literacy is not well-taught in many school systems (I suspect) because the elites don't want the public to be financially literate; ergo, having more of the market and investments for themselves.
There are, indeed, many investments that are relatively safe, personally rewarding, and profitable, and more of the public should know about them.
Of course, there are some religious people (including some Buddhists like me) who view charging interest-at-profit as immoral and will not do that, and there are some people with irregular incomes or unusual occupations who might find other, more unorthodox investments, and 'investment' for some people like me might well mean as investing in another human being called 'friend.'
My list is but a few, yet I encourage young people to use the internet and look into responsible "investments", rather than risk it all on speculation, which has always been crash-prone.
Jason A Jellison
Policy backfires
Re: "Phuket property still hot", (Business, Jan 14) & "Nominee group nabbed", (Business, May 2, 2025).
The recent clampdown on foreign ownership of property, whereby foreigners buy property via companies and nominees, has caused the property sales in places like Koh Samui and Phuket to almost stop. The authorities are enforcing the law, but the law is acting to the detriment of the country.
A 30-year lease is just too short for most people to invest in what would be a diminishing asset.
What is often not realised is that these properties are either occupied by wealthy foreigners who bring large sums of foreign currency into Thailand or are rented to short and long-term tourists.
The tourism industry in the islands is adversely affected as they rely heavily on these rental properties being available. Hotels are not the preferred option, particularly for families with children.
A 90-year lease would solve the problem. It is difficult to understand why a 30-year lease is acceptable, but a 90-year lease is not.
Phil Cox
