PHUKET: It should come as no surprise to anyone that police in Thailand do not have the same high technology available to them as Britain's Scotland Yard or the FBI in America.

Thailand remains a developing country with standards that need to improve further and it will be some time before a comparison can fairly be struck with developed countries.

Because Thailand is less developed and because society's rules are less clear cut is precisely the reason why many young people come to Thailand.

For the moment, the deaths of Hannah Witheridge and David Miller on Koh Tao this week can be filed with the deaths of four young women on Phi Phi since 2009 under ''Unresolved Mysteries.''

The one point that should be made is that rules and regulations and the law sit uneasily on rites-of-passage islands such as Phi Phi, Phangan and Tao, where the 20-somethings of the world come to party.

Back in 2009, American Jill St Onge and Norwegian Julie Bergheim died convulsing on Phi Phi and there was still no clue to what killed them when Canadians Audrey Belanger, 20, and her sister Noemi, 26, died in similar fashion in 2012.

Thailand's police did not have the forensic capacity to come close to determining a cause and it was left to a team of investigative journalists from Canada to conclude that the women probably were killed by the inappropriate use of industrial strength pesticides.

The deaths of the women were shocking but only now, with the hunt on for a killer or killers on two legs, does the question of lack of sophisticated methodology and equipment among police in Thailand's south become relevant again.

Region 8 commander Major General Panya Mamen, who oversees Phuket, Phi Phi, Koh Tao, Samui, Phang Nga and the southern mainland, is an astute officer who has given his backing to better standards of policing in his jurisdiction.

Without the forthright approach of Major General Panya and his quest to help Phuket meet international standards, it's doubtful if the transformation now taking place in the holiday island's taxi industry would have been started.

He gave his unqualified backing to Major General Paween Pongsirin, who conducted an undercover operation for months that led to the arrests of almost 200 drivers and the busting open of nests of thugs for whom threats and intimidation had become standard business practice.

Major General Panya has said that the international-standard gathering of evidence before charges are laid is a technique, pioneered by Major General Paween, that he would like to see more widely used in Thailand.

Out on smaller rites-of-passage islands that are further from mainland thinking than Phuket, the local businesses usually manage to persuade neighborhood police to turn a blind eye to many of the problems that come with rites-of-passage tourism.

Binge drinking and drug-taking are just the start. If the aim is to make tourists safe in Thailand, some of the tourists who take delight in being unsafe will be heading elsewhere.

As for Mr Miller and Ms Witheridge, their savage murders are unlikely to be forgotten.

One of the big differences between developing and developed countries is that many developed countries - Britain included - hold inquests into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of citizens overseas.

At some time in coming months, Thailand's police will be invited to make a submission to a British coroner about the investigation of the killings of Ms Witheridge and Mr Miller.

Whatever the outcome of the pursuit of the killer or killers, it will the content and the quality of the submission to the British coroner by Thailand's police that will mark whether the nation's concerns about tourist safety are real or not.