Opinion
NOW that the worst of the airport blockades appears to be over, Phuket can turn its attention to a more important issue: survival.
A colleague at Phuketwan put it perfectly: ''The high season is now the hell season.''
Anti-government protests that closed Bangkok's two big airports for more than a week have caused unprecedented damage to Thailand and to tourism.
How much damage? That will become clear as the flights return, even if incoming passengers do not.
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We'd prefer to look at the cost of this tragic exercise in human terms, rather than money.
One estimate is that the airport invasion will cost the jobs of a million Thais in tourism alone. That may be a little on the high side.
But it is fair to predict that hundreds of thousands of people will be thrown out of work, businesses will close, marriages will fail and children will be forced into poverty, because of the decision by protesters to occupy the airports.
The Constitutional Court verdict to disband the ruling political party and rub out yet another erring Thaksin-inspired Prime Minister would have been the outcome this week without the airports seizure, or the bloodshed.
Yet the People's Alliance for Democracy will now find a way to claim that its destructive actions have achieved some kind of ''victory.''
''We won,'' said a Phuket PAD supporter in a text message to a friend. From the outside looking in, not many people will see it that way.
Certainly not the tourists, and certainly not their governments, who have mostly intensified travel warnings that will keep huge numbers of visitors away from Thailand.
Generous-minded travellers may accept that a holiday here is one of life's little lotteries, but even the bargain-basement prices that will now be an essential part of Thai tourism for years will not bring back the majority.
Millions of people who would have come to Thailand in 2009 will now take their holidays safely and securely elsewhere.
Would-be tourists are not likely to forget that the big Bangkok flights blockade followed a similar invasion of Phuket International Airport in August.
Having shot themselves in the foot back then, hundreds of Phuket People's Alliance for Democracy supporters apparently decided to blow the entire leg off by joining the Bangkok airports sit-in.
When the jobs of their family members and friends disappear in 2009, it will be interesting to hear what the PAD members have to say.
Anti-government protest supporters should wipe the smiles off their faces. Phuket's pain, along with Thailand's suffering, is only just beginning.
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