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| Can you see those advertisements ahead? Do you know what they are? Image from Locky's English Playground |
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| Nature and Town coexist? Image from Locky's English Playground |
Everywhere you go, there are huge boards promoting their luxurious condominiums in the making. Unlike the colourful promotional AutoCad images presented in the brochures made by the Hong Kong developers, the designs you see on the ads in Phuket are 100% delivered to match the drawing. No tricks here.
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| A really new villa behind a not-so-new roadside shop Image from Locky's English Playground |
Immediately, I want to become an property owner in Phuket.
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| Seaview condominium Image from Locky's English Playground |
The sights of real estate development generate immense hope to the outsiders, making everyone thinks that this island of Thailand can really make gold.
But the longer the journey went, the more I felt a chill down my spine.
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| More flats in the making Image from Locky's English Playground |
There may not be a 7-11 around every corner, but you sure can find a piece of land or a building for sale. Street after street, construction sites after construction sites.
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| Image from Locky's English Playground |
One construction plan more shockingly beautiful than the one before. Then how can anyone earn more building an earlier villa if the next one is always better? The business seems attractive on the service but it feels like a cliff waiting just in front.
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| What the use for this piece of land? Your guess won't be too wrong Image from Locky's English Playground |
In Phuket, every piece of wood or grassland you see that still belongs to Mother Nature is bound to be scraped away by heavy machinery and hammered by iron bars and concrete.
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| "Give me a break", says Mother Nature Image from Locky's English Playground |
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| TESCO in the background Image from Locky's English Playground |
Are local investors investing in Phuket, or foreign ones? I have no idea, but sure enough, Phuket does attract planeloads of Westerners, tourism has got to be the key income of Phuket. Do any of the local people benefit from this development? I seriously doubt it.
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| local roadside shop with a real estate banner ad Image from Locky's English Playground |
If things continue to go the way they are heading right now, how much longer can the local shops and homes last before they all turned into modernised supermarkets and luxury resorts?
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| Coconut plantations waiting to be demolished Image from Locky's English Playground |
Only time will tell.
Vocabulary:
paradise -- (n) [C usually singular U] a place or condition of great happiness where everything is exactly as you would like it to be
Mother Nature -- (n) [U] often humorous nature, especially when considered as a force that controls the weather and all living things
scrape -- (vb) [T] to remove an unwanted covering or a top layer from something, especially using a sharp edge or something rough
machinery -- (n)[U] a group of large machines or the parts of a machine which make it work
mighty -- (adj) literary very large, powerful or important
condominium -- (n) [C] US an apartment building in which each apartment is owned separately by the people living in it, but also containing shared areas
planeload -- (n)[C] a plane of people, from -load -- (suffix) all the people or goods in the stated type of vehicle or container
tolerable -- (adj) of a quality that is acceptable, although certainly not good
Resources:
Travelling & Living: Bangkok...or...Japan? @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2013/02/travelling-living-bangkokorjapan.html
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/paradise?q=paradise
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/mother-nature?q=mother+nature
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/scrape_1?q=scraped+#scrape_1__3
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/machinery_1?q=machinery
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/mighty_1?q=mighty
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/condominium_1?q=condominium+
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/load_5
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/tolerable?q=tolerable