Catching Up

Well I've left Bangkok and have reached Koh Samui and so far I'm not impressed. Lots and lots of development, and I mean lots, crammed round the edges of a mountainous island of about 250 sq km. Underneath and in between some of the building, hotels are drilling for water and streams run dry and filthy with holiday rubbish. I had a long chat with the taxi driver on the way in about how an island with no springs of its own manages its water supply and he told me that it doesn't, that there is never enough, at least not for the locals. Which is as I suspected but doesn't make me feel very comfortable. Not that anybody else looks very bothered: it is as ever the needs of money and commerce that determine what happens to natural resources.

I wasn't planning to write about this but it is on my mind since, in the depths of my jetlag last night at 4am, I watched a BBC World documentary about China. Apparently the government, determined to preserve its economic miracle (and who wouldn't, out of the countries we live in?) has been forcibly throwing farmers off their land, killing them even if they get in the way, in order to use the land for hotels, factories and posh housing developments. The land, which belongs to the farmers, is taken away for little or no compensation. I found this devastating and dangerous, for all sorts of reasons but mostly because I am aware that the drive to develop economically is always more important, to all of us, than the need to grow food. Who was it that said that one day we would all wake up and realise that tarmac is inedible?