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National Geographic : 1982 Oct
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Out of the stuff of dreams, limestone peaks thrust above PhangngaBay: theirfantastic shapes, the work of erosion; their veils of greenery, the legacy of rock-clingingtrees. The region was a settingfor the James Bond thriller"The Man With the Golden Gun." In predawn darkness on Phuket Island, a tappercuts a rubber tree, startingthe flow of latex into a waiting cup. The lucrativestream dwindles with the heat of the day. Perhaps 250 other mountain villages still raise opium. "If we moved police in and cut down all the opium plants," one high Thai official told me, "we would instantly turn those peo ple into guerrilla insurgents. They must have some way to earn a living." But along with the carrot, there has to be a stick. Last year, in a Hmong village north west of Chiang Mai, after crop substitutions had begun, police made a token raid and de stroyed about an acre of poppies. Days later, when project advisers tried to visit that com munity, they found logs across the road in 14 Thailand:Luck of a Land in the Middle places. Each had a note in rustic Thai: "We want no more foreigners in our village." HANGE must come gradually, even with an industry like tourism. The governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, Col. Somchai Hiranyakit, analyzes one problem: "A few years ago we found Japa nese wives did not want their husbands to come here. A bad image. So we invited Japa nese lady magazine editors to come as our guests; we brought 600 Japanese women at low air fares. They visited Chiang Mai, saw hill tribes and arts of the people. They 527
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