In 1998, I was looking out from a 19th floor window of Telecom Tower on Ratchadaphisek Rd in Bangkok towards the plots of land below. It was during a break in one of the interminably long creditor meetings for TelecomAsia, part of the CP Group.
Among the buildings was a plot of land covered in pink taxis, handed back to the taxi company by drivers unable to make a living in the post-1997 Asian Economic Crisis world.
The floating of the baht by the Thai government on July 2, 1997 precipitated a wider Asian economic crisis engulfing, among others, the economies of South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines. The seeds of Thailand's crisis had, however, been sewn a number of years earlier.
1998 was before widespread mobile phone use in Thailand (and phones with cameras) so I didn't take a photo of the flamboyance of pink taxis below. People didn't take cameras to restructuring meetings.
One interesting aspect of the TelecomAsia group restructuring involved debt associated with the roll out of the Personal Cordless Telephone (PCT) network in Bangkok. This was an ultimately unsuccessful forerunner of today's mobile networks which was popular at that time in Tokyo. It allowed you to use your home phone number as a mobile number with enough handsets for the whole family. Wander the streets of Bangkok and you can still see relics of the network - decommissioned cell sites attached to telegraph poles with the telltale "PCT' logo.
Fast forward to 2021 and another economic crisis - this one brought on by Covid-19.
Taxis are once again being parked en masse as drivers struggle to find fares in a city without tourists and with many workers working from home or unemployed.
As Thailand trials reopening the country with its Phuket Sandbox model for vaccinated travellers as well as ramping up vaccination efforts, it is hoped that these taxis will soon be circulating throughout Bangkok once more. However, with reported daily Covid-19 case numbers over 9,000 for Thailand, the reality is that they may be parked for some time.
July 2021
© PELEN 2021
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