2002-01-27

A visit to a ghost town

The Riverine resort is just a short walk from Botter's house. We enter through a driveway under the canopy of a large arched trellis with vines and flowers running through it- some growing wild, some dead. There's a small rundown guard station but the only guards these days are two resident dogs who object loudly as we invade their territory.

The Riverine resort was in business in a time parallel to our own dot-com boom and bust. It wasn't in operation for long, never made money and shut down a couple of years ago. The owner keeps a few caretakers on the premises to slow the decay but the buildings are gradually disintegrating. Termites enjoy their feast and you have to be careful where you step lest your foot go through the floor. Weeds are beginning to overwhelm the once immaculate grounds. Tepid rainwater fills the pool.

The Riverine isn't the only one. I've seen many other abandoned resorts nearby. Botter says there must be hundreds of them in northern Thailand. It's tempting to draw comparisons between the frenzy of land speculation that led to these ghost resorts and our own dot-com bust. The Florida land boom of the 1920s was similar with the exception that, in the end, people still had a use for the land in Florida.

It was a simple formula. Buy cheap farm land, sell expensive residential land, run a resort on the side, get rich. Prices were going up, up, UP! They put in paved roads, marked off plots to sell or rent cottages, and built a resort center complete with guest rooms, swimming pool, meeting rooms and restaurant.

There was no way it could have worked. Where would the people come from to buy these cottages? Where would the guests come from to fill the resorts? Apparently, these questions were never seriously considered and it didn't matter since everyone knew that prices were destined to skyrocket and if you didn't get in right now, buddy, you were missing on the chance of a lifetime and would regret it later.

It's all going back to the land now. Some of the roads have become unpassably thick with weeds. The cottages are in the worst condition and appear to be beyond repair. The resort itself looks like it could still be salvaged but there's no reason to go to the effort. Some things even look new. The caretaker keeps flowers and plants around the polished reception desk that stands ready to greet visitors who will never arrive. I half-expect to see a smiling uniformed attendant pop up behind it at any moment and reveal the whole thing to be an elaborate gag. The gift shop still displays trinkets in the window. The restaurant tables and chairs are neatly arranged. But I can see farmers raising tobacco on the grounds and it's apparent that in a few years the land will reclaim it all and there will be nothing left but the foundations of a business that had no foundation.