It will probably come as a surprise to only a very few that the Khunpluem sons won the recent Chonburi PAO and Pattaya Mayoral and Council elections so convincingly, giving the family virtually unopposed administrative control of the complete Eastern Seaboard and Thailand's main industrial zones.

It will be interesting to see what effects this will have, and whether such schemes as the Pattaya tram system and the free government schools for 12 years ever come to be. More interesting may be the plans for the 5 casinos, which the PM apparently gave the go-ahead to last month, in Pattaya, Phuket, Kon Kaen, Chiang Mai and Hat Yai. Some time ago Kamnam Pho (Khunpluem Sr) offered to donate land for a racecourse in the Huay Yai area, which was never taken up, and the family still have large landholdings in the area; at the same time Ambassador City is ideally located for a casino and co-incidentally (?) could have been purpose-designed as one with an unusually high number of very large inter-connecting ball rooms, banqueting rooms, conference and meeting rooms, etc, and ex-PM Thaksin's son is believed to have bought up a large amount of surrounding land. Interesting ....

Equally interesting is the progress on Ocean 1, which was approved 2 years ago and is due to be completed in 2 more years. So far, despite reports that the specialist equipment had been brought here from Malaysia last year, the site appears to be anything but the hive of activity that could be expected and of the 91 floors planned there are still 91 to go. Interesting ....

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