Southeast Asian Tourism

The tsunami is the 3rd major blow in 3 years for tourism in southeast Asia. September 11, the Bali bombing, and now the tsunami have deeply damaged this mecca of tourism, especially from Europe and Australia. While I hate to look for any silver lining in such a dark cloud, hopefully all the damage will lead to better planning in tourism redevelopment as the beaches of Thailand have become completely overrun with tourists. They were even when I was there in the 1996 and 1997 and I understand it is far worse today. I guess it's hard to stop people from making money on other people going wherever they want. But some community planning would go a long ways to making traveling in that part of the world even better than it already is and hopefully some effort will be made to think through the costs of tourism a little more when they rebuild.