Thailand revives US$30bil coast-to-coast corridor to rival Malacca Strait

RANONG, Thailand: Chaiyaporn Arunrasamee hunched over his fishing nets, overlooking the waters of the Andaman Sea, where Thailand's government is proposing an ambitious "Land Bridge" that will ferry goods between ports on opposite sides of the peninsula. "Personally, I don't want it to happen at all," Chaiyaporn said of the project, which Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has resuscitated after the war in Iran and the closure of the Hormuz Strait highlighted countries' reliance on strategic maritime chokepoints. Plans envision a 1 trillion baht ($30.45 billion) logistics corridor to offer an alternative route to the congested Strait of Malacca by connecting two new deep-sea ports: Chumphon, on the Gulf of Thailand to the east, and Ranong, along the western Andaman coast, where Chaiyaporn, 50, has fished for his entire life. "This thing will be located in the area where we make our living," he said last month in the small fishing hamlet of Baan Hat Sai Dam on an island ringed by mangrove forests. "Where will we go?"