Abstract A powerful earthquake off Sumatra on 26 December 2004 set off the most disastrous tsunami to impact on the coasts and coastal communities of the Indian Ocean. Coastal tourism in Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Maldives was significantly affected. Examples from Phuket Island, Khao Lak and Ko Phi Phi Don, Thailand, show the variation in the impacts, recovery and resilience of Thai tourist coasts, focusing primarily on beach recovery and the reconstruction of the tourist industry. As priority was given to Phuket Island, tourism recovered after 1 year. Khao Lak was the worst affected and has yet to fully recover. Ko Phi Phi Don recovered but is plagued by land-use problems. Various mitigation measures have been implemented to increase the resilience of the tourist coasts. However, the resilience of the Thai tourist coasts in the event of a future tsunami is questionable.

Abstract The offshore tin deposits of Thailand are considered to be specially and genetically related to sea floor outcropping and subcropping granitoid plutons, at distances of up to at least 60 km from the present coastline. The cassiterite has undergone only limited transport. Pay streaks range from a few centimeters to about 1.5 m in thickness, and are locally trapped in extremely incised limestone bottom topography. To date, most production has come from the east and southeast coast of Phuket Island, where the pioneering, and still active, Tongah Habour dredging operation began in 1907. Thereafter, exploration for offshore tin lapsed until 1957, when the Aokam tin grab-dredge was started, immediately south of Tongah Habour. However, poor recovery soon led to the conversion to bucket dredging. Modern exploration, including both geophysical methods and drilling, began in 1968 in the eastern Thai penisula, but with little success. The search resumed in 1969 on the west coast from Ranong to Phuket, and resulted in the establishment of the TEMCO 2 (suction-cutter) dredge. Further exploration with the Department of Mineral Resources was carried out in 1972-74 in the area of the Adang-Rawee Archipelago. Although rich streaks were encountered, no mineral has been mined yet. The most recent development is the initiation of systematic exploration along the west coast of Phangnga and Phuket Provinces, with the cooperation of UNDP and CCOP. This prospect, to commence in 1978-79, will subsequently extend to encompass much of the Gulf of Thailand. The problems encountered in offshore mining are inherent. They are mainly due to the nature of the deposits—their overburden and subjacent bedrock topographies—and to adverse marine conditions of swell, waves, wind, and corrosion. In addition, many shallow deposits, such as those along the western coast of Phuket and Takua-Pa, are extensively depleted and invariably made sterile by numerous small operators, the majority mining illegally.

Abstract In the 1960s, anticipating the award of concessions in the Gulf of Thailand, BP carried out reconnaissance geological mapping over all of Southern Thailand including its Gulf islands. The resulting eight geological maps at 1:250 000 scale provided a database that underpinned discussions of Thailand's place in global plate-tectonic reconstructions that were emerging at that time. In particular, new light was thrown on the Paleozoic succession, and important differences were found between the Upper Thai Peninsula and the Lower Peninsula (respectively, NW and SE of the prominent bend in the peninsula's outline). The Phuket Group of the Upper Peninsula is a very thick diamictite-bearing succession of possible Devonian to Early Permian age, apparently sourced in the west, a region now occupied by the Indian Ocean. That in turn suggested a possible Gondwana origin for SE Asia, a contentious concept at the time, but one that is now widely accepted. The emphasis of field mapping these days is on obtaining detailed data that necessarily means over areas of limited extent. But a very broad regional mapping project such as BP's in Thailand revealed stratigraphic and tectonic insights that could be revealed only from a wide-ranging regional study of this kind.

Southeast Asia is a complex array of granitoid belts, predominantly of Mesozoic age. An eastern belt, forming the eastern third of the Malay Peninsula and extending to the Indonesian islands of Bangka and Billiton, represents an epizonal Andean-type calc-alkaline volcano-plutonic arc which was active from the Permian to the Late Triassic. The plutonic suite ranges from gabbro, through hornblende-biotite granodiorite, to granitic, and is of mixed S- and I-type. The plutons are ringed by aureoles of andalusite-cordierite hornfels. The tin and tungsten deposits are related to the ilmenite-series members. The arc has remained isostatically stable since the Late Triassic, as reflected in the concordant Rb:Sr isotope dates. A narrow central belt of Permian and Triassic granitoids and metamorphic complexes with local Cretaceous granites along its margins separates the eastern belt from the Main Range. The eastern margin of the Main Range is a serpentine-marked suture zone with local, strongly gneissic granites. The Main Range batholith is the most remarkable Sn-granite in the world. It is predominantly of Late Triassic age but includes granites of Permian age. It is strictly of granitic composition and entirely of the S- or ilmenite-series. The main or eastern part is of Mesozonal emplacement into greenschist facies metasediments with no thermal overprint, and consists mainly of biotite granite which commonly contains megacrysts of maximum microcline. Muscovite results only from greisenization in hydrothermally affected areas. The Main Range belt imperceptibly grades westward through Penang, Langkawi, and peninsular Thailand to higher level plutons, which are unsheared and surrounded by andalusite and cordierite-bearing aureoles. The north Thailand granites are predominantly Triassic and appear to be higher level than the eastern parts of the Main Range. They have some of the highest initial 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios of granites in the world, commonly in the range 0.722 to 0.734, and undoubtedly are entirely of upper crustal origin. Both the Main Range and northern Thai granites are devoid of contemporaneous volcanic associations, and they have been interpreted as collision-related, resulting from the closure of the central marginal basin in the Late Triassic. This represented the major orogenic event leading to the cratonization of Sundaland. Faulting, uplift, and hydrothermal circulation led to highly discordant Rb:Sr and K:Ar radiometric dates, which suggests that the region has been isostatically unstable since the Triassic; it continues to be characterized by hot springs. The granites of the western belt of Phuket and Burma are high level and characterized by good thermal aureoles, but they are not associated with obvious contemporaneous volcanic rocks. The granites and associated pegmatite emplacements were fault controlled. The Triassic granites generally, and some of the Cretaceous granites which occur in diverse localities, are associated with tin, tungsten, and antimony deposits, representing one of the world’s greatest metallogenic provinces. These elements are thought to be recycled from the continental infrastructure of Sundaland.