Thai netizens agreed that they need more visitors like Marcus Kingo, a Swedish tourist who spared some of his vacation time collecting trash at Thai beaches and even encouraged other backpackers to do the same online.
Marcus Kingo and his daughter, Susannah, were backpacking around Thailand for the month of July. During their travel, they visited Phuket’s Patong beach and another beach on Phi Phi island, where they felt like doing good by picking up the trash scattered on the popular beaches. Together they collected four bags on Phi Phi and three bags on Phuket.
Not only that, Kingo posted in a Facebook group for Thailand backpackers, encouraging other tourists to take an hour of their vacation to clean beaches. He posted pictures of himself engaged in beach cleaning to the group, creating a ripple effect.
“My experience is that, every time I have done this, people come and help out. We post pictures, not to give ourselves credit, but to motivate others to do the same,” Kingo wrote on the group.
“If we pick up one bag of garbage, that’s great. If we post it on Facebook and motivate 100 people to pick up a bag of garbage, that’s even better.”
https://www.facebook.com/DramaAdd/posts/10155735334528291
Drama Addict, one of the most popular Facebook pages in Thailand, shared the story and applauded the father-daughter duo that went out of their way to help conserve and clean the beaches.
“We’d like to praise this father. Thailand needs more tourists like him. Maybe he even cares more about Thai beaches than some Thai people,” the page admin wrote.
After his story made headlines, Kingo wrote in English on a public Facebook post: “This morning I woke up, I had over 30 messages from Thai people saying thank you.”
“I even got messages from Thai hotel owners offering us a free stay at their place next time we come to Thailand. It was pretty exciting. I was just trying to encourage other tourists to do the same.”
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