There is still plenty of gold in the ground across Thailand – deposits have been found in 31 provinces and there are long-term miners, especially at Bang Saphan, who have been using low-technology methods to hunt for nuggets for many years (one man claims to have found enough to have sent his children to university*).
There is talk of turning some deposit-holding places into tourism resorts – I expect we can all imagine what that would be like.
It is not so surprising that there is still gold to be had for the digging – Burma for example is home to all kinds of precious gems and metals** and that is just down the road. Besides which, people have been mining gold in the Kingdom for many years. I was, for example, just reading in James McCarthy’s 1880s and 1890s description of his time here Surveying and Exploring in Siam (White Lotus) about a site on the River Perak (pp.15-6):
“The first march took us through a gold-mine, where there were some clever Chinamen who had had experience in Australian mining. On a perpendicular bank of red clay about 30 feet high, showing nodules of slate, quartz, sandstone, and granite, there played a jet of water, and the material thus washed into a ditch below was worked by men by means of their feet and iron bars. The water and fine silt were drained off to the river, and the residue remained for gold.”
As it turned out, these men were resisting paying taxes to the local Raja and, because of the remoteness of their location, were then able to get away with it.
* Does the gold not belong to the state?
** Not sure if this is related or coincidence so will skate over it.
