"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 (US$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?"
Reuters crisscrossed the land and communities in the path of the proposed Land Bridge and interviewed more than 15 residents, local officials, experts, planning leaders and others involved or affected by the process.
The interviews, as well as government documents reviewed by Reuters, reveal previously unpublished details of a project with promises of savings and speedy shipments, but hampered by complicated logistics, local opposition and a staggering cost that has yet to attract major investors.
