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Never Mind the Bombings, Says the Thai Junta, Come and Catch Pokémon

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FILE - In this Friday, Aug. 12, 2016 file, investigators work at the scene of an explosion in the resort town of Hua Hin, 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of Bangkok, Thailand. Thai authorities said Monday, Aug. 15, they are investigating whether bombings last week at several popular tourist destinations were related to long-term separatist violence in the country's far south, backing away from assertions that partisan politics were behind them. (AP Photo/Jerry Harmer, File)
Investigators work at the scene of an explosion in the resort town of Hua Hin, 150 miles south of Bangkok, on Aug. 12, 2016.Jerry Harmer—AP
By Nash Jenkins

Despite last week’s wave of deadly bomb attacks that targeted tourist areas, the Thai junta is desperate to present the country as a safe vacation destination. To do so, it’s turning to Pokémon Go.

The Bangkok Post reports that the junta will collaborate with the game’s developers to plant Pokémon Gyms and PokéStops at popular tourist destinations in order to draw visitors there. There is no word yet on whether those destinations will be the same as those hit by the blasts, which included some of the country’s most visited vacation spots such as Hua Hin and Phuket.

The attacks killed four people and injured at least 20, many of them foreigners. They occurred near the first anniversary of the bomb attack on Bangkok’s Erawan Shrine, also a major tourist attraction. That attack, on Aug. 17, 2015, killed 17 and injured over 100. No individual or group has claimed responsibility for the blasts, though some have ventured that they represent an expansion of Thailand’s Muslim separatist insurgency.

“We hope foreign tourists will feel confident to come back to Thailand,” the junta’s top tourism official Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul told the Post.

[Bangkok Post]

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