Tourism and our trip to Thailand

The Thai people are amazing. The land is breath taking. As I take in the wonders of the land as a visitor in their country I cannot help but look around and see the impact. I am always shocked at the damage we as humans have on a land. We have damage in our native land but look at what tourism does. Tourism good or bad?
Do people leave their manners at home? Does common sense leave people as they walk around a new and wonderful land? Is it due to the fact that people visit therefore they are not responsible for their foot print? My foot print does not get to take a vacation does yours?
We have had great fun working with the locals to get water in a way that produces less waste. It is way too easy for tourists to get water at a store. Litterally there are stores or people selling water every 200 feet or so. It is so easy that people do not stop to think about the impact. They only worry about having 'clean' water to drink and not what happens to the vessel after it is empty.
In our travels so far we have hooked up with the local water delivery people to get the LARGE water containers that they use in their homes and in the restaurants. These are the containers that they use and then return to the water company to be refilled. In the store we CAN get a large water container that is 6L large BUT it is not reusable by anyone other than ourselves. We might pay 100BH to get that 6L of trash or we can get the Big Nam that is 3x the size for 20BH and produce zero trash (ok a bit of trash due to the saftey seal around the cap). Finding ways to decrease our foot print makes us feel better. However, better than that are the exchanges between the locals as we work to decrease our footprint. We have to work on our Thai and have them understand new thoughts. On PhiPhi island the woman who runs the WaterHill does not understand the concept of deposit for the container to get people to return the container. So by using their best Tinglish my travel companions work to get her to understand that we promise to return it. However, deposit WAS used on Tonsai, a much smaller community than PhiPhi, where we could get this container for 160BH of which 100BH was a deposit.
The other thing that we LOVED seeing was a water refill station located just off the beach in PhiPhi. It was only about 5BH to fill a 1.5liter container. Just think of how many water bottles that will keep out of the landfill assuming that there is one.
In the areas we have traveled so far there is NO recycling and for the most part not even an organized place to hold trash. This is depressing to see the trash littered about the places of beauty.
My travels hold such a bitter sweat taste for me so far. When tourism impact is not in my mind the lingering tsunami impact is all present.