by Shino Yuasa

=(PICTURE+VIDEO)=

BANGKOK, Sept 10, 2006 (AFP) - Five years after the September 11 attacks, Mubarak Rashid Matar sighs and shakes his head when asked about visiting the United States.

"It's not good. It's very, very difficult to get a visa. Also there are problems, you know. As an Arab, I don't want to go to the US," says Matar, a 48-year-old businessman from the United Arab Emirates.

Instead, Matar travelled to Thailand, becoming one of a rising number of Middle Easterners who holiday in the mainly Buddhist country after visa restrictions largely closed off the United States and Europe in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

The number of Middle Eastern arrivals in Thailand jumped 52 percent over the past five years to 304,047 in 2005, with 80 percent of them coming here for vacation, according to the state-run Tourism Authority of Thailand.

Unlike Asians and Westerners who tour mainly as couples, Middle Easterners travel with families, and like other holidaymakers in Thailand, they often seek medical care during their stay, feeding a "medical tourism" boom.

Thailand's top private hospital, Bumrungrad International Hospital, says it has seen "exponential growth" in the number of Middle Eastern patients since the September 11 attacks.

In 2000, Bumrungrad saw only 5,000 patients from the Middle East, but the number surged to 70,000 in 2005, says Ruben Toral, group marketing director at the hospital.

Middle Easterners, mainly from the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar, now make up nearly 20 percent of the hospital's foreign patients, according to Toral.

"They used to enjoy holidays and medical care in the United States and Europe. But September 11 changed both the travel patterns and the health care patterns of patients from the Middle East," Toral says.

"Just the sheer number is really quite amazing."

Besides procedural restrictions, a change in way Arabs are viewed in the West has also pushed more Middle Easterners to seek alternatives in Asia, Toral says.

"Beyond just the physical barriers that have been put on visa applications and immigration policies, there are invisible barriers that they feel in these countries," he says.

"People will stare at you, people will call you terrorists, people don't understand the prayer timing. These are things that penetrate the heart and soul of people," Toral says.

To meet the needs of Middle Eastern patients, Bumrungrad has created prayer rooms, beamed in Arabic TV channels and now cooks halal meals in accordance with Islamic dietary laws.

The hospital, which did not have any Arabic translators before September 11, now has 25 to accommodate Middle Easterners seek services ranging from check-ups to cancer operations to spinal surgery, Toral says.

Matar from the United Arab Emirates says he is getting a check-up at Bumrungrad during his one-week stay in Thailand.

"I'm very happy with the service. Thai people are very nice," says Matar, clad in a white Arab robe, at the hospital in central Bangkok.

A 63-year-old Qatari patient at Bumrungrad says he is also having a check-up while travelling in Thailand for two weeks.

"The hospital is very good. I used to go to the United States to see doctors, but no, I don't want to go there anymore," says the owner of a construction company, who declined to be named.

"I feel very welcome in Thailand. People are very nice," says the Qatari, adding his wife, their two children and his sister are getting check-ups at Bumrungrad as well.

Growing tourism demand from Middle Easterners, who each spend over 90 US dollars per day on average, has also helped boost the Thai retail sector.

Siam Paragon, the kingdom's biggest and glitziest shopping mall that houses some 300 top end brands, including France's Chanel and Italy's Dolce and Gabbana, says 30 percent of its foreign customers are from the Middle East.

"Due to high demand, we plan to hire two Arabic-speaking staff and the number can increase in the future," says a Siam Paragon official.

Bumrungrad's Toral says the influx of Middle Eastern visitors will continue to grow here due to "friction and tension (in the United States and Europe) that were further exacerbated by September 11 and the whole campaign on terror".

"They just don't feel comfortable in those countries. ... No one wants to feel unwelcome. That's just the bottomline," he says.

shi/lh

US-attacks-5years-Thailand-health-tourism