If you leave your vehicle in what appear to be ordinary parking lots, it is perhaps natural to expect to find it in the same condition you left it in. Don't bet on it. A recent spate of 'key' attacks on vehicles across Phuket have left owners shocked and angry, and car bodies looking infinitely less immaculate.

Back home in Samkong after work, a Post reporter was confronted with the sight of neighbours animatedly huddled around their black Honda Jazz. When the group parted, the damage was plain to see. Keyed scratch marks ran across the breadth of the car. “Who could have done this,” they were asking themselves, stunned.

The scratching was vicious and extensive. “It's going to cost a bomb to fix that,” the neighbour muttered angrily.

Another local expat resident left his car in the parking lot of a popular mall in Phuket city only to return a few hours later to find it severely keyed.

In the latest of complaints to the Phuket Post, a female Thai Phuket resident tells of how she left her car in the Baanzan market parking lot (in Patong, behind Jungceylon) to find the next morning that it was now sporting nasty scratch-marks on the passenger door. “I parked my car there at about 2 am Friday night as I got a bit drunk did not want to drive home. I checked into a hotel down that street. I left my car there for less than 7 hours in a virtually empty parking lot. Even when I returned to the spot the next morning, there was enough free parking space for more than 10 cars. I've no idea why anybody would do this. I find it so unfair. We are not supposed to get treated like this.”

“I went to the Patong police station, and the policeman on duty was reluctant to file a report and kept repeating that I would get nothing from reporting this!” exclaims the distraught lady. “'No one would claim that they did that and take responsibility' he said. He wasn't even interested in noting what had happened so that steps could be taken to ensure something like this doesn't happen to anyone else.”

The Phuket Post contacted the Pol.Col. Kritsak Songmoolnak, Chief of Kathu Police who admitted he has not been made aware of keying incidents in the six months that he has been posted in Kathu. Concerned, Pol.Col. Kritsak promised to investigate the matter thoroughly and encouraged others with similar experiences to contact him directly on 086-3743898. We hope that Police Chiefs in other areas as well will take immediate steps to put a stop to this growing menace.