WHEN Leow Kheong Mun decided to start his oil palm plantation in Thailand 19 years ago, Surat Thani, the place that he picked, was still classified as a “red area.”
The former seat of the ancient Srivijaya Empire was notorious for being the hotbed of the Communist Party of Thailand. CPT camps were based between the two spectacular waterfalls of Dat Fa and Muang Thuat on the Khao Chong Chang Mountain and armed rebels often wandered into the land on which the remote estate was being carved up.