KUALA LUMPUR: According to government statistics in Thailand, some 1.1 million Malaysians traveled to their northern neighbor through the first 6 months of 2012, making Malaysia the second highest market for Thailand after China. “China is the leading source with additional 8,513 visitors, crossing the one-million arrival mark in the first half of the year for the first time,” the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) said in a news release. However, it said, there was a drop of 8.5 percent in the number of Malaysian visitors, compared to the corresponding period last year at 1.2 million tourists. Other important source markets of visitors to this country are Russia, with 634,312 visitors, followed by Japan (630,058 visitors), Korea (540,523 visitors), India (504,634 visitors), Laos (464,931 visitors), United Kingdom (433,989 visitors), Australia (427,096 visitors) and the United States of America (379,430 visitors). It also said that 10.4 million tourist arrivals had been recorded in the country for the first 6 months of this year, an increase of 7.6 percent over the same period in 2011.
