Hoteliers in Pattani, Southern Thailand, are taking desperate measures to attract guests for their new half-finished hotels, including converting the whole future holiday resort into a huge artificial man-made cave. This to attract the "Collocalia esculenta" bird specie, a tiny brown and charcoal colored swift, known as "Sea Swifts" which builds nests, using their gluey saliva secretion.

If you were wondering? It all has to do with "Bird's Nest Soup", an expensive delicacy that for centuries has been made by the Chinese with bird nests harvested from high hillside caves on remote islands. An unlikely valuable treasure for which people are willing to kill for. "Bird's Nest Soup" is so popular because it is widely believed to help a persons sex drive, cure skin complexion and prevent aging.

In Pattani, those "Sea Swifts" or "Lady Birds" are nowadays attracted by closing up windows and punching holes in the walls of high-rise buildings. Hotel owners hope that these hotel improvements can tempt the birds to flock into the hotel for breeding, thereby providing them with the famous birds nests needed for the exotic "Birds Nest Soup". At 95,000 Thai Baht (US$ 2,300) a kilogram, profits are much higher than catering for human hotel guests, with Hong Kong alone purchasing more than 25 million US dollars worth of nests from Thailand every year.

With human guests, you need a lot of staff to manage the hotel and take care of the guests, said a Pattani hotel owner, but with birds there's no need for staff or even maintenance costs. You just wait for the money to fly in.

Traditionally, in Thailand, the nests from the "Sea Swifts" are collected from high inside remote caves on scale cliffs by agile climbers who use crude bamboo scaffolding to reach the nests. Once boiled, the crude birds nests dissolve into chewy strands which are used as noodles in the classic "Birds Nests Soup" that doubles as a powerful natural aphrodisiac and a long-life elixir.

Because the main ingredient of the soup is hardened bird saliva, the soup broth is spiced up with ginger and salt. A single serving of "Authentic Birds Nest Soup" can costs nearly 350 Bath (US$ 8), fifteen times the price of a bowl of normal Thai noodle soup, in the trusted street food stalls from China Town in Bangkok, Thailand.

Resorts on many small Thai islands are mushrooming with holiday makers intruding on the natural "Sea Caves" along the cliffs of the islands, which are the traditional breeding grounds for the "Sea Swifts". Tourists flocked to the tiny tropical island of Ko Phi-Phi Leh after it was featured in the Hollywood movie "The Beach", starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Two years after the release of the film, many "Sea Swifts" were forced to search for quieter breeding grounds and a sudden migration took place to vacant high-rise un-finished buildings near Pattani in the Gulf of Thailand.

Pattani is a Muslim dominated fishing town on the Southern tip of Thailand. Initially the people of Pattani objected to the mess and noise made by the invading birds, but realizing the money involved, they are now competing in catering for the valuable birds.

A huge tourist shortage in Muslim dominated Southern Thailand, accentuated by the Sars outbreak and terrorism threats, hit the Pattani tourism economy hard in the last years. But now, entrepreneurs from the South of Thailand prefer to cater for noisy birds, rather than for choosy foreigners.

All around the Southern Thai city of Pattani, people are building ugly high-rise brick towers. Some owners are even emptying the top floors of their hotel building to cater for the wealth bringing bird-guests. It's like winning the lottery, said one building owner, who just chased out his last human guests, we only have to wait for the riches to fly in. Land owners are eagerly studying the bird's flight patterns and learning to copy the mating call of the birds

Pattani's new wealth is now starting to get disguised by the ruined look out of the town centre where ugly multi-storey brick towers full of holes are being erected on the outskirts of the town to cater for the "Sea Swifts". Tourism in Pattani is now for birds, not for foreigners, said Khun Anusartne, who is building a new high-rise bird-hotel instead of investing in a tourist hotel.

Origins of Bird's Nest Soup

It was the Chinese who develop the taste for the exotic delicacy known as "Bird's Nest Soup". According to a ancient legend, a group of Chinese sailors were shipwrecked on a tiny tropical island of the coast of what is nowadays Thailand and survived by eating the tiny bird's nests. Another version of the legend claims that a Chinese eunuch by the name of San Pao was sent on an expedition to the Malay Peninsula by the mighty Ming emperor. There he was served "Bird's Nests Soup" and was told about the powerful aphrodisiac powers of the soup. Impressed by the taste and the medicinal powers of the dish, he brought some dried birds nests home as a gift for the Chinese emperor.

Over the centuries, the recipe of bird's nests soup, first a Royal secret, later became a passion for aging but rich Chinese and expeditions were yearly send to the Thai-Malay peninsula to collect the valuable birds nests, only to be found in sea caves of tiny remote islands. Nests of the "Sea Swifts" are not made out of twigs an feathers such as most other birds build them. The nests of the "Collocalia Esculenta" are constructed with a gluey saliva secretion discharged from the glands under the bird's lower jaw. This saliva comes out in long strands that immediately dry into strong strands after exposure to the hot tropical air.