womble

Looking to buy some shisha pipes for a bar/restaurant, does anyone know anywhere in Thailand where they can be bought?

thanks.

I should imagine this suits Thaksin, good time to change all his bahts into pounds........

Could someone tell me who you can turn to when a government run hospital does the wrong thing.

Is there anywhere you can complain to and it will be taken seriously?

Womble the water doesnt start to get clear till Bang Sapan, south of HH. Some very nice beaches there and the water is good. Very good spearfishing in Chumphon around the islands off Thung Walen beach. Its only a ferry ride away and a lot cheaper than HH.All there is in HH or Cha Am is a weekend on the yahoo. Enjoy. You catch anything on Tao when you went ?

Yeah we got some good fish, some nice coral trout which are great eating and a few other species. Saw some big queenfish but couldn't get them as the water is so clear and our small guns didn't have the range. Next time I need a longer gun, although harder to sneak around the island and away from the divers eyes.

dont joke about ghosts at night.......

They must have slips and lifting facilities, if you can't repair the boat there it will be useless, at the moment you have to get a tow to the mainland......

I'd never have a boat with in-boards here for that reason. At present outboards are the only real option and they break down all the time! + they are fuel hungry.

I must say that is the first time I've been accused of being anti-Thai

You misunderstand ,i am not calling anybody anti Thai ,but a lot of you are anti everything outside your retirement bubble,anti making money anti development (which is natural proggression ) I am sure you areold enouhg to remember the 60'sand 70's flairs loud shirts ,power cuts ,3day weeks ,union rule , east end mob rule( no muggings though ,part of change that imust say i am not happy with ) BEDSITS , signs outside places tp rent inlondon saying "quote" no blacks,irish or dogs (in that order ) rackman type landlords .

we are all anti pollution ,but i asume we all drive cars or ride bikes hypirictical to expect money making machines to think different,but instead of slating everybody and everything please please please give alternatives

lets all offer ours services to the tourist police volunteers so theplace is safer

lets offer advise on how money making machines can go green and still make a buck -its small but you will achieve a lot more that way than just moaning at the end of the day whats happened around the world recently should tell us that it's all about money unfortunatley !!!

my rant over , good night

tomorrow i am going to look and green ways of building and power to try and do my bit to save the island and planet.

because buildings willstill be built if there is a marketor potential for a market ,if noone is buying then the trend will soon stop and the money machines will dry up

Advice.........

1.) Go to Pharmacy

2.) Purchase Xanax

3.) Eat 1

4.) Wait 30 mins and prepare to Relax

note. Do not repeat step 3 too often, can be habit forming.........

To put the record straight:

Spearfishing is legal in Thailand - with or without tanks - so long as its not in a marine park area - and spearguns are legal - makes no diff purchased in Thailand or brought in with you on holiday.

I have speafished in Thailand with and without tanks and I care little for the "cheating" and "not fair arguments". You only have to look at how inselective netts are to realise straight away that spearfishing is a lot more sustainable and enviromently friendly.

The issue in a place like Thailand with has so many dive operators relying on populated reef structures to support recreational scuba diving, is respecting this side of diving and NOT stripping out the reef fish with spear guns.

It's self-discipline when spear-fishing that is important - don't shoot something just for the sake of it, or because you have the chance to - you ahve the oppurtunity to be selective, so use the oppurtunity responsibly.

Leave the reef fish alone, many of which are resident and settle on a particular reef, or particular part of a reef, and stick to hunting pelagics.

Hang back from the reef structures in the open water and pick on the big pelagics like barracuda, sail fish, wahoo, big jacks and any one of a number of others - they are are all in Thailand : its a case of getting the time, tide and weather conditions right.

South end of Koh Racha Noi (100yards or so off the end of the island), the hour before and after sunrise coinciding with high tide, during April, May and June - chances are very good you will run into [a] nice sized Sail fish, which hang around just below the surface - just make sure you have a proper gun and not some plastic/alloy tube crap from Cressi or one of the other scuba equipment manufacturer (most are crap).

Check out Riffe (separguns) - my favourite, or Hamilton Speaguns, or Steve Alexanders - proper guns.

You can get Riffe from Singapore, i'm trying to decide between Riffe, Daryl wong, rob allen and aimrite for my next gun.

where I spear water is dirty so I use a short 70cm, looking at getting something a bit bigger as I wanna get into bluewater hunting...........

it seems a very undeveloped sport in this country.

Would love to hook up with others interested in the sport, we can share experiances and boat costs.

A marina in Bangrak would ofcourse need a lot of dredging and this would have enviromental impact but it is actually the best place for it for a number of reasons, one of which would be that it may infact have less enviromental impact than many think, considerably less than most other areas around the island.

The area to the left of the temple where the seatran pier is a great natural harbour. It is however very shallow so there will need to be much dredging, I think we all remember the pier being unusable for many months after completion due to it being too shallow. Anyway around this particular area there is little coral unlike the area to the right of the temple. The seabed is very muddy and certainly also already very dirty and polluted from all the fishing boats by the market. Looking at the filth there is disgusting, remeber for many coming for KPG or Tao this is the first view of the island. Nice!

A marina in this area would be much better than in the south where it is far less spoilt and there is also much more coral. Bang Rak is one of few areas on the island where there is little coral. The muddy bottom would also make dredging much easier as taking away mud is much easier than carving away at coral.

I think samui will certainly one day see a marina. It is possible that if done in the right way it could actually benefit marine species. The seabed in the area at present is pretty barren, clarity of water is also some of the worst on the island, due to the silt. when building a marina there will be protective arms built around the sides, these often use boulders and rock which can provide great habitat for all types of fish, crustaceans and many other species of marine life. It could become an artificial reef. Around the world many pleasure fisherman benefit from harbours and marinas, the enviroment here doesn't suit all species, but some thrive, eg mullet, crabs, shrimp.

Samui needs a marina, and it is inevitable that one will be built sooner or later, personally I think bang rak is by far the best location, it is close to the marine park where the KPG and Koh tao the two other populated islands that boat owners may wish to visit. Also if a marina is to be built I think it's better built in an area that is already pretty degraded ecologicallly speaking than in somewhere that is more pristine (not that there is anywhere even close to pristine on the island).

In the end it won't make much differdence how many attend this meeting, what is important is if influential local and national politicians and members of powerful clans support this.

If enough money can be creamed off and it can be shared around enough amongst "right" people this will go ahead.

It will be good for samui.

Isn't this the job of interior minister?

Shouldnt he have done this in his previous job?

Perhaps we can also go back to nationwide 1am closing.....

In times of uncertainty people like to invest in gold, it's tangible.

Swiss francs might be worth considering.

Do the police in this country EVER catch anyone??

Certainly wouldn't expect any results on a case like this............

Still waiting for Somchai's killers to be brought to justice.

We often moan that there isn't enough investigative reporting into corruption in Thailand, there are a few who are brave enough to look a little deeper and it carries very real risks...........

I recently bought some mail order fishing tackle rod reel books dvd couple of shirts and a pair of proper polorised sunglasses from the USA.

I will not be doing that again UPS are completley useless and in cahoots with Customs, Rod arrived first and I had to pay THB2900 Duty and added UPS Charges?? Then after a long delay and calls E mails totally useless bunch the Reel and a few other Items arrived but I had to pay over THB12,000 this time.

Then the Sunglasses arrived in Bangkok via UPS . Thai UPS Contacted me by E mail to tell me that there would be THB700 Duty fair enough after 8 days they contacted me again and wanted to know what they were for and the manufacturer I responded within 45 minutes of the E mail.

After all this they then told me that I would have to pay over THB3000 storage fee at customs FOR SUNGLASSES!!!!,at this point I lost it told them to Stick it where the sun does not shine accused them of stealing and to return to sender I have not heard again from Thailand UPS and do not wish to but the Anglers Centre in California who was copied on all E mails apologised on behalf of UPS Thailand and are refunding my money for items not received and are changing any future Thai orders to DHL (will they be any better ? me thinks not)

So lesson learned dont order anything mail order get sent to friends and they can bring in or bring in yourself.

I work in West Africa and Thai Customs and so called World renowned Courier Companies(Thai based) will certainly match if not better the famous corruption of West African Customs & Police

Make sure there is always an invoice with the shipment clearly stating fishing equipment and a clear price, eg 1800 baht for rod, 2000 baht for reel, you will then pay duty on that amount, if you don't show invoice it can take days whilst customs decide firstly what catagory it falls into (% import duty) then they decide what they think the value is. This can take days. If you have an invoice with the shipment you pay the courier company the tax on amount shown at your door when they deliver, they then pass this onto customs for you.

No invoice and you deal with customs yourself, which is where costly delays happen.

troll..............

In a country where face and wealth are so important it would make sense to charge so much more for use of a platinum card...........

The funny thing is now the secret is getting out it will be funny to see those that continue to use the platinum when they could use a regular less face making card for less..........

Not really an answer for the OP, but do what all our tenants usually do - never pay the last months rent which usually comes near the value of the security deposit in most cases.

Yeah it's a no brainer, heard this happen so many times, it's cos they spent the $ and can't pay you back.

yuyi- Could you at least tell us what area this was in? Bangkok, The Sticks, Samui? Thanks!

Yes, yuyi, please tell us which land office this was. After your great responses to my other questions, this is the only one you left unanswered.

Yeah which land office?

was thinking of going to hua hin for a few days break. I like to spearfish, can anyone tell me, is the water clear?

was actually more looking for someone more into something short term perhaps for someones gf or gf's mother to do simple thai food. Not a 5* chef who can earn 100's k each month. I doubt you'd make more than 20k per month profit anyway, unless you have a really good idea,so it's more aimed at Thai's although I didn't make it clear in my first post. For someone who is succesful you could potentially earn much more............

Some of the theorys you guys come out with are funny, there's nothing sinister, simply a small bar that wants someone to do simple food. There is the choice of employing a thai on a salary or finding someone who wants to do it themselves thus taking the stress of the owner who only wants to worry about the bar.

The fact is it's short term, the bar won't be there long so no need to build fancy kitchens or worry about bringing in full time staff. Thats why someone shorterm to do something simple was the idea.

Get it?

I think for news on an english language website it's very important to get grammer and spelling correct. It's irrelavent that this is not an english speaking nation, the publication is supposed to be english language. They need a proof reader.

bet this will piss off the speadboat operators, good news for the ferry company tho......

From the business point of view, the upside and downside of considering hiring a native speaker to proof read an ad is easy to calculate. Risk of language error in ad with meaning of said ad still communicated (and which can be measured as inconsequential for ads that aren't targeted towards an *insignificant* minority) vs. no errors in ad + added cost of said ad, not to mention the richer cultural significance of keeping another "native speaker" from realizing some financial revenue (however minor). It's perhaps easier to compare the feelings involved to how much you care that the signs in Spanish and Vietnamese are grammatically correct at your local driver license office in the US for example.

spell check is free and those signs are designed on computer. Thai friends of mine are graphic designers and make loads of mistakes, if they took 5 mins to spell check it would be beneficial as there's nothing worse than going to print and then seeing the error, looks unprofesional.

I agree though that it's only important in business......