MrWorldwide

Jesus, meatboy - why dont you just knee the guy in the nuts and again in the face as he slumps to the floor ? One little ray of hope from someone who has tried to build a sustainable future in Thailand and you throw it back in his face ? Tough crowd.

shipito.com Oregon address

Believe it or not, some of the dealers refuse to ship to any business address which they believe to be a 'freight forwarder' - pathetic, but it's all part of 'protecting the brand'. The big boys argue that the cost of doing business in Sydney is much higher than Sacramento - beats the hell out of me.

^{Manarak. you make some good points, and I thank you for taking the time to respond to my post.}

Higher prices in developed nations also tend to reflect the higher wages paid locally, but the price differential on those Stax headphones I listed earlier is just astronomical. Stax has a dealer network to support, and I'd be interested to see how you get on with warranty if you buy from one of the 'grey importers' promising to get you a pair of SR-009s for roughly half the US price.

(FWIW, Boulder, CO looks to be the place for those who are into US-made audio. It seems to be the audio version of Silicon Valley)

Beetlejuice, I'm only a weekend warrior, but it's pretty clear that you havent even read my initial post. Give it a shot when you get a moment.

can't understand people busting a nut over being thrown out of a shop because they look loso, especially the part about coming back with the police. LOL.

and what can the police do?

Shops are private areas, the tenant can ban anybody he doesn't like from entering.

btw, the same thing happens also to Thais - and many westerners are still puzzled about why visible status is so important to many Thais...

1. The OP claimed he didnt look 'loso' when waved out of the shop in MBK (MBK, <deleted> - talk about a 'loso' dump !)

2. I'd be very interested to know, as a percentage, how many Thai shop-owners tell customers to leave when they have done nothing improper. Despite the replies in this thread, I'm thinking its still the minority, and they do it simply because they have no fear of retribution. We have hordes of Asian tourists in Australia who wander around our stores for hours on end, seeming looking - and in many cases handling - everything in the store, particularly clothes. Anyone found guilty of openly discriminating against a customer based on their nationality would end up in the media eventually, and no business wants that.

3. I believe I am the only person in this thread to mention 'going to the Police', and I was talking about Australian shops, particularly the 'old-school' crowd in Sydney's Haymarket where you were looked at quite strangely if you ventured into one of the Chinese shops back in the 80s. Whatever their thought processes, back then they had a very real fear of authority (particularly immigration and health inspectors) - any threat to 'call the cops' would have been taken seriously. That said, there are some chronic racists in Oz who continue to refer to the Chinese as 'chinks', 'chongs' and other pathetic variations on Chinese : II'm not onboard with that crowd.

Tyre-kickers are part and parcel of the retail experience - if Mama didn't want Junior besieged by them, she should have shelled out the rent to put him in one of those neat little hidey-holes that most of the high-end Thai handicraft places seem to occupy, usually up on the top floor away from the Hoi Polloi. Hell, she could have even slapped a 'By Appointment Only' sign on the door and had frosted glass installed to obscure the goodies inside from prying eyes. But she didn't do any of that - nope, she installed Junior in MBK. Pick any working girl in Soi 4 and ask her where the best shops are in Bangkok, and I can almost guarantee (short of fresh off the farm gals...) that her response will be 'MBK !, and there are hordes of Farang and Asian tourists there on any given day, all intent on finding a 'bargain'. Just the place for an amplifier that costs half a million baht ....

(if said working girl answers 'Yaowarrat Road !', cut your losses)

Some of the Chinese shopkeepers here in Oz seem pretty insular too, but I think a lot of that has been worn down with the increased popularity of Asian food over the last two decades, and an explosion in Asian supermarkets for those who want to cook at home. Still get the odd 'hairy eyeball' though but they know they cant openly discriminate against Gwailo in Oz. The Chinese have been here since the Gold Rush, but there have been waves of new arrivals since the 1970s.

Andrew - I'm not saying there are *no* dealers in Ploenchit - simply that they aren't *all* in the one location. I appreciate what you are saying though - no-one wants to tramp all over BKK if they dont have to.

Denizen, I'll see you on Soi 3. And again on Soi 5. And again around Soi 7/1 ....

One of the great things about planning to fail is that when someone tries to insult you with the jibe that you failed to plan, you can give it to them, both barrels, right in their fat faces. 'Ha, you ridiculous little man, this WAS my plan !'

If the roti crop fails, I'll go straight to bugs. Hell, I might even fry a few first till I get used to the taste.

Andrew - no, they aren't all at the top of the Ploenchit Center

Piyanas even have a store waaaayyyyy down on Sukhumvit 101, and others even further out including one in Sri Racha. There is a spreadsheet with links to every dealer in Thailand in the 'Audio' subforum if you are interested in exploring further, Personally, I much prefer the idea of auditioning gear in a standalone store on Suk 101 than in one of the shopping centres, but many of the hi-end dealers have located themselves within easy walking distance of Siam Paragon. High rents, but TiT.

http://www.piyanas.com/showroom/

Not if it was her money you opened your toy-shop with...

Yeah, that did occur to me - where does a young guy come by the capital to open a high-end audio store ? Might go a long way to explaining why they found themselves in MBK - surely *the* bargain-basement destination in inner BKK - surrounded by people selling cheap tat and endless rows of mobile phones. Not the market I'd be looking for - it would be like trying to open a Porsche dealership outside Tesco.

The upside, for me, is that I wont be revisiting MBK unless its at the point of a gun, so I am unlikely to ever encounter Mama EatMySh*t.

Buying online does you no good when Thai Customs get their hands on your package. No pun intended

Japan, and possibly S Korea are my shining lights at the moment - both high wage countries compared to Thailand, but I've seen examples of their prices in various places and its clear that if buy something that is made in Japan (or Korea), you can save serious dollars.

Example - Stax SR-009 headphones sell for roughly half the US sticker price in Japan, and they would be easy to bring back in without arousing Customs suspicion - it's just a pair of headphones, right ? A pair of headphones that sell for 5K USD ....

http://www.wooaudio.com/headphones/stax/sr009.html

Thai Customs would rape me if I bought those from Woo Audio in NYC.

For years, one of the worst insults an expat could throw at anyone was that they were so cheap they were forced to live on roti and chicken rice : the implication being that such staples put one on KSR with the backpacker crowd. I guess life has a very neat way of bringing things like that back to haunt us all - I plan to start at roti and chicken rice from 2014, and steadily work my way to panhandling on lower Suk. Investing all that leftover cash in low cap Thai stocks, I should be driving a Porsche by 2020. No pain, no gain.

I've had the odd run-in with cranky stallholders - women, fwiw, and usually the 'no have' wave - but I've never been explicitly told to p*ss off by a Thai business owner in an airconditioned shopping centre. Never.

Apologies to CarlBKK, but I wanted to bring this to a wider section of TV than the few here who seem to have an interest in high-end audio, because I believe this has less to do with high-end audio and more to do with the attitude of certain Thai merchants.

There are dealers in BKK that I like, and others I don't. You'll know pretty quickly which are anti-farang (i.e they consider any foreigner walking into the shop a timewaster) and which are open-minded and customer-friendly. Piyanas is good, I found Image to be good (and the Levinson dealer next door). XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. KS Sons at Paragon good. Worst so far is the new Hi End shop in MBK - great great stuff, but got waved OUT by an old Chinese woman sitting in there (mother of the youngish owner). I'm young, I was wearing smart shorts/polo shirt that day, I used to work for a hifi mag and I purchase high end hifi. She, nor the other two guys in there, ever considered that I might not be a timewaster.

I read that a couple of weeks back, and it has grated on me since. No argument that shop owners can refuse to serve a customer if that customer is clearly wasting their time/being abusive etc, but n this case CarlBKK's crime appears to be that he was a young Farang wearing shorts. I know confrontation is a big no-no with the Thais, but I would have gone to the owner and made my feelings very clear that I didn't appreciate being treated like that - in Australia, I'd get the Police involved. No question that stores that have shiny toys inside must have their share of tyre-kickers, but why open a brick-and-mortar store if you cant deal with that ? I've seen a very similar attitude from the Chinese at The Adelphi in Singapore - 5 or 6 floors dedicated almost entirely to high-end audio - but not one of them had the gall to 'wave me out'. I wonder if that woman waves hi-so Thais out of her store ? And how they would react if she did ?

If I seem to be over-reacting, its because this is a button-pusher for me. I try very hard not to get on the wrong side of Thai people - for very obvious reasons - but an attitude like that really raises my blood pressure, particularly in a country where so many people work very hard to get customers into their business. Exactly what a 'Hi-End Shop' is doing in a dump like MBK is anyone's guess - such businesses tend to cluster around CentralWorld and its ilk - but you just cant put yourself in front of that much foot traffic and sit there waving people out of your store, <deleted> ! I know - its their country, TiT, suck it up, you cant do shit to change anything - but I'm curious nonetheless.

Interested to hear from anyone who has had a similar experience and how you reacted to being told to 'hop it' for no apparent reason. The 'no have' wave has never worried me, and none of those stallholders has anything I cant find at the next stall anyway, but for toys with potentially high profit margins I find the treatment doled out to CarlBKK seriously xxxxxx up. As for the owner, it might be time to leave mama at home if she is going to get cranky with the customers - all that waving might kill the poor old duck ....

I suspect that having a camera or laptop in a your carry-on is no biggie - wheeling some monstrous box through the 'Nothing to Declare' exit may be a little tougher

My 'ideal' Thai woman looks a lot more like Pocahontas than Snow White, but those are cliched Disney images of beauty and everyone has a different view of the world. Based on some of the comments in the latest katoey thread, I'm not sure if some here insist on the presence of a vagina - it's down to a smile and a pulse, apparently.

Often wondered that myself. Chatuchak seems to be the biggest of the markets, but I find the place an overheated nightmare personally.

If I cant find what I want in Japan in 2014, I am going to have to fly to LA - it's appalling when you run the numbers and realise how cheaply Americans can pick up almost anything electronic, regardless of country of manufacture. How an item which is handmade in Britain, shipped to the US and stored in a warehouse can still be cheaper than the UK RRP mystifies me, but I've seen it repeatedly in audio. In many cases, the US sticker price is identical to the GBP price ! Save me, Akihabara.

OK - ixnay on the native English speaker - he just wants a blonde with a pulse

That blonde could hold my balls anytime - the crowd seemed to feel the same way

As a weekend warrior who tends to spend most of his money in bars, I've never bothered trying to get my VAT refunded at Swampy, but I'm curious. It has to be something totalling more than 5k baht from a 'participating' shop, and I'm guessing that I could easily get gouged - havent seen too many things in duty-free stores at Oz airports (beyond alcohol) that seem appreciably cheaper than standard Oz prices - in some cases, more expensive on things like cameras.

Happy to hear otherwise from those who have claimed the refund - it may well be that I've been wandering around Pantip with my eyes closed and just havent noticed the 'VAT Refund for Tourists' signs. I've seen a few in Emporium, hence the part about 'getting gouged' - the high-end handicraft shops may as well have a sign saying 'Come in, suckers !' at the front door. Still, 7 per cent is 7 per cent - figured I may as well look into this. Thanks in advance.

http://www.asiatraveltips.com/VATRefundsforTouristsinThailand.shtml

Who can claim VAT refunds?
- A non Thai visitor who has been in Thailand less than 180 days in a calendar year.
- A non Thai visitor who is not a crew member of an airline.
- A non Thai visitor who departs Thailand by air from an International airport.

How do you claim a VAT refund?
- A VAT refund will only apply if the goods purchased are taken out of Thailand within 60 days of purchase.
-The goods must be purchased from participating shops that display a "VAT Refund For Tourists" sign.
- On any one day, the goods purchased from an individual participating shop must not be less than 2,000 Baht including VAT, and the total amount claiming for refund must not be less than 5,000 Baht, including VAT.
- When you purchase the goods, ask the sales assistant to complete a VAT refund form, known as the P.P.10, and attach the original tax invoices to that form. Each P.P.10 must show a value of 2,000 Baht or more.
- You will need to know the method or refund you would prefer, and input that onto the P.P.10 form.
- You will need to show your passport to the sales assistant when you purchase the goods, to allow her to fill in the above mentioned form.
- When you are requesting the refund, the goods must be inspected by customs officers prior to check in. Show these customs officers the P.P.10 and tax invoices.

How will the refund be paid?
- If the refund does not exceed 10,000 Baht then you can have the refund made by cash (Thai Baht), draft, or a credit to your credit card.
- If the refund total does exceed 10,000 Baht then, refunds will be made by either draft or a credit to your credit card.

Are there any fees?
- If you request a cash refund a fee of 100 Baht will apply.
- For a draft refund a 100 Baht fee plus, the draft issuing fee at the rate charged by banks and postage fees.
- For credit card refunds, a 100 Baht fee plus money transfer fee at the rates charged by banks.

I've seen a few at the airport, but I'm usually either so focused on getting to the hotel (incoming) or depressed (outgoing) that I pay them little attention. By 'Farang', I'm assuming the OP means 'native English speakers', and I'm guessing that's a fairly small subset - even then, why fly all the way to Thailand to hang out with someone who looks and sounds much like the guys at home ?

This is either the world's most patient hitman or the stupidest. Surely proof that there is no God.

<p>Again, I'm confronted by folk who seem to want to live forever. I dont want to spend my final hours on a machine, but nor am I going to let the diet Nazis stop me eating the things I like - unless I suddenly turn into<em> Elvis circa 1972</em>, of course ........</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I look at Thais standing around in the hot sun selling chicken on a stick, and think 'God, what I wouldnt give to be that tough !'. I guess they figure it beats the hell out of squatting in a ricefield in 35 deg C : men, women and children.  Born tough, IMO - a little saturated fat is the least of their worries.</p>

I'm with tolley and others who say you're nuts to go back to someone's place alone!!! Securing the required number of signatures to have such a person committed springs to mind.

I promise not to do it again, Your Honor !

Actually, that's not entirely true - the dire prognostications of several in this thread have inspired me to take on my personal 'no-go' zone:

http://www.jakarta100bars.com/2009/01/stadium-jalan-hayam-wuruk.html

Read some of the comments below that review and ask yourself if you would even set foot in that club.