Mark Wolfe

The stories are simply not edited. They also don't always make sense:

Managers of the three resorts identified in the newspaper story refused to confirm or deny that their hotels were up for sale.

An official of Samui Buri Resort and Spa, one of the four Samui hotels identified by the Bangkok newspaper as offered for sale...

Is it three or four?

And why are only two mentioned in the Express article, when they are taking their info from an article in the Nation?

You can tell that a non-native English speaker is looking over the articles since there is a general problem with prepositions.

They were to exit in the border in Ubon Ratchathani...

At least four big hotels on Koh Samui are up for sale as the global economic crisis and Thailand's political unrest continue to deal big blows on the country's tourism industry, The Nation newspaper has reported.

The fact is that the local content is very limited (and the front page lead is just a regurgitation of another paper's story). I can tell you that I used to edit and totally re-write 3,000 words in a four-hour shift at the national wire service in Taiwan (The Central News Agency).

Most of the Express is news services' reports, which need little if any editing.

Not only that, but the editorial is garbage:

The local government, under the leadership of Mayor Ramnet Jaikwang, has been taking concrete steps to address most of the these problems ("...from lack of basic services and inadequate infrastructure to damage to the environment...") and we have been witnessing improvements that we hope will continue.

What improvements? Even the most basic public works -- the street lights -- don't work. Putting asphalt on the strip of road by Nathon Pier and pretty sidewalks must have cost a bit and was not a priority above such things as street lights, faulty drain grates and potholes around the island.

What I can't understand is why such poor quality is published? Surely these people can read their own paper.

Ask any sauropod, Samui and all of Thailand was ruined about 65 million years ago.

The Kodak shop on the main road in Lamai does stock it, although, I must be fair, I tried it once, and the expiry date had not yet come, but the photos were oddly washed out. I have been using the same Minolta SRT-201 since I purchased it new in about 1974 (?) and it has never failed me.

The photo shop I used in Taipei kept their films in refrigerated storage, something that would be a head-scratcher for the vendors here, I am sure.

By the way, I am seriously thinking of selling that camera so it anyone is interested, PM me.

I think it means the scams which the locals run with the BIB.

That seems like a very, very long stretch, bordering on paranoia.

Other forms of theft will be an increase in driving incidents/accidents with the locals...

An increase in driving incidents/accidents with the locals is a form of theft? You lost me there.

Care to introduce yourself, rysamui?

Are a person of integrity and stability who can be trusted with the common sense not to plan to bring a chunk of kryptonite in my vicinity since logic would dictate that such action might not be the most intelligent move, in the long run?

I've never heard anyone not complain about some aspect of where they live, be it London or Bangkok. Unless you are imprisoned where you live, you most likely are where you are by choice.

I have heard from many sources that the staff (in all bars) plays what they want when "the man" is away.

Do You Have A Love - Hate Relationship With Koh Samui

No.

It is what it is, and what you make of it.

The fact is that there are many interesting Thai songs that could be played along with Western music. I suspect that a little local color would be appreciated by tourists.

I wonder why Bob and reggae have come to symbolize "beach tunes"?

Some Thai music is quite good, but you have to hunt for it.

And what I was mostly talking about was not bars - there they play ghastly hip hop no-brainer music. I was referring to beachfront places.

Why not just play 106.1 FM from the Caymans? Good contemporary sounds...or better yet, the sound of the surf (no music at all).

Some of the power is out in Lamai right now.

just had my bike nicked about 1 week ago.

Motorbike, right? Was it new? A special breed?

Care to post a photo and license plate number so we can watch for it?

I was never much of a Bob Marley fan to begin with. Not that his music was "bad" or anything, but it just never resonated with me.

However, it seems that nowadays, everywhere you go on the beach you hear Bob. The first hundred or so times you hear Buffalo Soldier or Get Up, Stand Up, etal, you think: "Well, they've played the hel_l out of that."

But it just goes on and on and on....

It's like someone has decided to play Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer every day on the beach. It's maddening.

I propose a moratorium on Bob Marley music in Samui for at least the next 20 years. Actually, I'd like to ban his music forever, but that seems slightly harsh.

Everyone agrees with me, right?

This is what we were told by the electric company when we called to find out why the power was off. Argue with them about it.

If they post, I will.

I would expect the power company to tell you any old song and dance to keep you quiet. Sort of the equivalent of the dog ate my homework. You didn't stop to think if it was a tall tale?

Mark: "What's with all these power outages?"

Power Company: "Uh, it's the lightning. It's the ...uh, the lighting hits the ...uh, cable, yes, the cable...and then it, let's see...it, uh...oh, I know! It damages the cable!"

Mark: "Can't you fix the cable or prevent this? It never used to go out so much."

Power Company: "Oh, well, uh...the thing is that the cable is, uh...like...oh, I know! It's underwater! That's it! The cable is underwater and it, uh, the lighting damages the cable under the sea and boats have to come and fix it...but we don't have boats, er, I mean we don't have, ...uh, I mean the boats are busy."

Mark: "Oh, well, you're the electric company, you should know. Thanks."

Power Company: "My pleasure."

Transliteration, you mean...

On the side of possibilities, is there no way to adequately represent all the sounds (fairly closely) in non-English languages with English pronunciation using the ABC? Meaning without pronunciation cribs?

I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt this is a concern.

"Gosh, lighting strikes...we never thought of that!"

I'm not an expert or even a general knowledge guy, but I believe it safe to assume that safeguards of international quality have been put into place for such events. This doesn't happen in developed countries.

Unless of course we are talking about Thailand's underwater cable being a string with two tin cans at the ends....

If I had to bet, I'd say it was decaying infrastructure of some sort. The "lightning traveling down a cable under the sea damaging the cable (How? Does it hit some anomaly along the way? If electricity surges along a path, it continues until it meets resistance, like your toaster. I'd believe surface substations might be affected, circuit breakers and what not, but not the actual cable on the sea bed.)" sounds counter-intuitive.

But let's have some electrical engineer weigh in. Is it possible to have a lightning strike (where would it hit to enter the underwater main cable?) damage an underwater cable such that the cable would have to be raised from the deep for repairs?

Same situation in Taipei, where they rewrite the english name of the road every couple of years becouse the sound is not correct.

This is incorrect. It's a question of who has the power to convert the "official usage" to use which Romanization system for Mandarin in Taiwan. Neither of the the systems are perfect representations of the correct pronunciations.

Hanyu Pinyin to be standard system in 2009

ROMANIZATION: While government agencies will be required to use the China-developed system, individuals will be given a choice, an official said

By Shih Hsiu-Chuan

STAFF REPORTER

Thursday, Sep 18, 2008, Page 2

The government plans to make Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音) the standard system of Romanization nationwide starting on Jan. 1, an official with the Ministry of Education said yesterday.

Government agencies will be compelled to adopt Hanyu Pinyin, a Chinese Romanization system developed by the People’s Republic of China, Chen Hsuch-yu (陳雪玉), executive-secretary and senior inspector of the ministry’s National Languages Committee (NLC), said in a telephone interview.

While the public will be widely encouraged to use the system, individual preferences on which Romanization system to use will be respected when it comes to personal matters such as the spelling of their surnames, Chen said.

To facilitate the change, “we will refer the Guidelines of Using Chinese Phonetic Spelling (中文譯音使用原則) to the Executive Yuan for review within a month,” Chen said.

The guidelines, enacted by the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government in 2002, stipulate that the official Romanization system for Chinese in the country is Tongyong Pinyin (通用拼音), but its use is not mandatory.

This leads me to something I said earlier, that even with Romanization, you need to know how certain sounds are pronounced -- even though you are using ABCs. An initial "c" in mainland China using Pinyin is pronounced something like "ts". If you didn't have this crib, you'd mispronounce that every time.

The fact is, and what Samui04 was driving at was that (I think) was that languages ought to be Romanized such that everyone could just look at the script and read it -- without having to study the exceptions. That, I think, is impossible.

Hanyu vs. Tongyong

And yes, this isn't pure Samui/KP/KT subject matter, but everyone native here does speak a non-Romanized language. And speaking of which, why on earth confuse people with "ph" in Thai? If you don't know any better, and most outside the country -- English speakers -- would assume "ph" to be pronounced "f" as in "photo."

So Phuket is a rather funny place name...I don't know the history, but why on earth add "h" when it is not pronounced and only leads to confusion?

How could lightning strike an underwater cable? This is impossible.

There were intense lightning storms in the past and my power was not affected nearly as much if at all.

I was not aware that lightning hitting something underwater (cables on the sea bed) was common knowledge. I must be uncommon.

OP:

ive been hunting for a bar now around samui phangan area,,i had one in pattaya but dont want go back there

Why don't you want to go back there?

Odd how these "rolling black/brown outs" due to "repairs" happen to coincide with rain storms....

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Handbook, under the Restricted Jobs List is:

Legal or litigation service

Unless this is out of date, aren't a lot of people breaking this law?

Also:

List 1

Business that aliens are not permitted to do for special reasons:

(3) Raising animals (Aren't some foreigners raising pigs here?)

(5) Fishing for aquatic animals in Thai waters and Thailand’s exclusive economic zones (Hide that fishing pole!)

(9) Dealing in land. (Again, lots of people ought to be breaking this law.)

SBK:

Even gambling for fun is illegal in Thailand....

Can this be true? What about the lottery tickets I buy every two weeks and never win anything with? Granted, losing every time isn't fun, but is it illegal too?

Is there a legal reference to support this allegation?

koheesti:

Yet you yourself say in your own previous post that paracetamol are aspirin. Maybe it's just me but I took your reply to my little story to mean that you thought I wasn't telling the truth.

No, what I said was: "Who keeps so many aspirins (which is basically what these are, like ibuprofen) in the house?"

I was careful when I wrote that. Paracetamol, aspirin and ibuprofen are all basically the same -- headache/minor pain medicines.

As for telling the truth, you got me wrong there; I absolutely believe you. I am just wondering what sort of dummkopf would take a bottle of paracetamol. You must have the patience of Job. A stunt like that would have made it clearer than ever that she needed to be shown the exit.

So, Stiggy, I assume that your life-threatening incident prevented you from designating where you were taken, so where would you elect to go if you had a choice in Samui for treatment of a serious condition or injury?

I don't know, Neeranam when did Khon Kaen City lose its "perfection"? Or is that the Xanadu of Thailand?

Most of the paracetamol here is sold in blister packs

Which is still true and the bottle you showed here was not purchased in Thailand. And it is not paracetamol, it is aspirin. (And they are about to expire.)

That's Mr. Sherlock to you....

And I did say: "Or was this some big bottle full of them?"

In England and Wales on average approximately 130 deaths per year can be directly attributed to paracetamol alone. In the vast majority of these cases the overdose is deliberate, and these deaths are returned as certain or probable suicides. In a small number of cases the overdose was intentional but the individual's expectation was not to cause death. Such deaths may be recorded as accidental.

-- Web page

30 pills of 500mg can cause liver damage which can lead to death.

I was interested in the sentence: "In a small number of cases the overdose was intentional but the individual's expectation was not to cause death."

How does that work?

"Jesus! My head is killing me! Fck it! I'll take the whole bottle!"

Paracetamol is made from coal tar.

36,000 baht for oxygen is outrageous. Is there no medical costs and treatment oversight?

BigC:

why do we drive our birds into over doses ???

Sounds like you need to increase the dosage of baht. Increase dosages of baht tend to decrease the incidence of quarreling, sullenness, the "silent treatment," and other apparently infantile behaviors. However, like some other drugs, a resistance to baht can form, whereby you will need to steadily increase the dosage over time as the symptoms reappear.