benw10

Interesting comments here. Obviously all cannot agree. After ten years of living here, this is my take:

1. A majority of ex-pats seem to fit into the catagory of trying to 're-invent ' themselves. Have no ties to anyone from whence they came, i.e. high school chums or University chums (if they ever went); sort of like social mis-fits....sad.

2. Do any of these guys ever look in the mirror? I have never seen such a terrible

combination of dress....stripes with checks; black socks in sandals that have more straps than one can count; Pants that are not pants, nor shorts, but what we used to call 'pedal pushers' that only women wore.

3. What is the deal with all of these backpacks? It seems that men are trying to be more like women, with every possible item carried with them....you are not in high school or college! Stores give you bags for purchases.....LOOSE the backpacks!!! Looks stupid.

4. You live here, learn the language!!! I will not talk to a farang who says they don't have to learn Thai....plain rude!!!

5. Police are a complete JOKE!!! Avoid them like the plague.

6. DO NOT suggest that I move, as I have two homes; a wife; a son; and have put one boy thru University; his sister thru high school; other sister thru private girl's school; and son in private English school. Let's just say, I have contributed to this society and the Thai people.

7. Tatoos and piercings say a lot about a person.............you be the judge.

phonetically: 'tum dee' die dee', tum chua die chua............learn it and remember it!!!

shocked at your ignorance i felt like i was reading a fox news bulletin

I don't understand why you should acknowledge a fellow farang you have never met ?? You dont know them, do you do this in any other situation/country?

Well said that man.

I've got plenty of farang friends, all of whom I've met in either work or social situations. The numpties who grin at me on the Skytrain or 7-Eleven get ignored.

In fact we were always taught to acknowledge people in gereral when you cross paths as a child in the Uk just as our parents did.

What I find odd here is that people dont just not respond they look act as if you are invisible. Im sure it can not be unique to expats in Thailand, however I have not received such cold responses in other SE Asian countries.

Some people come to Thailand with plenty of money and lose it all. Some people come with nothing and make a life here. Some people base their life around the idea of one day moving to their place in the sun, when conditions of right, but for many this day will never come. Some people live in the now.

I am always broke haha..but to live in Europe in the snow eating farang food and no temple round the corner to go to and speak with the monks, no Pad kaprao

or Gaeng Thai (แกงใต้) no going waddling in the stream catching fish (ทอดแหจับปลานิน) and maybe a million other things then i just couldn't live.

i make only 17000 baht a month dont work at all except on developing my website and taking the odd person to a temple for a tattoo and translating for them.

On this 17000 baht a month i live quite well only i dont have any savings.

I can understand someone who comes here lives in a beer bar, starbucks kfc and the pizza hut would prefer to go home and make money than live here broke, as they live the same western life here as they do at home...

but i cant eat that stuff i eat only thai food and for me a pad kaprao with a fried egg on top costs me 15 baht or 2 curries on rice i get for 20 to 25 baht

I also cant live without this food i dont eat bread and all that farang bull it isnt tasty and also expensive.

A coffee in starbucks costs 60 baht (uff what a waste thats 3 square meals for me which are much more delicious than a coffee)

I always wonder why some farang copme here as some people pack their tins of beans, marmit/vegemite, and all their other "home copmforts" and live on that when they are here...what is the point of being here if you cant adapt to the lifestyle and have to need your stuff from home country.

This is like taking your country with you.....why dont you just stay home if you dont like the real life/food/culture here?

i suppose some people only come for the women..which is as far as i am concerned stupid, as Thai women dont like farang they just like their money.

I couldn't take a wife who only wanted an easy life and a free ride but really all she is waiting for is me to die so she can go home and make a house and marry the thai she has always told me is her little brother or cousin.

I know a guy he employs his wife's little brother...well that guy is her boyfriend really i found out about it...but i ain't telling the farang because he has to learn himself.

Broke in Thailand? yes! But it is still better life than being middle class in Europe.

How many people in europe can afford a prawn and lemon grass soup every day eating out?

Even your average Thai can afford to eat fresh fish, prawns and lots of other lovely stuff on a "Broke" budget.

My 2 room condo apartment costs me 2700 baht a month and have internet for 300 a month 1mb another 100 baht a month gets me 50 cable tv channels...god i would have to work my ass off in Europe to keep all that together.

The broke thing isnt important as if you have a lot of money here then you either just blow it all on uinnecessary luxuries (ie starbucks) or some woman or thai guy syphons it out of you.

If you have nothing for them to take then they cant take it off you.

my god you talk shit. 20baht pays for what 5 baht can buy! quality! many asian friends 'only" eat asian while buying burger king as a treat in london, and west indian friends queue for goat stew on holidays while stuffing there faces with 'pret a manger' sandwiches and sushi the next your home is where your heart and hat is not your stomach or fisherman pants. your opinion is so arrogant and simplistic.

with all due respect the madness of songkram like the truly hideous and dangerous full moon party , maybe be exasberated by over enthusiastic holiday makers, but both are heavily sold and promoted by the local thais, who then complain afterwards while counting their $$$, cant have it both ways, farang and thai friends will join in some areas and have a blast, others will fall foul of foul water and bad drug deals. i will shore my self up with tens of illegal dvds cheap booze and use my umbrella as a sturdy shied if forced to buy antibiotics.

all this, just to amuse the tourist and bring them up to CM

It's not just Chiang Mai. I will as usual stock up with food and drink and let the poor unfortunates who have to go on the streets get colds, flu, eye infections, ear infections and - for some - dead. Happy New Year. RIP.

Yeah same insanity,stay safe chok dee,to those who go out,and sorry to say this,but farangs on holiday worst offenders at causing mayhem

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? actually in my last 2 neighbour-hoods not a farang (other than newbie me) stupid enough to be in the are during this holiday, and it was very much a thai festivity of water throwing , and no sublte guns big dirty buckets were more in use.! so is all the water throwing and the farang$$$ responsible for the 200plus road deaths?

Your dead wrong 'newby' louissmith...the insanity started when you tourist started comming over to throw water in a rude way. before that songkran was a polite holiday to honor the elders in a gentle way and the Thais saw it as an opportunity to milk your tourist $$$ and make fools of you....5555, the laugh is on you stupid falang who will be a primary target in the free for all. better stock up on your antibiotics!!!!

how do you feel about smokers

drunk drivers

mobile phone using drivers

children hanging off the back of trucks on the way to school

idiots without bike helmets

vendors selling corn syrup rich and palm oil fried foods outside school

no free condoms

crap education

amputations instead of appropriate surgery

child smuggling

money boys and bar girls

PATTAYA for fuc_ks sake

drugs are way down the list there are bigger more regular killers on the loose

I hate hard drugs and what they do to people so I can understand the Thai government's desire to stop it. I think its something the police should continuously enforce. However, this erratic extreme enforcement is worrisome because the police are given a license to do whatever they want. I won't be planning any trips to Thailand for awhile until this stops because I wouldn't want to get shot by an over zealous cop for being in the wrong place at the wrong time....

so often ignored the death rate due to cigarettes, alcohol, the lack of use of condoms and the new biggie here DIABETES all relevant !

And if you have lost loved ones due to Legal drugs like Cigarettes and Alcohol ?

I believe that legally they have to justify their statements based on actuarial tables. They can't just "suppose" the risk is higher based on medically inaccurate beliefs such as the one you have just stated (and you might be surprised to learn that due to better education on the matter, the biggest rise in NEW cases of HIV is among straights- enjoy!)

"S"

Kindly point me in the direction of this "new found stunning' evidence, backing up your statement

hes right, greater spread is amongst heterosexuals, especially those using prostitutes,having numerous partners and not knowing how to wear a condom. many homosexuals dont even have penetrative sex.

This convicted murderer is only 24! Then he should be spending the rest of his natural life in prison which I feel is a far worse punishment than the death penalty! It's been proven that the death penalty is no deterrent for violent crime!

There's my 2 cents!

especially as being a budhist he gets to come back so soon and try again.

yiekes?

mishap?

my friend sent me to place on soi 22 Sukhumvit, called Grenadine not cheap but damned good, choose between thai or ozzy meat!

if it was not april the first i may be standing in 7-11 unable to speak thai demanding a dongle!

thankyou

soi 22 is a place which if all goes well i,n thainland in general, and the current condo developments go ahead ,in 3 years time it could be very good.

please come and eat, though not sure how long we have left may only be till march 5th.

sorry about access to site, usually goes strait and but on occasion seems to be hard to find, its incomplete due to the current situation re business.

thanks for reply

ben at Grenadine

hi

this guy is so right

but i must add the 3 l's of location location location

i thought id done it all pretty well

good chef

good staff

international bistro food in a lovely small restaurant

reasonable prices

excellent response from customers and a nice review in GURU

but ground work lacked depth i thought my location was good (sukhumvit so1 22 opposite imperial queens park) could not have been more wrong.

the rent is double the norm, i trusted the word of former owners.

we have grown in 4 months from 37 to 67 percent of costs, but this is not fast enough growth to cover the rent

im about to be one of the large group of people who flush away a lot of money.

be absolutely sure of all external influences not just your determination and self belief,it aint enough

so many blame thailand when they fail, best to spend 3 months here getting to know the place before you invest a penny, fools rush in where others fear to tread.

so www.greandinebkk.com is now a eulogy rather than the start of a promotional website.

Sorry to hear, the expenses are so high. Rent is the biggest expense at many locations in Bangkok.

Your website does not seem to come up. I think I know your location. Is this location 60 sq.m and you pay 84,000 Baht rent?

Not sure why, Soi 22 is such a tough street for many businesses. You would think with the Imperial Queens Park Hotel being the largest hotel in Bangkok, it would be a good location. Some say the business changed around three years ago when the US military stopped staying there. It may change in a couple years when Washington Square is bulldozed down and Central puts up another Mall/ Hotel.

Right now, your business is a destination location and it will take time to develop. I’ll stop by and eat there. I like finding “gems” and every once in awhile I can tell other people about " This great little place"

www.sunbeltasiagroup.com

hi

this guy is so right

but i must add the 3 l's of location location location

i thought id done it all pretty well

good chef

good staff

international bistro food in a lovely small restaurant

reasonable prices

excellent response from customers and a nice review in GURU

but ground work lacked depth i thought my location was good (sukhumvit so1 22 opposite imperial queens park) could not have been more wrong.

the rent is double the norm, i trusted the word of former owners.

we have grown in 4 months from 37 to 67 percent of costs, but this is not fast enough growth to cover the rent

im about to be one of the large group of people who flush away a lot of money.

be absolutely sure of all external influences not just your determination and self belief,it aint enough

so many blame thailand when they fail, best to spend 3 months here getting to know the place before you invest a penny, fools rush in where others fear to tread.

so www.greandinebkk.com is now a eulogy rather than the start of a promotional website.

sarpesius -

I don't claim to know anything about starting a restaurant in Bangkok, but in Phuket it was difficult and time-consuming. (I'm the "Khun Woody" mentioned in an earlier post.)

I write computer books (see AskWoody). Five years ago my girlfriend, Add, and I started Khun Woody's Bakery, because the food available in Starbucks and other coffee shops on the island was dreadful. We now supply nearly all of the upscale coffee shops in Phuket, several restaurants, hotels, and the like. Two-and-a-half years ago we started the Sandwich Shoppe in Patong. Fifteen employees now, and growing fast. I'm looking for a second retail location, and thinking about franchising. So, yes, it is possible to start a successful restaurant in Thailand.

The trick is simple - and devilishly difficult: Outstanding staff. Great food.

You need both.

It took six months for my first work permit, and it was painful. I got the permit primarily for computer work, but there was a clause that let me open a bakery. That's got me out of the chicken-and-egg situation you describe, where you have to have a business to get a work permit, and you have to have a work permit to run a business. As far as I know, the advice you're getting from Sunbelt is 100% spot-on.

Beyond the work permit...

Starting a business in Phuket was full of pitfalls, hidden problems, frustrations, scams, and lots of hair-pulling. We never would've made it without Add's experience as manager of Starbucks Patong.

If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't even think of starting a pilot project until you find a Thai national who's talented and hard-working, and whom you can trust implicitly. Every farang investor or business owner needs a superb Thai manager. If you don't have a great Thai manager, you'll end up with high school girls behind the counter who don't care, just as you fear. You can't make it alone. Guaranteed. Especially in Thailand. You'll get called away from the shop for reasons you can't even begin to imagine at this point - and you will have to go. Better to have trained, capable, smiling staff doing all the work, all the time. It's good for them. It's good for you.

Don't plan on closing up shop for a day or two with nobody noticing because you're in a tourist area. Phuket's a tourist town, and we get plenty of tourists at the Sandwich Shoppe. But our core business - the people who keep the doors open - are expats and long-term tourists. Friends. Much of our walk-in traffic comes via word of mouth: treat customers well, and they'll be your best sales force.

As for great food... Phuket is littered with restaurants that don't make it. Most of them make/made good food. Few of them showed a real passion for the kind of food they serve.

The franchise chains are fine, as far as they go - Burger King makes a fair hamburger; Subway makes a decent sandwich, and so on. But Phuket is sophisticated enough that people here (both farang and khon Thai) know the difference between a Burger King burger and a really good burger, or a Subway sandwich and an outstanding sandwich. They know that Au Bon Pain or New York Deli don't serve real bagels, that McDonald's shakes don't have any ice cream, and that stringy white stuff on Pizza Company pizzas tastes like, well, stringy white stuff.

I, personally, am passionate about the kind of food I grew up with. That's what we serve. I can't make an H&H bagel or a Wolferman's English Muffin, but I can come close. Our sourdough starter comes from San Francisco. Our Toolhouse Cookies use Nestle chocolate chips, the way the cookie gods intended. Our sausage would make Jimmy Dean envious, maple syrup tastes like maple syrup, waffles and Death By Chocolate Cake come from my mom's old recipes. And so on. Add and I spent years looking for "authentic" food in Thailand, or figuring out a way to make it here.

Phuket customers are very sophisticated, and I suspect Bangkok's are similar. Our customers know good food. They know good service. Give your customers both.

Hope that helps. Your attitude counts a lot.

i think if you were not so reactionaryh it would be plainly obvious that my use of the word glorious prefered to the physical geography the visual the traditional and not the damaged, i suspect i tweaked a guity nerve. surely every country has parts which are glorious, if dispoiled by human it is no fault of the soil.

[a new generation of long stay and respectful farang will help turn this glorious country around.

i recommend , you read on daily base THE NATION and BANGKOKPOST, visit local chanell like on sophorn cable about crimes, or look thursdays police 11.30 pm channel 7.

BKKPost for high profiled corruption and other related things and the rest fr cirme

GLORIOUS COUNTRY ........just open your eyes and look around you ( for example waste,spoiling nature)

GLORIOUS SAME LIKE THE NEW RULES

he also forgets that it was the usa british and austarlians who nurtured the repugnant sex trade that has so restricted the countries development and fostered its somewhat negative image amongst so many.still producing 60% of foreign male "tourism"

leading to an horific incidence of aids made worse by the farang ignorance that to be active is safe and the closet homosexual to carry the disease to his spouse or partner elsewhere.

i so want to live here and a few rules may need to be adhered to but lets hope a new generation of long stay and respectful farang will help turn this glorious country around.

oops as it says im a newbie and keep erasing the quote to which my diatribe refers, but if you have been reading all the bits im sure which narrow minded facist got my goat

I am astonished than any one person would consider another a cheat on the basis of shifting funds to enable succesful application to stay; if that person is then able to support themselves, eat out, rent a room, pay for mediacal care, suport a family or a whore in an essentially 3rd world nation, where one would expext gratitude for any form of spending providing a respect for this beautiful but painfully floored , ill educated, abused nation is maintained .(general response not just to chap above ,im sorry you just beacme the portal)

[

surely they as individuals irespective of name may be considered scots.

name=VTR1000' date='2006-08-19 20:29:37' post='856384]

Thai police offer reward for missing British tourist

BANGKOK: -- Thai police Saturday offered a reward for any sighting - dead or alive - of a British law student who went missing while white-water rafting near the holiday island of Phuket.

The search for the student Shenaz Kapoor, 22, from Dundee, Scotland, started when she fell in the fast-running water Tuesday at a popular rafting spot, but has been hampered by bad weather.

The local authorities attempted without much success use a local dam to reduce the water flow so that a thorough search of the river might be possible.

Kapoor is the second foreign national to have been lost while white-water rafting in Thailand within a week. The body of a Canadian woman was recovered from the Pai River in the north last Monday.

Kapoor had used part of her year off to work with Tsunami orphans in southern Thailand and was due to start the final year of a law degree at Dundee University in September. The incident happened in the Ton Parawat national park at Pha Ngan.

A local police spokesman told Thai radio that a 20,000-baht (500 dollars) reward had been offered to encourage local people to keep their eyes open because it was important to the family that they know without doubt the fate of the young woman.

Her grandfather, Ibrahim Okhai, is the head of the prominent Okhai business family in Dundee. She was a leading figure in her university's Islamic Society.

Okhai told the local Herald newspaper that the family had not given up hope: 'We gave her some spending money for the trip but she only used a fraction of it and gave the rest away. That's the type of person she is.'

Robin White, her university course adviser, told the Scotsman that 'Shenaz was not only a gifted student, she was also a very popular figure within the school, and she will be sadly missed by us all at the university.'

--DPA 2006-08-19

Yes, a very sad story and unfortunately the way it looks, an unfortunate end to a young person in the prime of their life.

As an aside though - are the press getting things a little mixed up here? Since when have Shenaz Kapoor and/or Ibrahim Okhai been Scottish names?

McKapoor or MacOkhai maybe ... but ...

the edgware road are w2 london

What a lot of prejudiced rubbish. How many of you self-righteous posters have tried to "fit in" in Thailand by converting to Buddhism or learning to read/write and speak the language? And have you failed to notice the number of existing mosques here? My first thought is good, may be able to get some decent babaganoush!

why play the racialist and predudist card, say something constructive.

could you please tell me where thier is a muslim arab town settlement outside of the arab nations, where it has been intergrated and working within a different community succesfully.

i am in no way being racialist but only realistic, i would love to see this type of thing work, but i would hate to see it ruin an area of bangkok, this should take a lot of planning and research to get it right, and not just rush into the planning and take the attitude 'lets see how it pans out'

if you need a fix of arabian dishes well go no further than the grace hotel and the immediate area.

don,t forget the thais will not be as lenient as the west, if there are problems the reprisals by the thais will be swift. and that can escallate any situations,

be very carefull and thoughtfull in the early planning stages of this type of project.

Do not trust anyone......and be extremely sceptical about the business figures which are presented to you........

Very true

.

You are far better starting a new business from scratch with your own new ideas than buying a so called established business which has more than likely run it`s course and is now struggling.

Another newbie witha little cash about to jump in to the buisness quagmire of bkk, i found this one entry the most encouraging, i had more exciting plans, but i think a bar in Silom would set me up in bkk giving me the time and experience to learn and develop coping skills in this highly competitive market and exhilirating city i hope to make mt home.

any advice, legal or otherwise most welcome.