mattias33

You won the 1st prize for generalization

Hope its not another playstation 2. I have 4 now. Tell me i won something drinkable?

Well, there's always a first time that mattias and I agree on something

As for the hippie subforum, do hippies have computers?

Is The Grateful Dead dead?

well, according to human kinds secret history, the majority of the Woodstock audience hitch hiked immediately after the festival to KPN. But, you know - hippies take it easy. So on the way over some stopped at Isle of Wright, Kreta and India and some even went to Bali accidental, but the ones who came, are still here.

Those hippies are amazing. Hitch hiking from New york to Kpg. Trought Kreta. They dicerve to be left in peace after that performance.

at that time, mattias33, even shipowner and captains were asked for lifts...

...the first tourists (=tramper) to Samui came by fisher boats

So true birdman. Still you have to be impressed that even though it was for free, it´s one hel_l of a trip. I mean, here i am, crying about the 11 hour flight from Copenhagen to Bkk. If i´m sometimes forced (due to cheaper fares) to do a stop on the way it´s about all i can take. Imagine what the hippies went trought on their way here. We should leave those guys alone. Let them have their free spirit kpg life in peace, after all, they dont disturb me at all. I dont plann to go to kpg anywere in the near future... . Or infact maybe ever!

What was this thread about again?

Ohh, kpg subforum. Sorry op.

Well, there's always a first time that mattias and I agree on something

As for the hippie subforum, do hippies have computers?

Is The Grateful Dead dead?

well, according to human kinds secret history, the majority of the Woodstock audience hitch hiked immediately after the festival to KPN. But, you know - hippies take it easy. So on the way over some stopped at Isle of Wright, Kreta and India and some even went to Bali accidental, but the ones who came, are still here.

Those hippies are amazing. Hitch hiking from New york to Kpg. Trought Kreta. They dicerve to be left in peace after that performance.

Would be interesting to hear somebody from koh tao speak up. Or are you guys to busy with tourists to be on this forum? .

I went to Bkk last monday, with lomprayha service, and from samui we were about 10 people. A few more jumped on in Pagnan. But in koh Tao the boat really filled up! Many of the people i spoke to had gone Bkk-koh tao, and back the same. Spent their whole holiday there. They were just fed up with the high prices on samui they said. A few of them. Arrived at 9 in the evening in kao san road wich i never ever seen that empty. That was a strange feeling. Like a bomb had hit or a virus. Felt like i was almost all alone in this area wich i know as a sure card to meet alot of people. Very scary! .

Got back yesterday, night train. Song serm service, i forgot the name of the boat, rung rang or something like that, but the boat was packed. Only my family and less than 10 more jumped of in Samui. Listening around among these tourists, i got the oppinion most of them where going to koh tao. Offcourse it is possible than a fair lot went to the fmp awell,

Almost everybody from Samui, who takes the train and bus to/from BKK go via URT/Don Sak not via Chumbon/KT/KPN. No wonder only a handful people get on/of at Samui. Probable only the ignorant ones and the ferry enthusiasts.

Yes. Also i went from bkk via donsak to samui. Just that majority of the people on the boat didnt jump of in samui. They followed the boat further. And like i said the lomprayha service didnt have many customers from samui. According to Bkk air they are half empty. So the people that claim that tourism is doing good, need to also explain how the tourits come here? Swimming?

Haven't you heard about the tunnel ?

From England to france? Or Sweden-Denmark? Yep, heard of both of them. Drove both of them to be honest. .

Ok, back to topic....

4 hours? From Samui to Koh Tao just an hour and a half.

True. Sorry for that typo. 4 hours from chumporn though.

Would be interesting to hear somebody from koh tao speak up. Or are you guys to busy with tourists to be on this forum? .

I went to Bkk last monday, with lomprayha service, and from samui we were about 10 people. A few more jumped on in Pagnan. But in koh Tao the boat really filled up! Many of the people i spoke to had gone Bkk-koh tao, and back the same. Spent their whole holiday there. They were just fed up with the high prices on samui they said. A few of them. Arrived at 9 in the evening in kao san road wich i never ever seen that empty. That was a strange feeling. Like a bomb had hit or a virus. Felt like i was almost all alone in this area wich i know as a sure card to meet alot of people. Very scary! .

Got back yesterday, night train. Song serm service, i forgot the name of the boat, rung rang or something like that, but the boat was packed. Only my family and less than 10 more jumped of in Samui. Listening around among these tourists, i got the oppinion most of them where going to koh tao. Offcourse it is possible than a fair lot went to the fmp awell,

Almost everybody from Samui, who takes the train and bus to/from BKK go via URT/Don Sak not via Chumbon/KT/KPN. No wonder only a handful people get on/of at Samui. Probable only the ignorant ones and the ferry enthusiasts.

Yes. Also i went from bkk via donsak to samui. Just that majority of the people on the boat didnt jump of in samui. They followed the boat further. And like i said the lomprayha service didnt have many customers from samui. According to Bkk air they are half empty. So the people that claim that tourism is doing good, need to also explain how the tourits come here? Swimming?

Somebody said that the average westerner living on samui spends the day drinking beer, hahaha. I know the average westerner (or i think so) on koh pagnan is a oldie goldie hippie, , (joking halfway). Now, i´m just curios, what kind of people live on Koh tao? I reccon there´ll be alot of divers there, running their dive company right? But other than that? I mean, it is quite the hassle to get there, 4 hours with boat either from samui or mainland. What is it that makes the island worth living on. What would the general expat say is so much better on koh tao than for instans samui, that it is worth it? Is there something in particular that you guys just love about the place?

Curios

Well, there's always a first time that mattias and I agree on something

As for the hippie subforum, do hippies have computers?

Yeah, look at that. Lets not make it a habbit sbk!

Nowadays everybody have computers.

I'll put it to admin, spike but I wouldn't count on it. It doesn't seem that there are that many Phangan posters to fill a subforum.

A search of Phangan titles yields 6 pages of posts out of a grand total of 84.

Koh Tao would probably not even fill a page of posts.

True. Cant remember the last time i read something from a koh tao member. Sad actually, i wouldnt mind reading some news from that place.

The op suggestion of a phangan subforum is not serious. You guys can try it out, but i doubt there will be action enough to keep it interesting.

How about a "hippie"- subforum. For all retired hippies all over thailand? Maybe that would generate enough traffic? .

Sorry, but seriously, maybe better off if kept like it is. We´ll try to leave some space for you guys, you´re welcome in this forum. And koh tao people, come on, start posting!

Why would a hotel/resort, pay more than 50,000 per month for a western F&B manager? A Thai manager can do it just as well, and 99% of the time, do it much better. Won't get into all the reasons why, just need say he is Thai, can speak Thai, understands Thai staff.

When it comes to hotel managing i dont at all agree that a thai would do it anywhere near as good as a westerner. Honestly. Many hotels dont rent to thais at all, and all hotels on this island for sure have 98% western customers, or more. The thing in the managers job that needs a thai, a good manager have thais among the staff that helps him out with. Understanding the Thai things is one thing, but the thing a thai can´t is understanding his customers, and thats the more important thing. Also westerners have a complete different understanding in areas like keeping the fridge full so everything on the menu can be served, serving food at the same time for everybody on the table etc. I was recently living 3 days in a hotel in surath. Thai managed. For 3 days i tried to order ham and cheese sandwich and got the answer "solly, no cheese". The hotel was door to door to 7/11. Thai just have no understanding for certain things that are important in westerners eyes. Thai manager in a hotel in surath, were the customers are 80 % thai, fine. In samui, no way.

Ohh, and when it comes to staff. My old gardener just got a new job. He asked me when i offered him the job "is it falang or thai owners/managers?". He told me that he dont work with thai managers. Have to be farang. Thais is only problem he said. Happy one day and fired the next. Speak very "strong words" to the staff.

Would be interesting to hear somebody from koh tao speak up. Or are you guys to busy with tourists to be on this forum? .

I went to Bkk last monday, with lomprayha service, and from samui we were about 10 people. A few more jumped on in Pagnan. But in koh Tao the boat really filled up! Many of the people i spoke to had gone Bkk-koh tao, and back the same. Spent their whole holiday there. They were just fed up with the high prices on samui they said. A few of them. Arrived at 9 in the evening in kao san road wich i never ever seen that empty. That was a strange feeling. Like a bomb had hit or a virus. Felt like i was almost all alone in this area wich i know as a sure card to meet alot of people. Very scary! .

Got back yesterday, night train. Song serm service, i forgot the name of the boat, rung rang or something like that, but the boat was packed. Only my family and less than 10 more jumped of in Samui. Listening around among these tourists, i got the oppinion most of them where going to koh tao. Offcourse it is possible than a fair lot went to the fmp awell, but still, question remains:

How is koh tao tourism doing?

Sitting in fron of the com with the door open, and if i look to the left, there`s the nice fullmoon. Pretty nice actually. Bit of a luck it turned out to be such a skyclear night. .

Ok, what the heck. Let´s do it. Bbq a nice steak for my wife and open a bottle of red wine. I hope you didnt fool me, it´s a special thing right? .

Sure looks nice, anyway.

You old romantic you Mattias..

Guess what, total succes! She loved it (at least she said so). Unfortunately the moon almost left our view before my meal was ready for consumtion. If i knew about it earlier i might plann it so i left the computer table an hour before!

She didnt care to much of the moon anyway, hardly commented on it when i pointed it out.. .

Well, dont blame a man for trying.

For kidney problems i was told a year ago in samui inter that they need BOTH urin test AND ct-scan to be sure. Actually if the urintest shows blood in the urin they can be sure already, but the ct-scan can show nothing and still there is a problem. I found this out since i as usuall couldnt "piss on order" and it was a must to do urin test since ct-scan showed nothing.

My oppinions about Bkk-hospital i leave out for this time. Lets just say i as usuall dont agree with highdiver and as usuall i think he is speaking with very limited experience. .

Sitting in fron of the com with the door open, and if i look to the left, there`s the nice fullmoon. Pretty nice actually. Bit of a luck it turned out to be such a skyclear night. .

Ok, what the heck. Let´s do it. Bbq a nice steak for my wife and open a bottle of red wine. I hope you didnt fool me, it´s a special thing right? .

Sure looks nice, anyway.

Is it possible we can put this to a vote???

All of you who believe the prices Bangkok airways charge has a negative effect on the samui economy say " Eye!!"

Those who think Bangkok Airways are well within their rights to charge what they want say "neigh"

EYE!!

Snake, i consider this a very good post. However, if you want to be a regular poster here with somekind of credability to you, you need to be a little more agressive. For instans you can start by calling another poster "low iq". If this does not do the job, you try to find out were the poster live, and then you go on saying "you been living to long in that area". If you read thai, you could try pitying people that dont, or, even better, try to see if you can telll somebody they forgotten to take their medicin. Whatever you do though, stop the track your on to now. Real facts and common thinking wont make it over here. We are suppose to love that Bkk air screw us over and over again, and if we dont, laopao and HD will not stop til we do. Dont know why, but this is the case. Just leave it.

Ps, if you ever run completely out of arguments you can always pick on the English of the poster. Dosent matter if your a native speaker yourself, its the last way out of it when you loose arguments. Ds.

Laopao and Highdiver took the angle that "bkk air did the investments and took the risks so therefore they are allowed to rip us off" in this thread. If you are infact only consumers of their service and not involved in any other way, i suppose your holdingpoint is nice. But rare. Look, in my country this monopoly would not be possible. You can buy land, build the only airport around, but never could you forbide competition. It is a well known fact that a situation like that is never good in the end for the paying customer. That the idea from a buisness point of view is smart, building a airport on a island, the only airport, and being alone in pricing, no doubt about it, but i think this thread should really be more about us islanders point of views than the people that live on us.

Those half empty planes they talk about in the op, would be able to fill up if the pricing was better. When me, my wife, and son, go to Bkk, we save a month rent almost if we choose lomprayha compared to Bkk air.

If we go with the car, the savings equals nice stops on the way with hotels and dinners out.

It would be possible for government to put up a difference on Bkk air fare to give people on this island same fares as the mainland. If not, the monopoly should be cancelled. Force Bkk air to stop overcharging this leg only when they fly everything else cheaper.

Koohesti got a clear point, the bkk air idea is really not that far from the taxiscammers. It is taking advantage of the tourist that dont have any other choice in both cases, and i know for a fact that it do scare many tourists off, not coming back the next year.

If you sit in Bkk, like many do, and plan to go a week to one of the islands in the south. You do the math. A family of 4. Phuket versus Samui. Phuket shaped up. They lower the hotel prices. While samui did nothing. You add the few thousand extra per flight ticket, more exp taxis, more exp roomrates. The family of 4 look at savings up to 100k if they choose phuket instead of samui for their week in the south. At least thats what a family i recently spoke to calculated in their case. so what do you choose then? Add to that the maybe flooded roads, and a powerbrake per day. Garbage situation is also nasty in certain areas of chaweng. Beachroad has a terrible smell sometimes. All this adds up. I think the tourism assosiation needs to sit down and start taking this seriously. Really.

It is clear, that tourist numbers will decrease day by day now. Many tourists, who were stuck here because of the BKK chaos can go home now. The majority of new tourists cancelled their trips for the next 2 weeks fearing another chaos. Arrivals afterwards cancelled partly as well or make their decision to come or not in the next days.

But the traffic on the island is still like nothing happened. Almost like in a city during daytime between Bangkok Hospital and Menam. And it is low season as well...

The taxi price to fisherman's village can be bargained down to 300 THB, if you bargain right. Still expansive for Thailand, but not for the majority of tourists. And almost every local or expat has own transportation.

I know. I was more trying to get the price the general tourist is offered as a experient for my friend who is doing a newsthing about this stuff. Not good bargain, only the simple truth about taximeter and set pricelist. If i where about to take the taxi i would bargain better.

Questions for you tourism experts...

Doesn't each time someone enters the country count as a tourist entry? In other words, if in the old days I made 12 border runs each year then I would count as 12 towards the overall number of 690,000 Americans who visited Thailand. And since the visa regualtions have changed and I had to get an actual visa and now only cross the border 4 times a year, that would mean that my personal contribution to tourism has decreased by 3 times.

Or does Thailand count each unique person only one time no matter how many times he or she enters the country?

Or do they only count how many are staying at hotels/resorts?

Also, do tourist counts include any foreigner that comes into the country for whatever reason, even if on business? If not, how can they tell by counting plane tickets, border crossings or hotel rooms how many came as tourists and how many for other reasons? If they count the number of visas issued, again, does that mean someeone adds to the total each time they enter the country?

I realy dont know, but i guess what matters is that when they all in tourism buisness have the oppinion that numbers are down they are down. Hotels, have stats over their last 10 years, airlines same, and travelagents, motorbikerenters, restaurants etc, etc.

With your teori maybe the numbers will go up with the new 15 day VoA-rules. .

And yeah, i drove chaweng beachroad yesterday evening and i have to say i never seen that road empty on people. Was actually pretty nice. Even the tailors didnt bother to stand outside their shop since there were rarely anybody to disturb. After a few beers offcourse i had to do my regular negoitiating with the Taxidrivers before i took my bike and drove home. Chaweng-fishermans village 400 baht. I said "i´m a tourist, when i arrived to samui they told me that i should ask for taxi meter, do you have that?" they say nobody have it in samui. I said "ok, then i was told that if you dont have a taximeter you should have a set fare pricelist on your passenger seat". They knew very well what i was talking about and when i said "set" they filled in with "pricelist". They told me that the reason they didnt have it was that after midnight nobody use it. I went throught this discussion with 3 drivers. They all said if i wanted to go to fishermans it is 400 baht.

I have to assume that 90% of the buisness on samui is depending on tourists? Maybe even on this forum? So, how can there be such a support for the things that scare tourists away? High airfares, no real taxiservice, overpriced hotels?

Beats me.

Posting "who said what" is redicoulus. It is all there to read. Most of the statements in your first post in this thread, is proven wrong and false already in the article the op in the tourism down thread provide. If you dont see that, you can go on thinking of yourself as a man with much knowledge and insight and credabillity. Fact remains that tourist numbers are going terribly down on Samui. You have some reason to claim otherwise but i doubt anybody beleive you. At least i don´t.

Reason for edit: mixed up the threads.

2. Once again i beg to differ. i am very involved in Samui tourist association as well as being invested in tourist related business.. it is a fact that there are more tourist this year then last year. if you care to dispute this please do provide facts.. not hear say from bar owners..

Please read the op.

***no flaming***. You claim everybody knows nothing about this but you. As usuall.

In this case we have statements from airport manager. We have statements from tourist athority of thailand, but that is people without any knowledge. Highdiver is the one to ask. Samui tourism is going up, not down, everybody that claim otherwise is either a person with low iq, or been living in the ghostroad to long.

***no flaming***

Bangkok Air is a good airline. They prize themselves as a boutique airline. Expect good service. Don't expect cheap price.

I particulary enjoy the long walks they provide you with. In swampi, flying with bka you get to walk about 3 km. Then you get another good 1,5 km walk arriving in samui, AFTER you picked up your bag. Now this is what i call "boutique airline".

Everybody who´s not yet been in Europe, try to go there before using words like "boutique".

You are joking!

Catcantoo opens in the morning so yes, you should be able to have ribs at lunchtime. Also has a jug of Chang draught at 99 baht all the time.

It is opposite the new pier, near the airport turn off.

Ohh, i think i saw the sign for the draught chang on the road. Never realized they had quality food. I might try that already tommorow then. Thx for the tips.

Hi all, They will deliver from 11am to 10pm every day. They will deliver to the Bangrak, Chongmon and Maenam areas only at the moment due to getting the food to you hot. The delivery charge is 30 baht with a minimum order of 300 baht. They will deliver you a menu for the 30 baht. I dont know if I can post the rder number, so wont till maybe a mod can clarify, but if anybody wants it they can PM me. It is the same guy that has the green mango one. He makes his own pizza dogh every day and Ive had less meat on some steaks Ive had on Samui than you get on his ribs. My favorite order is the 2 full rack of ribs, BBQ beans, coleslaw and fries

Thx for the info. My question was more if it is possible to go there and have the delicios ribs also around lunch time? I´m not eating lunch at home, i like to enjoy it out, but many good restaurants in ban rak, fishermans village, dont open til 5. How about this place?

And more exact position. Where in ban rak is it. Took a drive today but didnt see it?

Thx.

Has the Catcandoo,moved out of Green Mango,and still run by Jay Fox,an American,or is this a new bar just opened with the same name???.

Same owner Jay, Catcandoo in Bangrak is there already for a few years......

Open for lunch aswell or only evenings?

Do i have to bring in your previous posts or can you go back and read it yourself?

You said that tourism is up COMPARED TO THIS TIME LAST YEAR.

Now you gave us a new fact. 2008 is up compared to 2009.

So, tourism is getting down then?

And how would you be able to know this "fact"? Are you a fortune teller?