jmo

I am sorry to be late into the petercool party, but a couple of observations.

1) The jetskis have damage all over them already when rented out. If there is damage when returned it is totally expected and does not prove anything. The same damage gets used times and times over to scam different customers.

2) Somehow petercool totally ignores eyewitness statements. A random copper listening at a corner of police station knows things better than eyewitnesses. I hope this attitude is not widespread among police forces. We have tens of eyewitnesses who have seen the same thing going on tens of times each with the same group of people doing the scamming. I am one of them. How convenient that my observations account for nothing. At best the copper at the station has heard two very conflicting statements of what has happened and I do cannot imagine I could have any mystical capability to distill the truth from and be very sure about it. Sure looks like some volunteering for police without any formal training gives wildly inflated opinion about the capabilities of a copper. The eyewitnesses have seen both when the jetski is rented out and when it is returned and how the same damage gets used on several customers.

3) How poor is the privacy issues at thai police stations? I sure hope that if I ever have any business to a police station I can do my business without all random people loitering at the police station learning everything about it.

4) I agree there are people also not getting scammed. I have also seen hundreds of cases when somebody comes out from a jetski ride and no scamming happens. I have also in two cases have witnessed real damage done to jetskis. For example one case near the very north end of beach road there was a large area of exposed rocks and a totally drunk renter blasted his jetski into the dry 8ft away from water over these rocks one cannot even walk on. HOWEVER ALL OF THIS MATTERS NOTHING TOWARDS THE MAIN POINT THAT THERE ARE LARGE NUMBER OF SCAMS ONGOING.

Well, there could be several reasons for not posting the video. I think I know this bar and I think it is a gay-karaoke bar with closed walls so outsiders cannot see what is going on in there. Probably the big bunch of people on the video includes some customers and some of them could be gays in closet and it would be rather big invasion of their privacy to post the video on youtube.

Funny to find a topic on this exact name in here as I was also in there yesterday getting a tourist extension. During the last 3 previous winters this has always been a whole day event watching the officers drag their feet on every turn. Boy was I surprised to see them genuinely hustling to get the ball moving this time. I could imagine somebody is paying them bonuses based on how many applications they process per day. Now I think I have seen everything this land has to offer and nothing is gonna surprise me any more.

Yeah, I don't see much thais sitting outside supermarkets or 7-11 drinking cheap beer. However almost every night I see at several of the motorcycle-taxi stands (near 7-11) there are several thais some looking like the taxibikeriders sitting and drinking sang-som (and some beer) . The moment when I see a westener outside supermarket with sang-som bottle in their hands then that is a step down from cheap beer. I sometimes sit outside 7-11 with a waterbottle much cheaper than any chang. Maybe I am a truly lowlife scum.

pooperscoopers view about his own personal needs might make sense for his specific case. However I don't understand how he can think his personal view can be in any way generalized to apply at large.

There are almost no people in here that are training for any competition that involves lifting weights in high temperatures. Some people are training for competitiong events that involve running in high temperatures, but I am not sure there are that many of them in the gyms in Soi Buakhao. Some of these people might out there running outdoors instead.

If I would guess 95% of the people that use the gyms are in there to gain muscle mass, to lose fat or to improve their general endurance. Most of these people are not professional athletes and yes, big percentage of them is in it because on how it makes them look in the mirror. If anybody wants to use any insulting words to describe them, I find that appalling.

Most of the people in the gyms are in a danger of losing interest in going there and doing something else instead. High temperature has pretty much only one effect on them. It makes them to stay at home. I am quite sure Tony understands this when he is planning the business case for the lifetime memberships.

The number of people that do not suffer negative effects because of the high temperature is really, really small. It might be pooperscooper and perhaps 2 other persons out there.

Not all ways of working hard are created equal. You might want to work hard the particular muscle you are training. If the temperature is high or there are other things making life difficult for you in general you might be working hard for your whole body, but if that means that you are lifting less weights because of these other problems, you are not working the muscle as hard.

Actually I read the news as the first really encouraging sign that something really could come out from it because now for the first time they have taken up the magic word: "insurance". That is the one thing that is key to solving the problem and that has been missing from all previous plans. Once the customers know that the jetskis do have insurance they are not so easily bullied to paying for damages out of pocket. All the previous plans could be seen from mile away as only meant to look tough but not actually work at all. Now all they need to implement these rules and there is one thing to look for whether there is going to be jetskis with known insurance available for rent or not. Unified pricing is not a good thing, but maybe necessary interim solution to weed out the no insurance scammers with lowball offers that leave no other possibility for the rental business to make profit than the scamming. The rates need to be higher to make it even theoretically possible to make money the honest way.

Could not bother gooling longer than 2 minutes, but it seems that rules of drivers license vary a lot if there are any. In Australia and in Canada there seems to be a requirement of license for all motorboats regarless of hp or speed. In USA is seems vary from state to state and for example California and Florida seems to have no licensing at all. In France the limit seems to be 10 hp, In Germany 5 hp, In Sweden they failed to put into law a licensing for boats exceeding 15 or 30 knots. Even in Germany the rules seem to be that citizens of Germany are reguired to have a license for over 5hp boats, but for any alien visitor it is the requirements of the home country that apply so coming from a country with more relaxed rules it is those and coming from a country where there are no rules it could be mean no drivers license required at all for those individuals even in Germany.

With my limited 2 minute googling I could not find even one country where the rules are exactly like the user 'seadoo' suggested and each country seems to have different rules.

So I think we really need to know what is it exactly that the thai law says as extrapolating from rules of other countries seems pointless.

I am talking about recreational operation of small boats as ships and commercial operation are sure to have licensing requirements in many places.

Are you sure about the International Maritime Law? I know several western countries including my home country where it is perfectly legal to own and drive a 100mph powerboat with twin bigblock V8s with no drivinglicense whatsoever and there are no laws about swimmers like that either in my home country. There has been a lively discussion in here about whether my country will some day require an driving license for powerboats but even the proponents for such law have never raised an argument about any international law existing. So I think you made up the whole international law thing. I also know that there are jetski renting businesses all over the world with no problems with driving licenses whatsoever that I have ever heard of.

Maybe you could point to some specific thai law or point out some information about whether there exists some thai authority where it is provably possible to obtain an valid driving licence for boats. Somebody could be interested in obtaining one if they really are required. I know that in my home country there is no such authority that issues boat driving licenses at all as such things do not exist.

But the claim that facts count for nothing in thailand counts for nothing when it is presented in a case like this.

I don't understand why you are downplaying cameras. In your situation the fact that the police don't want to listen to your witnesses is of course troubling, but any hard evidence is much better than some bystander eyewitnesses which have a story that even you in your first post didn't believe to be the correct description of the situation. I didn't get the idea from your posts that neither you or the eyewitnesses in your side observed what truly and definately happened without a doubt and that makes your case rather problematic.

In my country the rearender is usually the guilty one and it is also quite usual that a rearending situation involves some strange behaviour from the rearended and that might or might not be an punishable offence which might earn the rearended one a ticket, but most of the guilt even in that case lies with the rearender which pays the bills even when the other driver has some guilt to the situation. It is quite rare that the rearender is declared totally innocent and I don't find from your own description you to be totally innocent either. You should have slowed down significantly if you see somebody making a silly move in front of you and in case of a totally completed 180 degree uturn with an additional stop after observing traffic seems quite long time for you to see this silly move and slow down to stop avoiding to hit him.

I think that even in my country the odds that you would be declared totally innocent in a situation like this would be against you without some really hard evidence to show that you slowed down significantly or either that there simply was no time for you to see this silly uturn and react to it far better than what a couple eyewitnesses could provide when other side has also some eyewitnesses on their side. The situation starts so clearly against you in a rearending accident. What could save the day could be a camera.

I find the news that the city hall will officially begin handling the details of compensation business quite strange.

In my mind the only possible successful solution will be based on insurance so that there is not even theoretical possiblity for tourist to have to compensate any big repairs to the jetski. If there is no such possibility, then there is also no need for any negotiating of compensations nor a committee about it.To my surprise there was not any mention about the word insurance in the posted article about the city hall meeting.

It the goverment takes in any way any part in handling any day to day operation of this business, it creates opportunities for possible corruption and also discourages any honest policemen to take action against any crimes that they observe as it is now city hall that is now responsible of running the business.

Government booths to sell tickets to the rentals and any government meddling in compensations where government would need to somehow be responsible of the process of observing the damages to private property and quickly passing guilt to some tourist to be the defined responsible person having caused the damage based on extremely dubious hearsay evidence. These are totally unsuitable to some executive branch bureucrat to handle properly for millions of reasons.

Insurance and policemen with a small set of simple rules and laws to enforce. These together are the only possibility to a solution. I just have to wonder why nothing like this is never mentioned in any goverment meetings about this issue.

I further believe that the pictures that are taken are not ever actually looked at in very great detail. I believe the real nature of the pics is that they work as intimidation. The thugs make it a quite strange high profile show to shoot the pictures in the beginning and that makes the tourists to feel small and feel like the shooters of the pictures are in control. When the tourists return from sea the thugs have proof they can use and the tourists know that they have not. The pictures are probably in many cases shown on a small camera display only and it is 100% impossible that any flaws could be seen on such small display even in that unlikely situation that they would be captured on camera. Somebody would need at least a laptop to study the pictures properly and I have not seen many laptops to be carried on the beach for this purpose. I believe in many cases the thugs just wave the camera around saying that they have proof on their side so the tourists need to pull out some cash right now.

I am not sure they need to photoshop the pics of the jestki. It is very difficult to get the damage on the jetski to be properly captured on the camera. I know this because I have owned a jetski of my own and to be able to sell it I needed to get pics of it and was very frustrated because on all the pictures I took it was almost impossible to get the pics to properly show the scratches and other flaws on my own jetski.

The shiny plastic material of the jetski works quite funny way on camera so that if you take pictures in broad daylight without a flash the jestki looks almost perfect no matter how many scratches and flaws the plastic surface has in real life. On the other hand if the general lighting is dark and you are using a flash, then the picture shows all the millions microscopic scratches and makes the jestki in the picture look much more horrible than it looks in the eye in person.

I have seen them take the pictures of tourists and they generally shoot them about 5 metres away from the jetski making it further more unlikely that the picture captures the damage the skis have. To have any hope to get a picture showing the damage you should shoot the picture from much shorter distance.

How about the simple and obvious solution. Each ski to be rented must display the company name and its registration number along with proof of valid insurance so that even the tourist will understand that there is an insurance to cover any damages and any jet skis found on the beach without these will be illegal and confiscated. Problem solved.

Most of these planes were never planned to go flying ever again, with or without the flooding. The only way they are going to be leaving Don Muang is cut in parts on a bed of a truck after being sold to a scrap metal recycling factory. What I can see the history of them some have been parked since 2005 and some since 2008 and are being cannibalized for spare parts to keep other planes flying. When they said in the article that "But he admitted all parts must be reconditioned to be used again." they did not mean that they are are ever going to recondition all of the parts of these planes to make the plane work. That sentence means that any spare parts that they in the future cannibalize away from these planes to be used in another planes, all of those spare parts must be reconditioned if they are going to be used for flying. Just like any spare parts used in the past were also needed to be reconditioned.

Somebody here said that an 747 is an expensive plane, well some of them really are not. It depends. The one really expensive parts of an old jet plane are their engines. That is why the engines are usually the first to go when an old plane is parked with the intention never to fly again. The value of the rest of the plane really depends on how close it is some of its major overhaul. Any 747 that has its hours full so that it must be going through a major paint-stripping-and-repaint and remove-and-refit-all-millions-of-components overhaul before its next flight is worth very little, basically the scrap metal value. There are a lot of those available as the major airlines have really started to phase out the oldest fuel guzzling versions of 747s in masses and there really is no sensible use for these planes as they are really not suitable to some bush flying company in africa like some smaller planes end up to in the end of their lives.

Theoretically it is possible that both cases could be true at the same time that:

- Most thai families would be horrified to learn their daughter works at a gogo bar.

- Most gogo-dancers have a family that is not horrified to know that their daughter works at a gogo bar.

the jet skis are worth 300 thousand baht i beleive

I have owned a jetski of my own, so I have some knowledge about the prices, not in thailand though.

There are 3 different classes of skis the renters seem to have. 

There is only one expensive ski to be rented out there, the red one with big RXP text on the side.

In Europe this one could cost around 8000-12000 euros used.

The Yamaha VX type skis are around 3000-5000 euros used in mint condition ( which the rentals are definately not )

Then there are a lot of older Yammis from 1990 or so which can be bought in europe for 1000-2000 euros in mint condition.

In this picture there are two VX:s in the middle and two old crap ones on both sides

As I will be staying in a hotel in Patong in a few days Donna, I wouldn't mind knowing which hotel it is.

Grand Tropicana.