monkeycountry

Replace the word "dam" with "storm surge barrier" or similar, then the idea is fine. Build a gate system at the mouth of the river, and install a series of giant pumps next to the gates (yes pumps large enough do already exist). Then when the tide is high and the river is flooding at the same time, simply close the gates, and pump water from the river into the sea. The electric bill will be large, but since it is only a few days or weeks a year, that does not matter much.

This method works, and it has already been done in both the US and in europe. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, and certainly no reason to continue with the "water pushing machines" they invented during the last flood, and which any engineer worth his salt, or just a person with common sense, could have told the government would not work at all!

Garbage is often mentioned as a problem, and I agree that it is a problem, but how come noone from the local government ever mentions the sea? I am aware that the mayor probably never goes swimming in the sea, but the tourists do, and quite often the sea, especially in Chaweng and Lamai is so dirty that people incl. myself avoid swimming in it. The beaches and the sea are afterall by far the most important assets of Samui.

The only way to avoid sewage water running from the klongs into the sea is to build sewage treatment plants, yet noone ever mentions this??

"Mrs. Chalee assumed he must be an honorable person, since he was with the Red Shirt party."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

One thing people should start to learn is that red shirt are definately not honourable, they are leeches, and they will never pay for anything in their whole life. Be it taxes, land, electricity or whatever!

It is a common sight in my profession....tourism!

By the way: better trained or better rested drivers or safer vehicles NEVER keep you safe from human idiocy! They just give you better chances of survival, when you crash! If you are a moron, who is always speeding, an airbag will not keep you from crashing...but you might survive it.

I agree, I will make sure to to check my airbag the next time I take a farang owned tour bus in Thailand :-)

Tourists should be careful to take tour buses that have 100% farang travelers. This would be one solid way to assure more professional, regulated drivers, as well as vehicle safety, law enforcement, and highway routing, scheduling, and safety. It won't eliminate these accidents, but it might help cut down on farang deaths as the result of Thai negligence. The operators and drivers are apt to be more safety oriented if the bus only carries foreigners.

First of all, what on earth makes you think they would be more careful with foreigners? Is that just a guess, or do you have any reference or evidence to back up that claim? My guess is the driver has no clue nor any care of who sits behind him!

Secondly, even if you are right about the above, then unless you are checking each passenger, and you make sure you are buying the very last available ticket, how exactly are you (as a foreigner) supposed to ensure there is only foreigners on the bus?

Many European or US American tour- operators simply demand higher safety- standards.

And most of them even follow up on them.

That means 2 drivers in a bus, driving- breaks for the drivers of vans, safety- belts etc.

In fact, the chances to get better trained, better rested drivers and safer vehicles, if you travel with a company that deals a lot with "farang" are clearly higher.

I guess I will have to take your word for your "facts" then, as you have not provided a shred of statistics, evidence or reference to back up your claim.

However, it does not matter how many drivers you put in a bus or how many breaks they have if they drive way above the speed limit, which the article suggests. Further, there seems to be very few of those safe farang operated companies around, because I cannot recall ever having seen a bus (or van) that drove below the speed limit (unless forced to by other traffic). Is that a common sight in your area?

Has anyone ever seen a bus in Thailand going less than 110-120 km/h? Or a bus driving in the left (inner) lane for that matter?

"Loan sharks may be allowed to register with the Finance Ministry in a bid to bring down the interest rates they charge."

In related news I heard that burglars may also be allowed to register in a bid to bring down burglaries!

No way, this cannot be true .. especially not in Thialand

I am not sure which parties are the corrupt ones-----I would agree with the villagers, but most of them would do the same if they worked for the insurance companies

Completely true. Recent polls confirmed this. The majority of Thais approve of corruption as long as they get a piece of the pie.

All these insurance, loan, deposit and mortgage packages sold by the banks are made so complicated that they are impossible to understand even for educated people. Therefore it usually ends up with the customer asking the agent what he thinks the customer should do. The agent is on commission, so he suggests the customer buys it all, signs a pile of papers the customer does not understand, and tells the customer that in a few months he will send the policy, receipts etc, which the customer also does not understand.

If the banks made their packages a bit simpler and more transparent some people might be able to calculate for themselves if it is a good deal or not. For the villagers and farmers however, there is no chance, no matter how simple the package.

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" 6-7% return on that after taxes. Thats 60-70k US a year"

The best low risk US investment return I'm able to find is around 6% BEFORE taxes, such as investing in the top ten Dividend Champions - That would be around 4.2% AFTER taxes.

Would you care to reveal your strategy for a low risk 6 to 7% AFTER taxes? . . .

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There are obviously many possible ways, but sticking with what you suggest, do what you suggested in Thailand instead of the US, and you should be there. Dividend is slightly higher, dividend tax only 10% and no capital gains tax.

The toilet from my house, and all the neighbouring houses, runs straight into the klong running through Chaweng (no septic tanks), and that klong runs straight into the sea between Chaweng and Chaweng Noi. That is most likely why the water in the klong is always black and stinks and why the sea quite often has a slightly brown color and is filled with floating stuff.

I live at south Chaweng and never seen what you describe.

Perhaps because you have never seen my toilet?

Time for those in charge of Samui and Phangan to wake up and ensure that this latest FK up does not happen again millions of baht must have been lost as well as tourists who I doubt will ever return !!!!!!!!!

Sound like you are talking about maintenance and forward planning. I am not sure either of those are in the Thai vocabulary (I have really never heard of those words in thai, but could of course be wrong). They do have a word for repair in their vocabulary though :-)

Apart from the obvious that we did not have electric for three days (or four depending how you count), I was quite amazed at the very slow response by both local and national authorities to come to the aid of both Islands in the way of time taken to carry out the repair, supply of water, feeding (for those not living in hotels etc) and generally an emergency service contingency plan with a dedicated committee. Passage of information was abysmal with information being put out on TV to Thai Channels, completely overlooking the thousands of foreigners who live and work here. Because there was so little authoritative information available, "rumour control" went into top gear. This varied from repaired tomorrow to getting repaired in 10 days time, a submarine had broken the cable, the cable was underground on Koh Samui and so on. Simple solution was to employ some of these pick-ups driving around with loud speakers which could have given out the official announcement in Thai and English. God help us if we suffer something like a typhoon!!

Funniest part was that information was published via television to people without electricity :-D

Seems some of you have misunderstood the mayor's job description. It is as follows:

1. Shell out appx. 100 million baht, or a couple of thousand baht to each of the 50.000 voters on Samui prior to the election.

2. Redirect all the tax money to his personal account for the next 4 years, partly to pay for #1.

Did you see beer, xmas, tourists, electricity or anything else in any of the above?

Power back at Chaweng Beach Road - at least a large part of it.

A staff at the power company claims power is being rationed, so each area will have power for appx. 2 hours at a time. They also confirm the broken cable story, and has shown pictures of the dug up cables near a transformer station somewhere. The pictures are taken at night, and there were lots of guys with yellow hard hats, so unless it's just a publicity stunt, it looks like they are working on it through the evening/night.

'Refused to press charges'??????

What is he hiding would be my first question

Ahhh Pattaya !!! Fireworks of every description available here

Simple, the foreigner knows all too well, that he will spend all night at the police station filing reports and wait and wait. Eventually the gunman will pay someone 500 baht and go home. Now the foreigner will also have to worry about potential revenge from the gunman.

Alternatively the foreigner will forget the incident, have fun with his friends, won't have to worry about revenge and the gunman will go home.

The difference between the west and Thailand is that the thai police generally do not press charges on their own. If someone was caught threatening someone with a gun in the west, the police/state would be the ones pressing charges, not the victim. The victim would not have a say in the matter, his only role would be as a witness for the state.

This is of course also why thais are not worried about committing crimes against foreigners. They know the foreigners most likely won't press charges, so even if they are caught, nothing will happen.

And no, it is not the responsibility of the foreigners to start pressing charges, it is solely the responsibility of the thai government to press charges when any crime is committed, regardless of whether the victim agrees or not.

I think at your age you are looking at min 30 million baht in savings and investments to guarantee a good retirement income preferably around 40 million.

Just to make sure I understand, are you saying that approx $1.3 million in US Dollars would be needed?

Thanks.

Sure if you want to live a good life in Thailand you would need something like this.

30k a month just doesnt cut it neither does living in a bedsit for the rest of your life and chasing happy hours at gogos.

What sort of life is that?

Why come to Thailand to live a dogs life?

Most people I know live in a reasonably nice house or apartment and drive a car. Why wouldnt you expect to live the same in Thailand?

I would also expect to have a few trips a year to different countries. You would need medical insurance and then if you have any dependents you would obviously need to support them eg wife, kids, girlfriend.

Further you need to hedge against inflation and currency flucuations to preserve your capital.

Given at 48 you might live another 30 odd years even at 30-40million baht you would still need to be very prudent.

I am quite sure most of the posters advising about how much money is needed to stay in Thailand, don't have that kind of money themselves. If they did, they would know that once you have a small fortune, it is fairly easy to get a decent return on investment. If you have say 1 million US in cash, it would be quite simple and low risk (not risk free) to make say 6-7% return on that after taxes. Thats 60-70k US a year, which is more than enough to live a nice life in Thailand - and keep your 1 million US intact (minus inflation).

Hope the Prime minister gets a copy of this on her desk and does something about it.

And I hope I win the lottery, even without buying a ticket :-D

All danes, especially women, are taught as kids never to go with strangers. The fact that the stranger in this case is a man, and that she is in a foreign country makes her actions even more naive. (Not that I am justifying the actions of the scum that attacked her)

Having said that, the Phuket authorities are partly to blame for this and many other cases. If taxis had been available at affordable rates, the danish woman would most likely have taken a taxi instead. Instead the Phuet authroities allow the taxis, not only to have monopoly, but also to charge more for a short trip than many hotels charge for rooms. Furthermore, this practise attracts opportunist taxi drivers whose lack of morals allows them to cheat, and occasionally rape/beat their victims. Normal rates would attract more normal drivers who just want to make a living and support their families.

The same goes for drunk drivers. In Bangkok or Pattaya where one can easily and affordably get a taxi or baht bus, there is no reason to drive your own car/bike, but in Phuket and Samui getting a taxi is so complicated and expensive that most people choose to drive drunk instead.

""The military, the security forces were responsible for larger casualties but both sides were clearly responsible," said Sunai Pasuk, a Thai researcher with New York-based Human Right Watch."

Yes of course the security forces were responsible. They were tasked with protecting not only themselves, but also a huge city from a mob attack. The red shirt attackers had only themselves to protect, and unlike the people of Bangkok and the army, the attackers could simply have gone home at any time. If khun Sunai Pasuk fail to grasp this basic rule reg. attack and defence, then perhaps working for HRW is not the right thing for him.

Imagine a group of 5 robbers attack my house with 5 people in it. In order to protect my family I kill 4 of the robbers, and the last one kills me. Then I think my wife will slap Sunai Pasuk when he tells her that "Your husband was responsible for larger casualties"!!

Once again I thank you Abhisit and the army for protecting me and my family from the red shirt attackers. Had you not defeated the red shirt attackers, they could have attacked and killed alot more civilians than they did.

So lets put this into perspective.

If I am on the road and I see someone buying or selling some fried bananas, and decide to take a photo of the offender, then send the photo into the police and they will immediately conduct a nationwide hunt for these master criminals?

Why not just ban the roadside vendors in the first place and save all the bother? I mean, it can’t be too difficult to find these vendors, just give them a caution and tell them to move on.

Because the vendors pay bribes to the police to be allowed to sell. The customers are now targetted as they do not YET pay bribes to the police.