joe84330

i've often wondered the same thing. three years back they were everywhere and now, nowhere.

can't say i mind too much though really since i'd get stuck behind a quad train of tourists and it would take everything i had to control the road rage.

shop for something in bkk that can be repaired on samui.

Man, you Samui TV guys are good posters.

Were this The Phuket TV Forum you would have endless posts about how Phuket is hell on earth, gone to scheit, continuous drivel.

I don't see one of those here, good job.

floodgates are now open.

must be another shortage of eggs or milk that needs to be downplayed for him to have to comment on something like this.

anybody ever visited kingston in Jamaica?

loads get ironed out in the middle of the street there and people just step over them and carry on., like its normal! mad or what !

actually i lived there for quite some time. i don't remember seeing any bodies in the street for me to step over but i'm sure it's happened. beautiful island, mostly political violence.

Overcrowding....high winds....full moon sea....drunk skipper...pissed up passengers....night time....

Good luck. :jap:

overcrowding? perhaps on the beach but not on my boats. drunk skipper? maybe on some small speedboats but definitely not on my boats. pissed up passengers? certainly, it's similar to herding cats.

you won't be assured a time to return regardless of ticket. the speedboats only come back once a certain passenger capacity has been reached.

you could of course charter your own yacht to use as a base for the full moon party. then you'd be able to depart on your schedule, join the party or retreat from it on your own schedule, head back to samui on your own schedule etc.

i know someone who arranges these sorts of things...

flight at 8:45 is cutting it close, maybe too close. you'd pretty much need to be on a 5am ferry because you need at least 2.5 hours to get from nathon to the surat airport and that is if every connection is smooth as silk.

thanks for the extra info crusty. i'm trying to see if my 10yr old boy would like to do it but it's a bit late now to drive back to the other side of the island and return by 10, would he get the same beginners chance tomorrow? i'm hoping he'll get into it because i have a bunch of motor yachts that need boat boys and then i can kick him out of the house and put him to work haha.

impressive. do you have any other details for tomorrow? specific location, cost involved, time etc?

Guess they will have to rename it "Not the Pizza Company"

haha..

but there pizza'a are a disgrace, taste horrible !! and for the price they charge you can go to an Italian restaurant and get a ' real ' pizza .............

please indicate one single restaurant on samui that makes a good pizza. i've tried at least two or three dozen restaurants that claim to make pizza with no luck. the italian restaurant pizzas are pathetic. so many pizza ovens on the island and nobody knows how to use one.

i'm waiting for the non ipad version myself. i've waited a couple of months and can wait another no problem.

Thank you people for your replies, you have some good points. We don't have a value on the property, that is why we want to meet agents, we are not interested in asking for an unrealistic price from the current market. We are located within the confines of your suggested "good" locations.

We are new to these sorts of communication so have no idea what 'PM' means or how to do it.

good morning rnr, have you considered long term renters? there aren't many willing buyers at the moment, yet many willing sellers so value will be skewed according to your situation. properties south of the boundary i mentioned may still be quite good but only in the sense that you are prepared to live there. PM means private message and is a means of communicating with individual members without sharing personal information with the world. click on any particular persons name and you will see a link for messaging them directly.

Social Contacts - hmmm.....

I once tried asking something similiar and then I realized that making social contacts in samui is pretty much impossible, why because certain groups only go to certain areas or have no time take as a few examples

1. People only into the bar scene who go night after night either to escape the life or situation there in or just to eventually to lose more brain cells

2. Foreigners busy working all the time who don't even have time for a so called life

3. The family foreigner who really don't have much time since their kids take up all the time

4. Shady foreigners - lets be honest I'm sure there's quite a bit especially like the absolute group we have all seen roaming the chaweng areas

5. Foreigner only interested in having a new thai woman every night only over time to finally get some kind of disease and pass away

6. Foreigner as a loner - I'm sure quite a few people for this one, after having tried to find contacts you realize the social scene is pretty much fake and just plain crap

I've been to some of this so called clubs more like fake atmosphere. If your looking for social contacts I wish you good luck

congratulations, you're unique. here's your hermit card.

Another family or two, that probably wont be coming back to samui ever again, probably go home and say farangs ripping us off,

I,m not saying you did, but it was up to you to have the contract written out properly, and when extra people turned up,you should have sorted out that problem, maybe charged more.

2 families conplaining to others about samui, could possibly lead to 10 or twenty families not coming to samui.

well done, just what samui needs

Exactly. This family probably feels just at jilted as the OP, especially if their vacation is ruined by the villa owner kicking them out for doing something "wrong" that wasn't even addressed in the contract (presumably.....the OP has apparently declined to answer any of the questions we've asked about the contract, so I'm assuming that the terms were not clearly laid out).

I am actually in the process of researching & booking a villa right now. Not in Samui, thank god! No chance of it being this place. One of my main deciding factors has been feedback from previous guests. Bad reviews means I don't even add the villa to my short list....not worth taking the risk in case the complaints are true. Great reviews means the villa goes to the top of my list. Fancy websites and descriptions can say anything they want.....guest reviews say it all.

pretty shortsighted. can't see the forest for the trees. nobody booked his nice 5 BR villa on the west coast with private pool and sea views without sending an email stating the number of guests. they certainly didn't randomly show up in this area.

would only take a sensible person 10 seconds on a site like for an example an advisor for trips to see the number of bogus property reviews that vault an unacceptable and reputation burning property to the top of the list to realize that reviews are a minor factor in the purchase process.

debate hypothetical numbers (total guests, total water usage, etc.) all day and twice on sunday but you weren't involved in either the buying or selling process so if you want to play devils advocate at least use a credible argument because i'm told i need a few hundred more posts to be able to access the full features of this website and i could stand a good argument to help me get there.

does sound like a problem with updating the firmware. hope the mods keep in mind that unlocking the iphone is not illegal. pretty much any model of iphone can upgrade to the most current firmware version and in many cases is done so automatically and unnoticed via itunes. if your iphone was factory unlocked you wouldn't need any original sim card.

Yeah, I used Itunes for upgrading.....but with a bad result......Guess I have to wait, like GmB said. Just pretty bad, since all my contacts ONLY are on the phone ( yes I know , I should have syncronized first )

Before there was a guy in Tesco who could unlock Iphones etc. is he still around ?

i don't know about any guy from tesco but i've unlocked a few myself and have had a 3gs sitting in my desk drawer for 3 months because it was "accidentally" upgraded to 4.1.2 several months ago and i don't need another ipod.

you can certainly unlock it yourself by upgrading to the ipad firmware but there are a variety of related snafu's that exist if you do and it's currently unreversable. follow this link to go to perhaps the easiest to use and most simplified jailbreak and unlock tutorials available.

i'm surprised that this thread wasn't merged with the "how to make social contacts in samui" thread

if 6 "agents" haven't returned your call it's because you're poorly located or they don't perceive your "realistic valuation" as a valid reflection of the current market. if you don't think you're poorly located and your realistic valuation agrees with the market then send me a pm because i have a steady stream of happy customers living the dream and looking to expand their collections.

p.s. namuang is poorly located and just about anything south of the chaweng noi/bang por line qualifies as well if you are looking for resale and not day to day living for an extended period with no concerns in the world.

does sound like a problem with updating the firmware. hope the mods keep in mind that unlocking the iphone is not illegal. pretty much any model of iphone can upgrade to the most current firmware version and in many cases is done so automatically and unnoticed via itunes. if your iphone was factory unlocked you wouldn't need any original sim card.

Samui is smaller hence faster to get around than Phuket.

Phuket has better shopping and I think it was overall cheaper than Samui.

as congested as samui's main road is through mae nam and chaweng, phuket traffic congestion is crazy bad in spite of having up to 4 lanes in each direction in addition to hundreds of access roads. the only shopping phuket has that samui doesn't as far as i could tell is brand name shopping and personally speaking, thailand is the last place i'd want or expect to buy international brand names.

a bit off topic but i had a party yesterday for my staff to blow off some steam after an incredibly busy peak season. we cruised up to a remote beach around koh taen and dropped anchor for some swimming, music and of course some cold beer. anyway, all the non thai staff were quick to jump off the yacht and swim while all of the thai staff were very hesitant, except for one young lady who wasn't a good swimmer but picked up a life jacket and jumped in. i happened to be near the spot where she was splashing around and laughing and she told me " i see farang always try something new and i want to try. i think good" (paraphrased but as close as possible to original).

adding that for those that think things will never change in thailand.

i know of one very good indian restaurant in bang rak that offers 20% discount resident cards

I think there is more to consider than things like a swimming school and costs.

I think for me, the fact that you'd be bringing children into this environment would be the most worrying. Anyone who has lived among the Thais on Samui for a few years begins to see that behind the "Sawadee kap/ka Mr. Tourist," veneer are a people hardwired for conniving, dishonesty (or at least very fast and loose with the truth), unreliably, and accept a lackadaisical and inferior level of standard in almost everything they undertake (relationships/workmanship/concern for others, etc). You have to adjust yourself here to view the "Thai style" of doing things as either somehow primitively endearing or just part of the local color.

My feeling is that I would not want my children to grow up (for however long your stint here is) around a culture that enshrines so many character traits that are anathema to what is considered correct behavior in the West.

I know people will dog-pile on me for being "anti-Thai" or bigoted or something, but the fact remains that unless you are living in an artificial bubble you will understand the subtle undercurrent of corner-cutting and misdirection that goes on here as part of the fabric of life.

As an adult you can identify these things, eventually, and choose to ignore them or confront them; but as an impressionable child, these will be absorbed (to whatever extent) into his or her psyche. Or at least it is possible, and that's not something that I would want to risk.

Most importantly I would not want my child to think that a shoddy job is sufficient in anything or that your word is worth nothing if you want to change your mind at any point.

And as a final point, Samui is one of the worst places for "self-centeredness" and extremely poor behavior I can think of, right up there with Pattaya and Phuket. Bangkok is a cosmopolitan city; Samui is an island tourist trap with gentle edges. It's a place filled with people who are not from here and are only here to part the foreigner tourist (or resident) from their money.

i am not inclined to disagree with your point of view towards the majority of thais, i will say this is not just on samui but all of thailand. I do question if you have children because if you did then you would understand that one of the most important aspects of good parenting, is teaching your child what is you considered a moral standard of conduct; responsibility, accountability,and reliability hence at the end of the day it is what a child is taught at home not what they see on the street.

QFT

i'm very happy to raise my kids here on samui. you'll never be able to shelter your children from the actions and attitudes in the previous post regardless of your location in the world. as long as the parents are responsible and set the parenting standards then the children should be able to learn what is and is not appropriate behavior.

i don't know this film but i love mississippi river delta blues

hell yes they'd get the bill.

i'd just assumed that it was the wrong children being exploited and a quick 20mio cash payment would help ensure that only the correct children will now be exploited in those countries.