Road-cleaning

[mattias33]

The new ghost road with all the drainings and widening, has turned out to have a serious problem. In certain places, when heavy rain comes, the road gets full off sand. Apperently a girl died there on tuesday night last week. Tonight as i´m writing this, two more girls fell down and are now in my house getting first aid (ok, only scratches, they were lucky) from my wife. Both accidents in the exact same place, opposite the school just beside blessing village. Reason for the accident is the sand is so thick on the road, the slightest touch on the brake and you can´t do anything, you just fall. These two girls were offcourse surpriced. They came so slow and did not understand why they fell, as we know motorbike education is not something thaigirls in general have.

So, point of this thread, besides warning others, is: who is responsible for this sand to get taken away? Tessaban? Or what is the plan? Surely it must be somebodies responsibility to clean the sand of the roads? Where could i call and ask whats going on? Two accidents this latest week (that i know of) and one of them with deadly ending is not good. This needs to be taken care of urgently.

[Samui Coconut]

The new ghost road with all the drainings and widening, has turned out to have a serious problem. In certain places, when heavy rain comes, the road gets full off sand. Apperently a girl died there on tuesday night last week. Tonight as i´m writing this, two more girls fell down and are now in my house getting first aid (ok, only scratches, they were lucky) from my wife. Both accidents in the exact same place, opposite the school just beside blessing village. Reason for the accident is the sand is so thick on the road, the slightest touch on the brake and you can´t do anything, you just fall. These two girls were offcourse surpriced. They came so slow and did not understand why they fell, as we know motorbike education is not something thaigirls in general have.

So, point of this thread, besides warning others, is: who is responsible for this sand to get taken away? Tessaban? Or what is the plan? Surely it must be somebodies responsibility to clean the sand of the roads? Where could i call and ask whats going on? Two accidents this latest week (that i know of) and one of them with deadly ending is not good. This needs to be taken care of urgently.

Tessaban, or if you can't wait, do it yurself.Alternatively, get in touch with th enew major. Sorry to hear about the loss of that girl, sad indeed.

[mattias33]

The new ghost road with all the drainings and widening, has turned out to have a serious problem. In certain places, when heavy rain comes, the road gets full off sand. Apperently a girl died there on tuesday night last week. Tonight as i´m writing this, two more girls fell down and are now in my house getting first aid (ok, only scratches, they were lucky) from my wife. Both accidents in the exact same place, opposite the school just beside blessing village. Reason for the accident is the sand is so thick on the road, the slightest touch on the brake and you can´t do anything, you just fall. These two girls were offcourse surpriced. They came so slow and did not understand why they fell, as we know motorbike education is not something thaigirls in general have.

So, point of this thread, besides warning others, is: who is responsible for this sand to get taken away? Tessaban? Or what is the plan? Surely it must be somebodies responsibility to clean the sand of the roads? Where could i call and ask whats going on? Two accidents this latest week (that i know of) and one of them with deadly ending is not good. This needs to be taken care of urgently.

Tessaban, or if you can't wait, do it yurself.Alternatively, get in touch with th enew major. Sorry to hear about the loss of that girl, sad indeed.

Doing it myself i think is not a very good option. It´s very much sand and it seem to come after 10 minuites of heavy rain. I think Samui needs (hopefully have already) a better plan for this problem.

But i will try to put some time into this tomorrow. At least try to get somebody to call the right man in tessaban and let them know.

[Mark Wolfe]

I believe that in Samui, only God cleans the roads with his gentle rains....And remember, sand is God's gift to the island too, wherever it may be found...

[mattias33]

I believe that in Samui, only God cleans the roads with his gentle rains....And remember, sand is God's gift to the island too, wherever it may be found...

Well, that may be true Mark, i just don´t think you rebuild half of the islands roads and leave some of it "up to god". I´ll try that the next time i want to finish a job early. When my boss call furious i will just say "the rest is up to god". Good idea!

But seriously i am here to tell you that god gives and god takes. That´s what i learned yesterday. We just barely managed to plaster the scratched girls up, when one of the girls pregnant sister called her in full panic. Her water came out and she was in heavy stomach pains. Since none of the girls could barerly walk after the insident, and their bike was halfway fuc_ked, i had to step in and drive them with my car. Early reports says they got a baby girl in nathon around 3 in the morning. So this thread turns out to show life in general. 4 posts down and one dead girl, one newborn. Still i blame samui community for the unnessesary death of a young girl and two injured yesterday. It has to be take care of. Next time it might be someone close to you, or me. When the rain starts for real this road will be more dangerous than before they rebuilded it. It don´t make sence.

[Samuian]

....edit......who is responsible for this .........edit....

Sorry, but here is NOBODY responsible!

It is just not part of the grand Plan!

Very sorry for the unnecessary loss of life and the many, many injured!

[Pilchard]

A call to the fire station and the promise of some whiskey could bring some high pressure hoses to clean the road. Just an idea .

Personally I think it should be at the cost of the land owners whose unsealed roads or newly cleared land is the cause of sand spilling on to the public roads.

I won't be holding my breath tho

[Boater]

A call to the fire station and the promise of some whiskey could bring some high pressure hoses to clean the road. Just an idea

In Phuket, the fire service regularly clean and jet the roads........ i do not see why they do not do it here

[Uros]

There were the street cleaning/sweeping/sand-clearing vehicles that were bought and working the ring road many years ago. I think they lasted about a week before developing a terminal problem. No one could be bothered to get them fixed or get the parts IIRC.

[Mark Wolfe]

A call to the fire station and the promise of some whiskey could bring some high pressure hoses to clean the road. Just an idea

In Phuket, the fire service regularly clean and jet the roads........ i do not see why they do not do it here

Phuket is an advanced beach and retirement community. Samui is very much the hayseed of the beach destination family. Compare Samui to Sri Lanka or Cambodia or Laos, but not to more developed areas.

In many ways, you should savor the flavor of being in a backwater; one day in not too many years, there will no place so unregulated as Samui. The good comes with the bad and all in all, I'd rather be out Asia-way than back in the West.

[BusyBee123]

good business opportunity for putting stabilisers on motorbikes, should stop the falling off

[ClaudeFeller]

Who is responsible? The Landlord

Who cares? Nobody

[mattias33]

Who is responsible? The Landlord

Who cares? Nobody

So, what "landlord"?

We are talking about a community road. There is also no construction or development or other "owners" to blame in this particular case. It´s the ghost road, between blessing (they send their staff out to clean in fron of them, Nok told me a few days ago), and the road that turns right before the school. (going from ban rak towards chaweng). Problem is simply heavy rain talking sand down from the mountain and it ends up on a community road.

The landlords (most of them) did their parts along this road. We are talking about a peace that "falls in between" the amazing wounderful developing farang companies. Something that i feel, and infact also been told by some Thais by now, is "communitys" responsibility. Tessaban do have a "cleaninglady" out in this field everyday, but she mostly runs thru the garbage situation, (she´s doing a great job collecting loose garbage and putting it on fire), and the sand requires machinery. Like a tractor with a shovel or something. One would think that if the community have machines to build this fantastic road with all the drainings ( it did turn out pretty good), the machine to clean it would be peanuts.

I also somehow think that it is sad that it will take 2-3 more dead girls before they wake up. Problem is the road before is so good and so clean that it invites you to speed up. And if you don´t drive this road everyday, how can you expect this 5cm deep sand to be in the middle of the road all of a sudden? The sand situation is nw ok again, taes a few dry days for it to "self-dissappear". But the rainy season is soon here. All it takes is a good 10 minuite rain and it´s turned into (proven already) a death-trap.

[toptuan]

The title of the thread brought me a good belly-laugh!

[Samuian]

Well after all, how about some voluntary community work and simply get some people from the community and have a "Ghost Road cleaning event" every 14 days, monthly or whenever is needed?

At least it will ring some bells in the neighborhood, eventually the pu yai ban may hear about it, it may go all the way to the nai amphoe or to tessaban,lot's can be done, the quiet way!

Pointing fingers.... asking questions, wont get the road cleaned!

[mattias33]

Well after all, how about some voluntary community work and simply get some people from the community and have a "Ghost Road cleaning event" every 14 days, monthly or whenever is needed?

At least it will ring some bells in the neighborhood, eventually the pu yai ban may hear about it, it may go all the way to the nai amphoe or to tessaban,lot's can be done, the quiet way!

Pointing fingers.... asking questions, wont get the road cleaned!

The opening fingerpointing question is noted. Good idea. Let´s see if it gets the road cleaned.

[MSingh]

Who is reasponsible ??

Come on Mattias, i think you've been here long enough to know about Thai's & reasponsibility, there is none..

If you feel so strongly about it, only option in my opinion, whether it's right or wrong, is to do it yourself as you certainly can't wait for the " Plan " to be implemented, that's for sure..

[Samuian]

Well just recently riding along with a local islander of a rather influential family, I noted the road situation and his reply underlined with a bright smile was: "It's all natural, Samui's roads are natural roads, close to nature!" No further comment!

[mattias33]

Well just recently riding along with a local islander of a rather influential family, I noted the road situation and his reply underlined with a bright smile was: "It's all natural, Samui's roads are natural roads, close to nature!" No further comment!

You promise?

Nature did not rebuild the whole roadsystem i Ban Rak. Humans did. And i think it´s pretty lame to not follow up the so far good work.

However, despite what all you so far say, there is a plan for this, and there seem to be responsible people in tessaban, and at this point it seem to be down to patience.

Now, i did not start this thread because i´m bigtime bothered myself. I started it as a warning and to get to know a little how things work around here. So far the "knowledge" among thaivisa members have been my least helpful source. I myself have no problem with this sand, but general thaigirls driving home from their bar at night do, and when i saw it i had to react. It is a problem started by Thais and its a problem mostly for Thais. I have no intention of cleaning the road, i simply don´t consider it my job. Still i don´t feel good watching Thai after Thai injure themselves on the behalf that (as i suspected) somebody is not doing their job. "you been here long enoght to know about thais and responsibility". Well, i guess so, but i think some of the members here have been here long enough to even become thai in their thinking. I have not.

Another point of notice is that if i started a thread saying "isn´t it lovely with all the natural sand on the roads of samui?", i think pretty much the same posters will come here and say "are you nuts? don´t you realize how dangerous this is for motorbike drivers?".

Forum is getting more and more pointless.

[koheesti]

Mattias, mai pen rai, TIT, don't you know there are bad roads all around the world?, if we wanted rules we wouldn't be here, HEY! love or leave it, buddy!

Did I leave anything out?

Of course the roads are a problem that needs to be addressed but you need indiviuals who can get the ball rolling and get things done. It's not easy and most people don't come to Samui to do things that aren't easy - both farang and Thai alike.

I wish you luck.

[mattias33]

Mattias, mai pen rai, TIT, don't you know there are bad roads all around the world?, if we wanted rules we wouldn't be here, HEY! love or leave it, buddy!

Spot on. Now thats the real thaivisa answer.

I tell you guys what, i give up. I will carry a blanket with me when i take a walk out there. Next time a scratched up girl (or like the first one with her eye popped out of her skull) i will put the blanket over my head and keep walking.

Actually if it is after a heavy rain, the sand on the road would be deap enough for me to put my head in it so i dont see the blood mess.

We are all retards here. Lets live like it and stop pretending.

[MSingh]

Mattias, mai pen rai, TIT, don't you know there are bad roads all around the world?, if we wanted rules we wouldn't be here, HEY! love or leave it, buddy!

Spot on. Now thats the real thaivisa answer.

I tell you guys what, i give up. I will carry a blanket with me when i take a walk out there. Next time a scratched up girl (or like the first one with her eye popped out of her skull) i will put the blanket over my head and keep walking.

Actually if it is after a heavy rain, the sand on the road would be deap enough for me to put my head in it so i dont see the blood mess.

We are all retards here. Lets live like it and stop pretending.

No need for the blanket Mattia, as i said, sweep the Road yourself if you feel so strongly about it & then you may or may not have the scraped up people coming to your House.

[Samuian]

No need for the blanket Mattia, as i said, sweep the Road yourself if you feel so strongly about it & then you may or may not have the scraped up people coming to your House.

See, this I call deeper understanding of the real issues of the matter, the ZEN way out!

An alternative attempt would be trying to prevent anyone getting on the bike, using Ghost Road at all, once and forever!

On the other hand, raising public awarenes!

Who rides especially Ghost Road in a manner that he/she end up with "eyes popped out and badly scraped up" acted ignorant and careless, riding ANY road in south east Asian provinces may lead to death - it's risky out there... it is...!

Next would be..... no more alcohol, way too many die drunk, ban all cell phones way too many accidents because of them, airplanes... well name it.. see it?

How about some simple SELF AWARENESS, RESPONSIBILITY....

take care!

Edited October 23, 2008 by Samuian

[mattias33]

No need for the blanket Mattia, as i said, sweep the Road yourself if you feel so strongly about it & then you may or may not have the scraped up people coming to your House.

See, this I call deeper understanding of the real issues of the matter, the ZEN way out!

An alternative attempt would be trying to prevent anyone getting on the bike, using Ghost Road at all, once and forever!

On the other hand, raising public awarenes!

Who rides especially Ghost Road in a manner that he/she end up with "eyes popped out and badly scraped up" acted ignorant and careless, riding ANY road in south east Asian provinces may lead to death - it's risky out there... it is...!

Next would be..... no more alcohol, way too many die drunk, ban all cell phones way too many accidents because of them, airplanes... well name it.. see it?

How about some simple SELF AWARENESS, RESPONSIBILITY....

take care!

Ok. Should i, or should´nt i? Well, just for the heck of it, i think i go.....

Hey, samuian, you are of course right. No alcohol, maybe even a drivers licence, some understanding of how a bike behaives in sand, helmets, ban on cell phones when riding a bike (can´t beleive we actually have to point this out!), and so on. Maybe a yousay a total ban of biking the ghost road (i like this one even though it means i can´t get to my house). And, yes, all over south east asia biking (or driving anything) is combined with life danger. It is in the whole world. I agree. 100 %.

Can we just start, before we dig into these deep problems, to get the responsible guy in nathon, who lift a salary every month for "taking care and maintaining samui roads" from Bangkok office, to do what he is payed for and save some lives while we are waiting for the rest of your requests to come true?

I know everybody thinks for themselves. Don´t tell me. I did not fall down. Yet. I tend to think i always stay within the limits of my competens (offcourse this change dramaticly when you fall down!) as a driver. So, stop pointing out the obvious. And yes "if it bather me that much i should go out and try to sweep 1 ton of sand with a handbruch myself everyday, and stop whining about it" is quite honestly a statement that would qualify for a price in stupidity msingh. Stop this stupid statements. The road is suppose to be maintained. It´s paid for by the tax all vehicles on the island pay every year. Period.

[MSingh]

So, stop pointing out the obvious. And yes "if it bather me that much i should go out and try to sweep 1 ton of sand with a handbruch myself everyday, and stop whining about it" is quite honestly a statement that would qualify for a price in stupidity msingh. Stop this stupid statements. The road is suppose to be maintained. It´s paid for by the tax all vehicles on the island pay every year. Period.

Unreal but a response i expected from Mattias ( Oh & if i used & wrote a Language that wasn't my native tongue, i'd take some lessons first, just so i didn't make " stupid statements " when using it.. )

The Road is supposed to be maintained Mattias, yeah you're right & no one is disagreeing with you but it obviously isn't getting maintained & never will be to the standard that you want/expect it to be so you can do one of three things, 1 ) Stop expecting something to happen that never will, no matter how much you moan about it on an Internet Fourm 2 ) Instead of spending too much time writing about it, you could go out there & sweep to the best of your ability until you don't want/can't sweep any more to possiblyu prevent accidents, it's not your reasponsibility but it doesn't seem to be anyone else's either & at least you could sleep well at night knowing you had done " your bit " 3 ) Bore off..

[mattias33]

Come on Mattias, i think you've been here long enough to know about Thai's & reasponsibility, there is none..

The Road is supposed to be maintained Mattias, yeah you're right & no one is disagreeing with you

Msingh, can you please read your previous postings before you do new ones? It would help you to stop doing these "stupid statements" even in your native tongue.

Edited October 23, 2008 by mattias33

[koheesti]

People are geting injured and dying on that newly repaired road and these are the best solutions you guys can offer? That's lame.

[mattias33]

People are geting injured and dying on that newly repaired road and these are the best solutions you guys can offer? That's lame.

Agreed koheesti. Luckily this is only what this forum came up with. Alot of bullshit and slagging to eachother. During these postings i went to tessaban together with another poster who is doing videonews and we got a meeting in a week from now with the responsible people. I spent 5 hours on the phone before i went there. I plastered the two girls injured and i drove one of them to the hospital in nathon for the delivery of her sisters babygirl. All on my freetime.

The postings here was just to try to get some help and motivation along the journey. From my side. It led adsolutely nowhere.

This threads point got lost.

[MSingh]

Come on Mattias, i think you've been here long enough to know about Thai's & reasponsibility, there is none..

The Road is supposed to be maintained Mattias, yeah you're right & no one is disagreeing with you

Msingh, can you please read your previous postings before you do new ones? It would help you to stop doing these "stupid statements" even in your native tongue.

Again, can't see a " stupid statement " from myself which is surely classed as " Flaming " anyway, it's only my opinion on what you should do anyway & to have my opinion classed as " stupid " on 3 occasions now is out of order...

Thankfully you've seemed to accept option 3 ) though that i gave you...

Edited October 24, 2008 by MSingh

[MSingh]

People are geting injured and dying on that newly repaired road and these are the best solutions you guys can offer? That's lame.

Why the f is it what " Us Guys " can offer, what have " Us Guys " got to do with anything & how can " We " make a difference ???

Mattias, simple, stop writing about it on an Internet Forum & get down to where your voice can be heard & where you can voice your concerns..

PS : Other Readers, if Mattias does that, expect a new Thread in around 2 hours from Mattias titled " Why is no one in authority listening to me on Samui ?? "...