Zero political inspiration. Just a desire for competence, or is that not a concern to you? Is the concept of leadership too fat fetched in this land. Or does the majority of tourists abandoning the 3rd most popular tourist destination warrant concern?

Mike Macarelli

Chaiyaphum, Thailand

Sent from my Samsung SIII

Why do I like hearing news like this? My brain's really stuffed up. I long for a multi year drought for Phuket for example. ......Total gridlock on the streets of Bangkok. People stuck in cars for days....chaos......collapse. Where can I get help?

High voltage cables are a strange thing and failures do create massive effects .

Nonsense.

Why are you making excuses for the incompetence and the arrogance with which public servants treat the population here.

If the equipment was used within its limits and underwent the correct maintenance by properly trained engineers then it wouldnt fail.

It doesnt fail in Paris, It doesnt fail in Tokyo and it doesnt fail in Hong Kong. So why has it failed in Koh samui, and why, after 3 days have they not been repaired. I read that the one engineer who could solve the problem had to be flown down from Chiang Rai, (was he busy repairing underwater cables there too?)

Is Samui so impoverished it cant afford to maintain its infrastructure, cant afford to pay for competent engineers to look after its systems?

Where on earth did you get the idea that EGAT is run by Samui?

Are you saying that EGAT have no resident engineers on Samui, no officials with responsibility for their area, nobody with the authority to effect a repair to the islands main supply, or do the Samui minions have to go grovelling up the chain of command until someone can authorise repairs?

Overview of rolling power outage. Please note that it indicates parts of areas. Loop is 14 hours.

A relatively simple problem with a relatively simple solution. Its called "Preventative Maintenance". Unfortunately this country runs on 20/20 hindsight viewed through rose tinted glasses along with a generous helping of blind luck, - which just doesn't cut it in the real world. Nothing is maintained here, nothing. They only bother to fix anything once it has catastrophically failed. Take tires for example, they don't replace them once worn, the preferred method is wait until they explode. Same guiding principles go for almost everything.

In summary; Mai Phen Rai...... Booom. Ops. wasn't me.... Someone else fault.

I just tried to access the PEA (provincial electrical authority, Thailand) website, only to be informed by Google Chrome that access was blocked due to possible infection by malware.

You couldnt make some of this stuff up.

Amateurism doesnt even come close.

Are you saying that EGAT have no resident engineers on Samui, no officials with responsibility for their area, nobody with the authority to effect a repair to the islands main supply, or do the Samui minions have to go grovelling up the chain of command until someone can authorise repairs?

Thailand is a highly centralized country, every level reports to a higher level. For example; Samui govt has no authority over songthaews. They are under the Provincial Dept of Land Transportation which is under the National Dept. of Land transport, just as an example (before someone starts in on me saying whats this got to do with songthaews). If you don't grasp the basic way this government works then you won't understand how these things can occur.

EGAT is, like all governmental organizations, a top down bureaucracy. Making high level decisions without superior authorization is not going to happen. This cable is extremely expensive and very very expensive to repair, I find it very hard to believe that some medium level amphur based technician has authority.

I'm due to be there in a few weeks time. Think ill cancel the hotel booking now. No way I'm going there without electricity.

I'm due to be there in a few weeks time. Think ill cancel the hotel booking now. No way I'm going there without electricity.

Pretty sure they will have electricity in a few weeks

Bophut on at 16.15.

Are you saying that EGAT have no resident engineers on Samui, no officials with responsibility for their area, nobody with the authority to effect a repair to the islands main supply, or do the Samui minions have to go grovelling up the chain of command until someone can authorise repairs?

Thailand is a highly centralized country, every level reports to a higher level. For example; Samui govt has no authority over songthaews. They are under the Provincial Dept of Land Transportation which is under the National Dept. of Land transport, just as an example (before someone starts in on me saying whats this got to do with songthaews). If you don't grasp the basic way this government works then you won't understand how these things can occur.

EGAT is, like all governmental organizations, a top down bureaucracy. Making high level decisions without superior authorization is not going to happen. This cable is extremely expensive and very very expensive to repair, I find it very hard to believe that some medium level amphur based technician has authority.

The bottom line for me is being a state owned service there are no penalties to pay when the service is not provided so no real sense of urgency compared to what would happen if it were privately owned, then you would see some rapid repairs as the penalties kicked in for non provision of service! you would also see a better state of the provision in general, government jobsworths have no incentive to provide a decent level of service. This is typical of any public sector service in the world, full of overpaid jobsworths who wouldn't know how to make a decent cup of tea.

Ok latest up date....No one knows how to fix the cable but they are trying to fix it, no one knows if that will work because they don't know what they are doing. If its not working by Saturday it won't be working on Sunday. If its fixed and working Sunday week it could be still ok and going on the Tuesday before that. As for Wednesday next week no one wants to commit to that but I have heard if its not up and running on Thursday then it definitely wouldn't have been back on by Wednesday.

That is the official explanation I got from the Mayor, Govenor and the PM.

Finally at least these guys are starting to make some sense of the situation.

Overview of rolling power outage. Please note that it indicates parts of areas. Loop is 14 hours.

Thank you Gulfsailor. At last - some useful information

Bophut on at 16.15.

Nothing here in Plai Laem - and we are supposed to be on the same timetable?

.

Making high level decisions without superior authorization is not going to happen. This cable is extremely expensive and very very expensive to repair, I find it very hard to believe that some medium level amphur based technician has authority.

Typical third world cluster****, although I thought it would be more the responsibility of the PEA, who operate on a local basis, rather than the power generating company EGAT. I think Samui is under the control of the Nakhorn Si Thammarat Southern Area 2 office, the chain of command cant be so convoluted that it takes 3 days and counting to restore power.

It just smacks of typical Thai incompetence, lack of responsibility and professionalism that is so often seen when problems arise. It might have been acceptable 15 years ago, but these days it is just plain embarrassing, to say nothing of the inconvenience to visitors and small businesses.

Bophut on at 16.15.

There are two sections of plai laem. You are probably with ban rak and cheong mon. That means you will get it at 10pm, and should have had it this morning at 8. At least we in ban rak did. Anyway, the electricity now comes from 13 generators on trucks, which are driving around apparently.

Nothing here in Plai Laem - and we are supposed to be on the same timetable?

Thanks for that info - yes we had power at 8am today.

TOURISM

Visitors flee power blackout on Koh Samui, Koh Phangan

· Published: 6/12/2012 at 12:00 AM

· Newspaper section: News

Interior Minister Charupong Ruangsuwan yesterday instructed state agencies to dispatch mobile generators to the affected areas, as tourists faced many problems after being without electricity since Tuesday.

Many tourists left their resorts, crowding Koh Samui's only airport in tumultuous scenes.

Typically at this time of year Koh Samui hosts about 20,000 tourists. That number shrank to about 1,000 yesterday.

Supplied by Samui Gazette.

What utter rubbish.

1,000 visitors on Samui - there are more hoons visitors that that riding around on rented motorbikes!

enjoying my last 27 mins of electric

Just been a bit about it on channel 3 news and they've got some farangs in working on it and is back to 20% at the moment, and 'hope' to have it fixed by 'tonight' according to the wife (I didn't understand a word of it as usual).

Fingers crossed chaps

High voltage cables are a strange thing and failures do create massive effects .

Nonsense.

Why are you making excuses for the incompetence and the arrogance with which public servants treat the population here.

If the equipment was used within its limits and underwent the correct maintenance by properly trained engineers then it wouldnt fail.

It doesnt fail in Paris, It doesnt fail in Tokyo and it doesnt fail in Hong Kong. So why has it failed in Koh samui, and why, after 3 days have they not been repaired. I read that the one engineer who could solve the problem had to be flown down from Chiang Rai, (was he busy repairing underwater cables there too?)

Is Samui so impoverished it cant afford to maintain its infrastructure, cant afford to pay for competent engineers to look after its systems?

Did anybody notice that when the Skytrain was built in BKK it was not engineered by Thais? It was a German company subcontracted to do the construction. The level of traing and education here in Thailand was always adequate within the everyday TV and newspaper realm of a small, proud nation, but now that Thailand finds itself interfacing more and more with first word competence, awareness and expectations, the government and its media are becoming constantly embarrased and losing international face more and more.

Fifteen or 20 years ago the. govt could get away with saying or doing whatever it pleased. But, SCARY MONSTER, the internet and WWW have. utterly kicked their legas away.

"Responsible spokesmen" are still desperately continuing to make up "statistics" and facts and figures (ie normally 20,000 tourists here - now there are 1,000) seemingly unaware that then entire rest of the world is watching via online sources, and able to access databases and TAT stats, andlaughing at their transparently idioticic nonsense.

One poster here mentioned HK, Singapore and somewhere else with a similar problem that would be a simple routine fix, never make the news and be done overnight. Absolutely true. But these are countries that don't hang their HT mains cables from trees and poles, all tangled together with the cable TV and phone lines, and joined with wire and sticky tape. These countries also don't produce university graduates who put a Band Aid on their faces when they have a toothache or consider "fresh" juice to be a can that they only bought yesterday.

Every month, little by little and more and more, poor little Thailand, a country. for generations so proud of being independent and separate from the rest of the world, is now begining to discover that this is no good thing.

There is only so far you can go in the international community making total cock-ups and then blathering pathetically to try to save face. And every time it happens this lovely, happy, carefree nation is shooting itself in the foot again and again. But it's cheap and sunny here, so what the heck!

R

High voltage cables are a strange thing and failures do create massive effects .

Nonsense.

Why are you making excuses for the incompetence and the arrogance with which public servants treat the population here.

If the equipment was used within its limits and underwent the correct maintenance by properly trained engineers then it wouldnt fail.

It doesnt fail in Paris, It doesnt fail in Tokyo and it doesnt fail in Hong Kong. So why has it failed in Koh samui, and why, after 3 days have they not been repaired. I read that the one engineer who could solve the problem had to be flown down from Chiang Rai, (was he busy repairing underwater cables there too?)

Is Samui so impoverished it cant afford to maintain its infrastructure, cant afford to pay for competent engineers to look after its systems?

Did anybody notice that when the Skytrain was built in BKK it was not engineered by Thais? It was a German company subcontracted to do the construction. The level of traing and education here in Thailand was always adequate within the everyday TV and newspaper realm of a small, proud nation, but now that Thailand finds itself interfacing more and more with first word competence, awareness and expectations, the government and its media are becoming constantly embarrased and losing international face more and more.

Fifteen or 20 years ago the. govt could get away with saying or doing whatever it pleased. But, SCARY MONSTER, the internet and WWW have. utterly kicked their legas away.

"Responsible spokesmen" are still desperately continuing to make up "statistics" and facts and figures (ie normally 20,000 tourists here - now there are 1,000) seemingly unaware that then entire rest of the world is watching via online sources, and able to access databases and TAT stats, andlaughing at their transparently idioticic nonsense.

One poster here mentioned HK, Singapore and somewhere else with a similar problem that would be a simple routine fix, never make the news and be done overnight. Absolutely true. But these are countries that don't hang their HT mains cables from trees and poles, all tangled together with the cable TV and phone lines, and joined with wire and sticky tape. These countries also don't produce university graduates who put a Band Aid on their faces when they have a toothache or consider "fresh" juice to be a can that they only bought yesterday.

Every month, little by little and more and more, poor little Thailand, a country. for generations so proud of being independent and separate from the rest of the world, is now begining to discover that this is no good thing.

There is only so far you can go in the international community making total cock-ups and then blathering pathetically to try to save face. And every time it happens this lovely, happy, carefree nation is shooting itself in the foot again and again. But it's cheap and sunny here, so what the heck!

R

Rob, you are getting more cynical every day. You have to look at this in a completely different way; do you like watching clowns at the circus, or tv comedies like Family Guy? Well you are now living in that! How cool is that? I am having a laugh a minute, and it got better and better every year, since the 9 years I am now here. Truly Amazing Thailand.

I please everybody to stop with the Thais and Thailand bashing.

We need instead useful info and news.

Please keep this thread civil, useful and informative.

Sent from my HTC Desire HD A9191 using Thaivisa Connect App

Power in Nathon came back at around 5PM. Since this was not on the rotation plan (thanks again Gulfsailor), we are in good hope .

Correction: Apparently not all of Nathon, didn't know they can restore power selectiveley only.

Fingers crossed power will be fully restored before the end of the world on December 21st.

Sent from my GT-I9070 using Thaivisa Connect App

I am having a laugh a minute, and it got better and better every year, since the 9 years I am now here. Truly Amazing Thailand.

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Well, how childishly wonderful for you.

Consider if you will for a minute those people who are running businesses that depend on a regular supply of power, surely not such an outrageous demand in 2012, on an island that advertises itself as a world class vacation destination, consider their loss of income and their loss of reputation, through no fault of their own.

Consider also, those visitors who have spent their own hard earned money to travel there, only to find no power, no lighting, no hot water, refrigeration or television, swimming pool pumps dead, etc.etc.etc. all because of poor maintenance, poor planning, little or no information and a lack of skilled on site engineers.

But you seem to find it all very funny. are you Thai by any chance.

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We had power in Bang Por (santithani) from 16.30 to 18.00.

Unfortunately now it's off again.

God, bless True Move!

Overview of rolling power outage. Please note that it indicates parts of areas. Loop is 14 hours.

Thank you so much for the useful information - please post more of the same!

Just enjoying my last hour of electricity here on Koh Phangan...

People in vast swathes of the Greatest Nation on Earth were without power for weeks in the wake of hurricane Sandy, a storm of no particular magnitude compared to what this part of the world experiences every rainy season, plus (with all due respect) Samui is a small and fairly insignificant island. Let's perhaps not get too carried away extolling the superiority of the West.

It IS extremely annoying and could be handled better, but how often and at what length does the point need to be made before we can get back to practical questions?

(Thanks to the people who've been posting updates, by the way. Very helpful.)