Life in Koh Samui

For tourists throughout the world, Koh Samui is one of the most preferred destinations. Based in Thailand, this island is highly renowned for its loveliness and tranquility. The best characteristics and other Koh Samui attractions are its white sandy beaches, clear waters, large coconut plantations and vibrant night life.

The locals on this island are also very friendly and so the tourists do not experience any type of problem when searching for appropriate Ko Samui accommodation. Since the availability of the Koh Samui villas, the tourists have experienced a lot of convenience due to their economical rates and relatively better services. The amenities of Ko Samui villas comprise of big rooms with lovely glimpse of the ocean, total privacy, lovely swimming pools with deck facilities, bar and restaurants offering all kinds of drinks and tasty Thai cuisines. The employees of the villas of Ko Samui are professionals and wait on the visitors with total Heat.

Villas in Koh Samui is located conveniently close to beaches and market places. You can also spend time in the pool or a drink on the deck with the other half. If you regularly to Koh Samui, we recommend that you buy a villa in Ko Samui. You can also rent to other tourists and earn money with your investment. Samui is the best place to invest in real estate in Thailand. Thousands of visitors to the island come to enjoy the naturalbeauty. There are lots of hotels in Samui, but Park Samui Hotel is the best.

Owning A Bar On A Tropical Island - Is It Really A Dream?

In a good year, in excess of four million people visit Phuket in Thailand. A lot of those visitors will love it. Some will love it so much that they want to live here.

Every year thousands of people come to Phuket hoping to set up a new life on a tropical island. Many of them need to make a living and quickly discover that employment opportunities for foreigners are very limited. So what are their options? Well one of the most likely avenues is to invest in your own business. And what is the easiest business to get into? Owning a bar.

To many people it sounds like a dream. A life on a tropical island, days by the beach and evenings partying in your bar. But does the reality match the dream?

It is something I considered doing when I first arrived in Phuket. I checked out the options; spoke with estate agents, bar owners, even bar girls. In the end, I decided it just wasn't worth it.

I was new to Phuket and still naive to many of the pitfalls that await bar owners but even then, I could see there were so many problems with owning a bar in Phuket. To begin with, 'owning a bar' is a misnomer as you will almost certainly be leasing and probably at very unfavourable terms.

It is difficult to make a decent living from a bar and in fact most fail in the first two years. Even if your bar does make money, your working status will probably be illegal. The laws in Thailand are stacked against foreigners owning a small business.

As much as all these things concerned me, they were not my biggest concern. The biggest factor in turning me away from owning a bar was the lifestyle. I got to know quite a few bar owners and when I looked at their lives, I knew it wasn't for me. It is just such a crap life.

Don't get me wrong. I love a night on the beer. Even several nights on the beer. But having to do it every night at the same bar as a job? It would soon lose its charm not to mention the obvious health problems that go with such a lifestyle.

Since I made that decision to leave the bar business alone, there has not been one second when I have looked back and regretted it. I know plenty of bar owners and consider several to be friends but I never envy their lives. Recently, the untimely death of one of those friends really drove it home for me.

He was not yet 50 years old. He owned a bar in one of the sois (side streets) off Soi Bangla in Patong. He was a nice guy, easy going and easy to talk to. Although I saw him no more than once a week, we always enjoyed a good chat and he was one of my favourite bar owners.

Over the previous year, he had a few health problems. He had been in hospital several times and the advice from the doctors was plain and clear - stop drinking!

The problem is it is very difficult to stop drinking when you are a bar owner. The two things that bring customers to these small bars are the girls and the owner. And often the girls will not work very well if the owner is not there.

Regular customers like to have a chat with the owner. Often, if the owner is not there they will just move on to the next bar. Quite simply for these bars to work, the owner has to be there most of the time.

So couldn't my friend have drunk soft drinks? Well he did that for a few days but the boredom got to him. You spend the evening sitting at your bar, bombarded with the deafening music that these bar complexes seem to think is a good drinking ambience. For a good part of the evening, you may not have any customers, but still you need to be there just in case. You can watch the TV but you can't hear it. Your only company is the bar girls who are probably nagging for time off or free drink.

And when the customers do arrive, they want to get drunk and they want you to get drunk with them. Of course, it is okay for the customers. If they are on holiday, they are only doing it for two weeks before returning to their normal lives. The bar owner has night after night, year after year.

They offer to buy a drink and not to accept a bad deal. If you want to maintain discipline and stay sober at night is unbearable. Drunks are a lot of fun if you're drunk with them. If you're sober, there's nothing worse than trying to laugh at their silly ramblings.

So despite the warnings of the doctor, my friend was drinking too early. And 'onlyfor the area, a bar, you're going to drink a lot.

It all started with my friend. He had a bad motorcycle accident. He has never drunk driving, but motorcycle accidents happen easily. He resigned too early ignored doctor. The next meeting has been drinking too much for a body that was tired. He died in his sleep.

The crazy thing is that it does not even need cash. He had worked hard in his homeland and was ableto retire. I and other friends had tried to persuade him to give it up. The problem was he was one of the few bar owners who was making a good profit and he found it hard to walk away from a good business. In the end he was too good at being a bar owner for his own good.

The strange thing is most of the people who buy into bars have come to Phuket for a better lifestyle. They want to live in a tropical island paradise. Phuket is their dream home and owning a bar is how they will fund their life here. The problem is owning a bar excludes them from enjoying the island.

Most bar owners wake up mid-afternoon with a hangover. They lounge around their budget apartment shaking off the hangover until it is time to go into the bar and start work again. They could do this anywhere. Phuket's glorious beaches, islands and other tourist attractions are irrelevant to the bar owners because they hardly see them.

I know a couple of bar owners who did not even know there had been a tsunami until the evening when they set off to work. I know another who after three years in Phuket had not yet seen Phang Nga Bay, Phi Phi Islands, Nai Yang Beach, Nai Harn Beach, in fact anywhere more than a few kilometers from Patong.

I don't want to totally put off potential bar owners. I just want to open their eyes to the sort of life they will be buying into. I think for the right type of character, under the right circumstances, it is an okay option. If you are young, you can handle this lifestyle much better. I know when I was in my twenties I did lots of boozing and was always able to shake it off ready for the next session. As you get older, your powers of recovery diminish.

For somebody who is looking for a couple of years partying and is willing to get in and out, owning a bar in Phuket is a decent option. If you have the sort of discipline where you can go to the bar and entertain customers without getting drunk every night, then maybe it is for you. But as a long-term source of income - for most people it is just not worth the sacrifice.

Another bar owner friend decided to sell up after a couple of years in the business. He was a young guy and his bar was making him a living. The problem was he had got to the stage where he hated his bar. He hated going to the same place night after night, he was sick and tired of dealing with bargirls and their petty squabbles and he was tired of feeling crap all the time.

So he sold up and got out with a nice little profit. It wasn't until after he sold the bar that he discovered the reason why he felt crap all the time. It wasn't just the hangovers; they were masking the real problem. He had Leukemia.

I'm not saying that owning a bar actually caused his Leukemia but it certainly did not help his body deal with it. What it did do was put him in a frame of mind where he thought it was normal to feel bad all the time and he accepted it. Fortunately, he got out in time, was diagnosed and returned to his home country where he was successfully treated.

He is now all clear and he hopes that one day he can move back to Thailand. At the moment, his regular check-ups prohibit that. He says that now he looks back at his time in Phuket and realises he was in a rut. He was making enough money to live but he couldn't save anything. His life revolved around going to his bar every night so he was just not doing the things that drew him to Thailand in the first place. He would never return to the bar business in Patong.

So to recap. If you are thinking about becoming a bar owner in Patong, what can you expect? Well you will spend most nights sitting at your bar waiting for customers and listening to dreadful, loud music. You will struggle to make a worthwhile profit. You will have to deal with the antics of your bar girls. You can decide to either spend your evenings sober and bored or drunk and happy.

Assuming you go for the drunk and happy option (most bar owners do) you will eventually pay for it. I don't know a single bar owner who looks like a picture of health. It is a demanding life and if you do it long term you are probably taking a few years off your life expectancy.

You could take the attitude that work is always crap. It is crap in your my home country so you might as well have crap work in Phuket. Well fair enough, as long as you go into the bar business with your eyes open and not with some rose-tinted vision of days by the beach and nights partying.

An Ideal Prom Party At Page, Arizona

When it comes to planning a prom party, could be very stressful, especially if you have designated drivers who will decide. With our Prom Party Limousine driver site for the role is not a problem. Our experienced driver will take care of all your transportation needs. You and your prom party Pals only need to tell him, you know where to go and do what the time for you and Page Prom Party Limousine driver for oureven be able to suggest to you one or two exciting things to do at Page, Arizona.

The city of Page is located near the Arizona/Utah border, overlooking America's second largest man-made lake - Lake Powell, with the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. It is a small town on the southern shores of the wonderful Lake Powell and it is an ideal location for your and your prom party pals to explore many of the American Southwest's renowned national parks and monuments.

For some outdoor "wet" activity, you and your prom party pals can use tour boats, personal watercraft, houseboats or any other motorized watercraft to explore Lake Powell's endless side canyons, inlets and coves. Water sports activities are almost endless, so it is advised that you bring extra clothes to change for your other activities later in the day.

One great place for you and your prom party pals to enjoy shopping, dining and dancing all under one roof is The Dam Plaza, located at 644 N. Navajo Dr, Page, Arizona. Shopping at The Dam Plaza can be quite a fun time and you can start off with The Dam Outlet - a clothing outlet for men, women and children, with the latest trend and they carry brands such as Levi's, Polo, Sketchers, Hot Kiss and etc. Next stop would be The Shirt Shack where they have a variety of t-shirts, hats, souvenirs, jewelry, accessories and other gift items in their store.

When shopping is done, you and your prom party pals can now enjoy a good meal at the Dam Bar & Grille. They serve great steaks, seafood, pastas and cocktails that you can enjoy in a very casual atmosphere and if you want, you can have patio dining that is available in their beautiful outdoor setting. Another thing unique about this place is that they have a scaled down version of the Glen Canyon Dam, which will make your dining experience one that is not easily to be forgotten!

If you and your prom party pals still want some action after dinner, The Gunsmoke Saloon is your next destination. It is said to be Page's number 1 nightspot! The dance floor is huge and they have state-of-the-art sound and lighting that will keep you and your pals dancing all night long. And if you are not into dancing, they also have 4 full sized pool tables, foozball, and video games to keep you entertained. The best thing about The Gunsmoke Saloon is that there is no cover charge at all, so you only pay for your drinks.

"A Broad Abroad in Thailand" by Dodie Cross

"A Broad Abroad in Thailand" promised to be a book that I could relate to in several ways. Being an expat myself, I always find what other expats have to say about their new countries fascinating; I've always considered myself a broad and I absolutely adore Thailand. So at a first glance I found it hard to imagine that the book could live up to my expectations...

Having read a fair number of books about expat life and experiences, I mostly found them quite imbalanced and superficial. Granted, most of the authors were rather young, but in the majority of cases I was just not overly impressed by them. Dodie Cross' "A Broad Abroad in Thailand" is definitely an exception. The author never tries to hide the fact that she was no spring chicken when she headed to the Land of Smiles, which certainly gives an interesting spin to her observations. We get to learn more about orphanages and healthcare than we do about beach parties and bars, which in my opinion is a nice improvement. Ms. Cross also nicely balances the funny-to-hilarious misadventures with more serious issues and her 'who-could-ever-understand-those-habits' moments with her obvious admiration and respect of Thailand, its culture and its people.

Ms. Cross' memoir begins with a hasty marriage to a golf instructor, which is needed in order for her to be able to accompany him to his new position in Thailand. Although she is not totally certain that marrying Dick (and oh, what an appropriate name for him!) is such a great idea, she decides to go forward with it. Their move to a new country is very eventful - as those moves tend to be... Very soon she is battling not only a badly cracking marriage to a sex addict, but also countless rules and regulations imposed by the wife of Dick's boss, the overpowering Ms. Anorexia. Ms. Cross would rather get to know her new country and meet the people, but all such attempts are considered by Ms. Anorexia as against the rules. Then along comes the near-fatal accident on the infamous Sukhumvit Highway - which truly is at least as bad as described by Ms. Cross as well as a bladder surgery with unexpected results. Dick is not thrilled by Dodie's restored virginity, the boss is not thrilled by Dick and Ms. Anorexia is just generally not thrilled with anything, particularly not with Dodie. Such is the sorry state of affairs overall, which will only lead to more trouble. You will, however, have to read the book for yourself to learn how Dodie resolves the situation.

Having seen that Ms. Cross has also lived in New Orleans among other places, I will definitely keep an eye out for a book about those experiences. According to the little addendum, she is already working on one about her life in Iran, so I can only hope that the New Orleans one will be next. As for "A Broad Abroad in Thailand," I found it well written and very enjoyable. If you need something to brighten your day, just read one of the funnier chapters, maybe the one about mastering the use of Thai toilets or the joys of buying underwear in a strange country. You will feel so grateful that you do not have to deal with any of this that your day will immediately improve. Great read for expats, expats-to-be, wanna-be- expats, travelers and just about anybody else with a sense of humor.

Christmas Cheer in a Thai Prison

For several years I have corresponded with prison penpals from around the world. Many spend a lonely Christmas and are fortunate if they receive any Christmas cards from their family. In prison, the "festive season" can be the loneliest season of all - reminding them of how far they are away from their family and loved ones.

This story from a friend I'll call Charlie, warmed my heart as I read it - Charlie is imprisoned in harsh conditions in Thailand:-

"The prison Church is the call for funds for a Christmas party and New Year. He wants to spread essential toiletries and medicines to fellow Christians - and the Burmese, Chinese and Africans - as many are destitute. The Church invites all those who are not gifts that can help friends and family to this cause. The importance of altruism can not get enough points, its effects are pleasing to the maximum. "

I know from his letters that my friend oftenhungry, without what we consider essential in life, such as toothpaste and other toiletries. He often suffers from the disease because of poor diet and lack of nutritious food.

But in the midst of their needs, thought my friend Charlie to look at the needs of others. The story reminds me of the widow's mite, although small compared to the donations of others, showed true generosity of heart and mind.

May we all remember the true spirit of Christmasgenerosity this year as we enter the festive season.

Female Puberty - An Arduous Process!

Puberty is the process of a girl's body maturing in preparation for reproduction. During puberty, hormones change which causes changes in their body. This process begins at different ages in different girls. Some girls begin the process as young as 8 years of age and some not until 12 or 13 years or even older.

When entering puberty, girls begin developing breasts, gain weight in their hips, buttocks, and thighs, and begin to grow hair under their arms, grow pubic hair, and their skin becomes oily, which can cause pimples in the majority of girls. At some point during this process, girls begin to menstruate. Once menstruation begins, girls are, of course, capable of becoming pregnant. Going through puberty is an arduous process with many emotional ups and downs.

During the process of going through puberty, most girls begin to be attracted to the opposite sex and begin to want to look womanly and attractive. They want to shave their legs, put on makeup, wear more fashionable clothing - even revealing clothing. Love songs become very interesting to them as they search to find out what that boy/girl thing is all about. They start flirting with boys in the form of trying to be around them as often as possible and performing acts to attract their attention - for example, seeking them out to talk or to aggravate them by any means handy that will get their attention. Of course, normally, those boys are also going through puberty and are acting just as silly towards the girls trying to attract their attention. It should be noted that there are some girls who are never attracted to the opposite sex but are very attracted to other girls. They still go through these same stages of puberty, their interests are simply directed in another direction.

During the puberty process, girls go through mood swings as their hormones change in their body. They may be happy one minute, crying the next minute, and angry the next - mostly over minor things or over nothing at all that a parent can see. All girls go through it and most make it just fine. Some mothers, however, have a harder time. They question their sanity and their ability to cope. Sometimes one wonders how it is that mother's have any hair left after their little girls finally pass through puberty! Maybe they hang on to the thought that revenge will be theirs after their little girl has a little girl of her own and she has to cope with the puberty process!

This article is not intended as medical advice. You should consult your doctor with any questions regarding your child's development.

Edinburgh Hen Nights - The Perfect Getaway

The second largest city after Glasgow, Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. Filled with the beautiful Medieval and Georgian Architecture, Edinburgh is truly a magnificent city. Vast green pastures, the old charm of the rugged medieval architecture and a commercial hub, this city has all the charm of the old and new world. Edinburgh is also one of the most populous cities in the UK, hence, the streets and clubs are always buzzing with warm and friendly people. Edinburgh is also very famous for hosting a range of festivals, some of which might sound a little bizarre. From the famous Edinburgh International Festival to Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the calendar of Edinburgh is filled with events and organization. They also have a lot of street parties which only shows how enthusiastic and energetic the crowd is. Vibrant, lively and full of colours, Edinburgh is perhaps the liveliest and friendliest place for that perfect getaway. No wonder it has at least 1 million tourists visiting every year, a number that comes second to London.

Edinburgh Hen Nights: The Perfect Getaway

Hen Nights in Edinburgh are very popular. With event organizers especially for stag and hen weekends running full time businesses here, you can imagine its popularity. It's because Edinburgh has a very vibrant nightlife. They have a varied range of activities which can be organized according to your budget. Here a few activities that you could try on your Edinburgh Hen Weekends:-

Paintball, Edinburgh

Paintball is a very popular game in Edinburgh. With the backdrop of that beautiful medieval architecture clubbed with vast green landscapes, Paintball in Edinburgh is a totally different experience. So, get ready to dress up in traditional Scottish costumes and have a blast. Though this is considered to be a stag activity, the setting is so amazing that you are bound to have a ball of a time.

Pole Dancing Lessons

Edinburgh offers some of the best experts for Pole Dancing Lessons. One look at those lanky girls swinging on that pole in a club and you'll know what we mean! Who says a party cannot teach you some moves! So, get ready for the wildest party which will have some of the best Pole Dancers teaching you the moves!

Highland Games

The Highlands of Scotland are world famous. Combine this with a few Highland games and you have got one fun activity for your Hen Weekend. The beautiful green pastures and some real fun games which will organized by your event company, now that's what we call an adventure day.

So, if you are looking for a hen weekend filled with adventure, action and amazing parties, head for Edinburgh!