pirates

From some of my local friends I've heard some unpleasant stories about farangs getting burned badly by Thais. A relatively common story is a farang moves here, sets up a bar or some other business and gets it off the ground, but eventually has to go home for a while. They get back after a few months and find their bar full of thais. Fine, they think, and just tell the Thais to hit the road. The Thais respond, fuck off and don't come back or we'll shoot you. Wow. That's happened with houses too. The only way to be safe is if you're part of the family, and the easiest way top do this is marry a Thai woman. In some ways, Ko pha Ngan is a bit like the Wild West, especially up in a place like Bottle Beach, not reachable except by boat, and there, the locals really make the laws. Not that it's that different elsewhere, since the cops are pretty corrupt, but it's not as bad. A guy named Jamie got put through the wringer by some Thai "friends" of his up in bottle beach. He bought a speedboat and started a business with it, kiteboarding or something, but all the legal forms that he had to sign were in Thai. So he asked some of his friends to help him out, and after all was said and done it turned out that the forms he signed were conferring ownership of the boat to the "friend". It took a lot of money and wrangling, but he got that crap voided out eventually.