Koh Samui current priced

Doesn't matter what happened to him , as far as main Thai islands go a lot of locals running small time bungalows etc got forced out by high rents . In the case of Phuket the expensive living costs have made life difficult for locals not part of the tourist trade.

In Rimini prices have exploded since tourism took over. Luigi is not in tourism, if plants veggies - and sells them 20 more expensive than before tourism. His brother Antonio is fishing and gets now 14 Euros per kilo instead of 80 cents.

Alfredo rented out rooms in his pension for 5 Euros; he reinvested some of his profits and upgraded his rooms and even paying a higher rent he makes more money than ever as he gets now 55 for his rooms.

The only one who didn't make it was Pinocchio. He didn't upgrade his rooms, just pocketed all the money. When rents increased he couldn't cope.

Their distant cousin Lee-Berlusconi in Singapore is doing well, he inherited his grand dads pub, they pay 15'000$ rent these days but with a good crowd and at 18$ a beer he is doing wellj, just went on a holiday to Rimini.

Dave, it would be locals running small time bungalows, on who's land would these bungalows be build? How can they be run off because of higher rent? Maybe they sold their land.
Locals on Samui had land, not so much more nowadays, but that's how most of them started out.

RE# LIMBO ,
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At first the bungalows and other businesses were run by locals who owned the land or paid rent to local families who owned the land - not everybody owned the land , not unusual for different bungalow owners to be paying rent to the same land owner. At the beginning sea front land wasn't very valuable but later on when plans for an airport got under way and mainstream tourism was making inroads outsiders and resort companies moved in to buy land . Some locals who owned land did well , some were coerced to sell and numerous others who were renting were forced off.

QUOTE - "Locals on Samui had land, not so much more nowadays, but that's how most of them started out. ". Just to repeat again to make it clear , only SOME locals owned the land not every single bungalow operator. that had sprung up. Same thing has happened on Ko Chang , Trat province and Ko Phangan and elsewhere.
But in any case this is not an economics or job creation forum and another thing to consider is that whats happened to Samui is spilling over to Ko Phangan also - its becoming a little Ko Samui with evermore development and they are building an airport there too .
Many can accept that Thailand needs some developed tourist islands for its tourist industry and most didn't complain too much about Samui and Phuket when there were still alternatives like Ko Phangan , Ko Lanta , Ko Chang . But now just about everything is being taken over for upmarket / mainstream development . The only thing sparing some places like Little Ko Chang (near Ranong) is that the beaches are not very good.
And one other point , in times past when posters would give reports about was happening to certain beaches and islands they would be often chided with something like - " stop moaning and complaining , go find a new place !" . Well we have go to the stage where the new places have just about run out , and you not going to find another beach that looks like Chaweng or Lamai or Thong Nai Pan on whats left.
The "moaners" deserve an apology.

PICTURE Chaweng nowadays.

PICTURE Chaweng in the wooden bungalow era.

Dave, you phrased it as 'what about the hundeds of locals that used to work and make a living running ordinary bungalows and restaurants who couldn't afford to upgrade'.
Plenty of Samui families had 'useless' beach land, the good land, all located in-land was given to the 'good' kids, the black sheep of the family got the beach land that nobody really wanted.
All land originally was held by local Samui families. A lot was sold.

Just realized that PM's are disabled, do you allow me to use the two LP pix of Chaweng in the 80's for my blog?

I phrased it that way in response to to Tools4Fools comment about the hundreds of jobs created , but I didn't just say "couldn't afford to upgrade" I also added - "or who were pushed out by high rents ".
Thats right a lot was sold, but the land became even more valuable after much of it was sold , those who sold early were the losers. By the time there were lots of bungalows on the Samui beaches many of them were renting .

Yes you can use the pictures - it belongs to Lonely Planet anyway and was taken by Joe C , he didn't identify the beach , but it looks like Chaweng. Its regrettable about PMs not coming back.

Thx, appreciated for the pix. Yes, not having the pm function is a bit strange, what can be the reason for that?

^^ One can only imagine the paranoia in the BBC head office when they decided to stop people PMing each other on TT.
It's a major problem, and may be a contributing factor in the reason so few people regularly use the site compared to before the great thread massacre.

It's been downhill since the massacre, that's for sure. PM's and signatures were nice tools, I can understand not wanting sig's but PM's? Back to kindergarten.