September 22
Oct 3 Update
The site was hacked last week and was redirected to a Japanese porn site – magic4man.com, if you are interested. I thought I had fixed it but I hadn’t found the root cause and the redirect kept reappearing. So more drastic action was required.
Help was obtained from IT guys in bangkok and France and we thought we had it sorted. However, the hackers kept coming back and the attacks are still ongoing. The site hasn’t been redirected recently but the database keeps getting deleted – meaning have to start puttin g the site together again everyday.
The content is all here. Photos are missing and various features wont work until the site is secured again.
Thanks to Gez at Nirada.com in Bangkok for his work finding the problems and especially to Cyril from France, a WordPress wizard who has spent mos tof this week helping out in his freetime to try to got the site secure. If you need any website problems fixing then I can definitely recommend him. Many thanks also to IT guys Charles in Phuket, Vincent from Shanghai and ‘Moob’ in San Francisco who also offered their help, suggestions and advice during the past few days.
Also, thanks to the 50+ people who texted, called and emailed to let me know when the problems were reoccurring.
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After the last, less than stellar, update there’s a bit more meat on the bones of this one. And things don’t get much meatier than a suicide brought on by economic woes. Sadly, last week, the owner of a new luxury resort on Koh Chang hung himself. Apparently he was having money problems. The mid-forties businessman had invested a huge amount in his new resort and had applied for a loan to pay debts and cover the running expenses. The process of approval for the loan was taking longer than expected. Approval for the 50,000,000 Baht lifeline arrived a day or two after he died.
Anyone driving between Kai Bae and Lonely Beach will have noticed the new hotel block and restaurant that is under construction at SeaView Resort. The restaurant will have simply the most amazing views of any restaurant or hotel on the island. From the balcony that runs the length of the restaurant you get the view above. Floor to ceiling glass doors open onto this balcony. It will be the ‘must visit’ place for sunset meals/drinks on the island, regardless of how good the food is.
The restaurant is split in two. One section that looks like a bar for private gatherings / functions and the other, much larger, public area which by the looks of things will be a more western style pub/restaurant with what looks like a rather tacky bar and a stage for live music. One thing that is a bit odd is the upper balcony area. The ceiling here is extremely low as you’ll see in one of the photos below.
James, from Slim Jim’s ‘Purveyors of Quality Pork Products’ in Klong Prao, has been honing his baking skills and turning out some interesting custom baked cakes. These are ideal for any occasion special enough to warrant splashing out on a couple of pounds of carefully iced sponge that can be shared amongst guests.
Below is a boob cake. He also does a nice clownfish cake, but for the purposes of this update a finely hand crafted nipple is probably of far more interest to the majority of readers. I don’t know who ‘Mark’ is, but congratulations on the successful sex change operation anyway.
If you’d like any edible body parts rendering or just want to order a fun, unique cake whilst on Koh Chang, get in contact with James
A couple of our guests recently got engaged whilst they were on the island. The spot Kevin chose to pop the question to Melinda was the deserted beach at the deserted Grand Lagoona Resort in Bangbao. This was enough motivation for me to go and take a few photos of the resort and see how it shapes up as a destination for a half-day activity in it’s own right, albeit one which leaves you thinking “What the hell is going on here?”.
From the monstrosity of the floating hotel to the beauty of the converted rice barges and oddness of the lifesize concrete elephants; from the manicured beach with amazing views to the rundown restaurants, the pointless floating swimming pool and the lifeboat from a Panama registered tanker than sank off the US coast in 1986. . . . there really is something to make everyone say “WTF?”. A few photos below, but far more of the highs and lows, in this Photo Gallery.
*Wait for this page to load before clicking on the thumbnails*
Next Update. More rooms at Baan Rim Nam – our guesthouse. If you could see yourself lazing on this deck by the river then you might be the sort of person who would like to stay in our new annex, a.k.a the neighbour’s house, comprising two airconditioned ‘Standard Superior Deluxe’ rooms which can be yours for around 1,000 Baht/night each . . . once the place has been fixed up.
