Gated communities: is Hua Hin and Cha am a dangerous area?

[crispernator]

Hi all well i have been looking on some websites about proerty in hua hin and cha am and i see a fair ammount that say things like nice gated community with 24 hour security .Now as the title of the post suggests do you need to be in a gated community to feel safe there ,perhaps some of the long time residents of these areas can shed some light on this question .

[JamesWest]

the roads like all of Thailand are dangerous. i would say this is your number one concern.

if you drive around, you will see almost every Thai house that is not in a gated area has bars on all the windows, all the way up to the third floor. not all, but many. most parking spots in front of houses are completely fenced in to lock up scooters/motorcycles. many sliding iron gates.

Some Thais and "guest workers" are very poor and will steal your expensive running shoes if they get a chance. i had a cheap pair stolen. they can sell a pair of sunglass at the market and get money for food. your iPhone charger cable is lunch money.

the thai house i am living in now has bars on all the windows, iron gates on all the doors, bars across attic crawlways.
the thai people who live across the street who own a grocery store have broken glass glued to the top of their wall.
thais dont spend money on all this stuff for no reason.

the expensive gated community that i lived in a year ago had guards walking around the streets INSIDE the compound. They were asleep most of the time at the main gate at night. like the bus drivers. that house did not have bars. it was beautiful, but i still locked the doors and hid important papers.

there was a pair of drug addicts breaking into farang houses in HH. they hit about 30 homes. they got busted.

personal safety at night is no problem. some on this forum think HH is dangerous at night. but i think it is very safe compared to cities in the west. HH rolls up the sidewalks at midnight. zero issues in HH. Sort of boring. if you hear anything, it is drunk farangs and Thai lady fighting.

except for that ladyboy in Pattaya who would not take no for a answer, i have never had a bad feeling or been confronted in Thailand.

[expat71NL]

Hua Hin is a thousand times safer than any medium or large city in the Western World as far as crime is concerned. The roads are not safe. Your biggest chance of injury will be on the roads or in your own house. If you do not get involved in the criminal community you will be a lot safer in Hua Hin than in Mayfair!

[Big Boy]

A personal gripe of mine is gated communities. When I moved here 3.5 years ago there were 2 needs on my property list. The main need was not to be inside a gated community. The second was not wanting a swimming pool.

I have only ever been into one gated community where security seems to work, and that is Emerald. Every other community, I've driven into (and there are a few), I've never been challenged.

When we were looking for a property, we were taken to a gated community (basically we were lied to, just to get us there). Whilst I didn't want to be there, I listened to the sales pitch. Signing for one of their properties would have required an extra £6,000 on top of the deposit for the first year's maintenance fee in advance. If I had been remotely interested, any interest went straight out of the window at that point.

Many friends who live in gated communities experience problems e.g. add-ons for electricity and water, a lot of people (mainly, but not entirely Thai) refusing to pay their annual fee, promised work (gardens etc) not being done. Maybe your fears are directed in the wrong direction.

Yes, there is the odd dishonest Thai, but that could be said about anywhere in the world. Most people are honest, and I've never felt at risk living outside of a prison compound gated community. Maybe we'll be burgled one day, but shit happens.

[crispernator]

Thanks guys i can relate to the bars on windows and doors as my significant other has a grate on her window and lockable steel door in front of the normal door in her apartment but this has only been since her neighbour was broken into and diamond ring stolen {pretty good landlord] .Big boy i can relate to what you say about a prison compound as that would be the feeling that i would have and as you say there is the fees . I didnt drive my last trip there but i didnt really notice any radical driving errors when i was in others vehicles aprt from a taxi that squeezed in between a bus and a car getting me to don muang ,i made the driver aware i was not happy scared the crap out of me.
When i spent some time in the phillipines i noticed the gated communites there had the 20 foot high fences and glass on top but that is a whole different country especially in mindanou ,didnt really notice to much around bangkok or the other cities i visited then i wasnt really looking for it either ,id say bars and steel doors would deter most wanna be crims and as stated keep important docs hidden away.

[Dannie Boy]

I've only visited the Philippines for business trips maybe six times, but my impression is that the Hua Hin area is about ten times as safe as an equivalent town in the Phils - watching an armed guard take up his night shift outside McDonalds in Makati was my guide that it's not a safe place.

[StevePIraq]

As far as gated communities go I think mine is pretty good, if you are not a resident you must leave your driving license at the 24/7 manned entrance gate, the vehicle plate number is also registered and you are on camera, you are given a temporary card which has to be returned to get your driving license back. As far as services go it is totally dependent on where you are, I am very happy with my gated community.
Break in's can happen anywhere, have installed an alarm system, there are some excellent ones now which can text your phone and more.
As said previously your biggest risk is driving and the standards here are terrible.

[Name Taken]

I've only visited the Philippines for business trips maybe six times, but my impression is that the Hua Hin area is about ten times as safe as an equivalent town in the Phils - watching an armed guard take up his night shift outside McDonalds in Makati was my guide that it's not a safe place.

I have heard a lot of people say that the Philippines is dangerous and that it sucks.
I personally would never go to the Philippines.

[JamesWest]

yes the guards are just "kabuki theater" at gated communities. i was never challenged even on my first day in the "farang homeland simulator".

much happier in this Thai neighborhood. hard to believe this house is totally quiet, i got lucky because thailand is a very noisy place.

anyone coming to HH you should be worried about transportation safety and walking near streets.
slipping and falling on unsafe sidewalks and the total lack of safety procedures everywhere. never assume anything around construction sites or men working with ladders you are walking by. common to see sidewalks covered in cables that are wrapped round the base of a ladder. people painting three stories above you.

next is getting ripped off by real estate agents. don't assume there is any ethical behavior. if you think it is impossible for the agent, seller, attorney to all be "in on it" you are wrong. your number one priority is to find a honest agent.
don't let anybody tell you that you can OWN land. LIE.

Keep asking the hard questions even if you are renting. Will my view be blocked? Do the farmers burn their fields next to my house? is that a call to prayer? are they building a football stadium? if they are building so many houses and condos how can my value go up? just the one street into this whole area? the roosters i am hearing, they sleep at night, right? is this traffic normal? the train does it blow its horn like that all the time?

[STEVE G]

I live out to the west without a gated community and haven't had any security issues at all, I've got a fridge full of beer and soft drinks in a room in the garden that doesn't even have a lock and none has ever gone missing.

[Khundon1975]

Gated communities are not worth the money you pay for them.
A couple of years ago in Chang Mai, a farang was slaughtered by two boys who stole his car and the guard just waved them through.

Much better to get to know your neighbours, make friends with them and they will be your security. And they are awake a lot more than the idiot in a uniform sat in a deckchair.

Just my humble opinion.

[hhfarang]

During the 10 years I lived there I was in 3 houses and an apartment, none in gated communities with guards, and I had no problems. The home I built was a large two storey which did have gates and walls but the walls would have been easy to climb over. I had no barred windows or doors and never had a problem in seven years living in it. However, two different gated communities where friends lived both had a rash of break-ins and robberies and in both cases it turned out that the guards were involved as inside men to let the thieves know who was not home... so I'd say you're saver NOT in a gated community.

[Spitfire]

Hua hin is probably one of the safer places.

[centermid7]

I sleep like a baby knowing that the night watchman at my place is sleeping just outside my door.

[crispernator]

Hi all thanks for the replies ,now i hope im not stepping on anyones toes here but ill say what i think about being in a gated community .Firstly they are or look fairlly sterile in that i mean there is no individualism /character in the homes from what i have been looking at ,maybe this is just the newer ones but thats my take on it.As someone said before there are the maintenaince fees which some apparently do not pay which should be noted by the consortium and no work done to there property but then that leads to other problems if your trying to sell your property and the one across the road looks like a dump .
Another thing is that when and if i come to live there i dont want to be surrounded by farang ,that to me is why i am coming there ,from what i have heard there seems to be a lot of farang who do nothing but gripe about living there {not on here } and my first question to those type of people is why are you still here ? My idea of coming to live there is to try to assimilate into the culture ,i know as a whitey it will probably never be but as close as you can get to it, also i think by moving into a gated community you would be isolating yourself from what you came there for in the first place to live amongst the thais and thai community
Now i know there will be some who will say you dont live here you dont know what your talking about and this is true i dont live there ,but i have been doing a lot of homework on this and other subjects prior to a move ,evrey country has its bad points and i have looked at these as well ,in fact i watched two of my countrymen get the crap kicked out of them in phuket last night ,but that goes with the territory they want to engage in . Anyway that is a small look at how i veiw living in a gated community.