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Originally Posted by IRISHJD
Hi All,
First time visitor to these forums and to Phuket. Very excited!
My Girlfriend and I will be staying at The Tropical Garden Hotel for 7
nights. Anyone been or know anything about it? What's the cheapest way
to get to patong other than motorbike and how much can we expect to
pay?
Also, a question is in relation to custom tailors on Phuket. Who is
best? Or even good? We're looking to spend a max of 14,000 baht each.
What can we expect to get for this?
Any help would be appreciated!
JD
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With 14,000 baht, you should be able to get a reasonable suit, ... but don't go advertise in advance to the Tailor how much you want to spend.
Phuket-info.com also has a reasonable search function in the "blue" bar in the upper part of the web page you are viewing. You can use that to find past posts on Tailors on this forum.
Did you read this thread?
http://www.phuket-info.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6234
It has some suggestions for Bangkok and Phuket Tailors, and also has some warnings as to a couple of tailors to stay away from. The information in the thread is is all highly subjective, but hopefully it will be a help.
Material selection is very important in suit selection, and that is where a lot of tailors make their money (as it can be difficult in Thailand to justify high labour costs). If you can find your own high quality material outside of Thailand (and bring it with you), that can be an even better way to get a suit made. I can pass you some information as to the quantity of material one must get, if that is the approach being considered.
As a rule of thumb, you could consider:
jacket 2.7 yards
pants 1.5 yards
vest 1.0 yards
I recommend one go for two pair of pants with a suit, and not just one pair. Pants are often the first item to "wear out" in a suit, and hence an extra pair of pants will extend the suit's life. If you bring your own material, also add some extra material for the possibility that your chosen tailor will make a mistake.
Of course, if you go with the tailor's material, having to worry about not having enough material is not a concern.
I'm told England can be a good place to find high quality material (if one knows the right places). I once picked up some great Irish Tweed in Ireland, for a wonderfully warm winter suit that I had made in Bangkok. And I've had other suits made of worsted wool. I noticed New Zealand on the location part of your post, and I sort of suspect (although I concede I don't really know) that New Zealand may not be the best place in the world to get good suit material ? Have you looked into seeing what you can learn about material in your local area?
Having said all of the above, most tailors in Thailand will have a reasonable selection of material to choose from, but it will typically be limited to different patterns and colours of worsted wool. I have found the very highest quality of worsted wool to be missing from the Thailand tailor's material selections.
The very best worsted wool material you select should have a hard finish, otherwise it will wear through too fast. This is not the tailor's fault--it's the way material is manufactured. In the case of all suit material, you should also crush some of it in your hand to see how much it retains wrinkles. If you crush it and it hardly wrinkles at all, you've got the good stuff. If it retains the wrinkles, it will do the same when you wear it. Stay away from that material.
I'll post some more on suit style in a different post.