It was great to spend some time with you both, and La-on and I hope you enjoy the rest of your honeymoon!!!

Marc and Elke - true blue pyromaniacs to the core!!

Everything was sorted out by the time they both got to Koh Samui, and we duly carted them both off to the ‘Town Hall’ on Samui to present their paperwork and get that very special wedding certificate.

Well… that was the plan anyway! Unfortunately there was a bit of confusion when they were getting the completed paperwork in Bangkok, and they left the office (thinking everything was done) before they were given the ‘official’ (ie: stamped) copies of all their documents! All they had when they came to Samui were un-stamped photocopies of their documents!!! Oh Dear!!

Of course, the officials on Samui couldn’t accept the documents without the official stamps, so Aleks and Sina could’t get married… and… to compound things, they only had 48 hours left to collect the officially stamped documents from Bangkok!

Well… to cut a long story short… La-on asked one of her friends living in Bangkok to whizz around to the various offices and collect the official documents on their behalf, and – after a seriously busy day taxi’ing around Bangkok and greasing the appropriate palms, June (La-on’s friend in Bangkok) finally managed to get everything sorted and sent to Samui… Just in time!

So… happy ending and big smiles all around… and Aleks and Sina will never forget their wedding on Samui… complete with all the drama! lol

It was great to be able to help them ‘Tie the knot’, and we all had a great time celebrating their special day… with lots of beer being drunk, and lots of photographs taken! I have put only a few of them below….

CONGRATULATIONS ALEKS AND SINA!!! It really was great to meet you both, and I hope that our paths will cross again soon. La-on and I would like to wish you both the happiest of futures together, and hope that your love for each other never fades.

Aleks and Sina with their coveted marriage certificate!

Aleks and Sina with La-on at Wat By Laem, receiving Monk's blessings

After setting the fireworks up on spare land close to Marcel’s villa, I asked him if he would like to shoot the show himself, using one of our wireless remote firing systems… big grins all round!! I do believe we have a closet pyro-freak in the making here!!!

Marcel had a great time pressing the remote buttons to shoot his fireworks, and I hope it will give him yet another excellent memory of his Birthday Firework Display!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARCEL !!!

Marcel at the helm!

Off we go! lol

An awfull 'out of focus' photo (all my fault sadly!) of Marcel's birthday-bash friends!

We also have our good friends and fellow ‘pyro-freaks’ Marc and Elke coming back to Samui on the 11th to see us too!!! Really looking forward to meeting up with them again! We are very lucky to have so many pyro-freak friends! lol lol Let the good times roll!

Last night we had all 3 teams out at shoots, and it was a fantastic night for numerous reasons… not least of all because all of the shoots went perfectly, with all 3 clients more than happy with our high levels of service.

I chose to go to the smallest shoot we had last night, as I had been in contact with Jeffrey (the client) for some time, helping to plan what was going to be a very special evening for him and his girlfriend, and I wanted to make sure that everything went perfect for them. Jeffrey and his girlfriend had come to Samui for a short break, and Jeffrey had planned a surprise romantic dinner on the beach at the Silavadee resort, where he planned to ask his girlfriend to marry him.

We had planned a Lancework banner saying ‘WILL YOU MARRY ME?’ with a lancework Bear on each side of the banner (the bears meant something special to Jeffrey and his girlfriend).

We sneaked-in prior to the couple coming down to the beach, and set-up the lancework in secret, and then, at the given signal, we set off a small ‘attention-grabber’ 49 shot cake… and – when that finished – lit up the lancework!!! How could any girl refuse such a wonderful, romantic gesture?

The answer was – of course – YES! (Congratulations to you both from all of us at The Firework Shop!).

The Silavadee is a beautiful resort in Lamai, with a romantic beach setting, and provides a genuine 5 star service to its guests from some of the best trained staff on the island. Highly recommended.

The other 2 shoots were over on the south of the island, both wedding party shoots. The shoot at Nikki Beach was particularly impressive, and Blue Team out-shone themselves with the firework display they gave the very special guests, who were delighted with non-stop explosive action!

After the shoot there the staff began to clear-up the spent firework debris (lots of bits of paper and 100s of small round cardboard ‘plugs’), and were surprised to hear from a member of staff that ‘the other person who shoots (fireworks)’ simply piles all the rubbish next to the bins and leaves it for others to clear up. Our staff explained that we always leave a shoot-site ‘as we found it’ (sometimes cleaner!), and would never leave our rubbish for others to clear up!

When we say we 'clean up' after our shoots, we REALLY clean-up!

This gives an indication of the high levels of service we provide our clients, as well as showing that – unlike others – we ‘walk the ‘walk’, and that you really can believe that ‘we do what we say we do’ on our website. After all… our strap line is … ‘Safety – Quality – Service’!

So… all in all, a very succesful night for all of us, with three couples who are now aware that The Firework Shop goes the extra mile to ensure that the promise of ‘Safety – Quality – Service’ is fullfilled to the utmost.

It is an honour to play a part in such an important day in the lives of people.

What a beautiful couple! Jeffrey and his girlfriend (future wife!), with 'yours truly' in the middle! Two lovely people, and we all at The Firework Shop wish them the very best of everything, and look forward to shooting for their wedding when they come back to Samui!

We were vivited by our old friends (old as in we have known them for a while – as opposed to them being old!) Christian and Melanie from Wupperthal, Germany a week ago. It was so good to see them again, particularly as both of them are firework ‘experts’ in their own right. They run their own firework shop in Wupperthal, so we spent a lot of time swapping stories, and me picking their brains for any information that could help us improve our service and standards of safety. Christian mentioned the cost of remote firing systems in Europe (very expensive), so I put him in touch with a Chinese contact of ours that actually manufacture many of the sytems available in Europe… at around 50% of the cost if bought from them direct! I showed Christian and Melanie some of the systems we use, and their faces lit up… I hope they work out for you guys!

I will upload some pictures soon, as well as a link to their website. I do hope that next time (soon?) we will be able to spend more time together… it is so cool talking to fellow ‘pyro-nuts’, and I am proud to call Chris and Mel our Pyro- brother and sister!

There can be nothing better than the approval of your peers, and when Chris and Mel saw how we set-up and shoot, and the level of safety we bring to all aspects of our work they gave us the ‘thumbs-up’! For our standards of safety and service to be acceptable by our peers – judging us under European standards – then I can feel proud about our work. Thank you to you both… and I hope we meet again very soon. Have a safe trip home guys!!!

Christian & Melanie enjoying Laarn's cooking at our home.

Despite our best efforts to limit ourselves to only a handful of shoots this New Year’s Eve, we have ended-up with 8… not being able to turn down those who didn’t realise that they had left booking us way too late!
Putting our foot down at 8 shoots didn’t quite work either, as we are also ‘assisting’ a further 4 shoots (2 more resorts and 2 private parties) by lending them each a wireless remote firing system so that they can shoot their own fireworks (bought from us of course!) safely – and have fun pressing buttons of course! We will be setting the 4 shoots up for the customers, and getting everything ready for them so that all they have to do is switch on the remotes and get ready to start shooting at midnight!

Last week ‘Blue Team’ shot a wonderful display for the opening of a resort in Lamai… they made me really proud! (Aaaaw! lol). It was a ‘Big Do’, with some rather important guests – including a good friend of ours, the Chief of Police of Samui – so we were determined to give the owner – Boris – a really special event!
The firework display was to be set to music – Boris’ choice, which – although great for fireworks – consisted of 2 songs, each well over 5 minutes long! The actual display was going to be around 4 mins 30 secs in total, so I had to cut down the music to suit (I use a great free software programme called Audacity). It took quite a few hours of playing around and cutting the music, but I eventually managed to get in down to a total of 4 mins 30 secs. Now all we had to do was choreograph the fireworks!

I must admit that I do like choreographing firework shows… it brings out my artistic side lol… !!!
We also made Boris a very special Lancework set-piece, consisting of a damn-near perfect representation of the resort’s logo and name… it looked great!

BUT… I am a firm believer that ‘self-praise is no recommendation’, and therefore I am never really relaxed or happy until after the firework display, when we can judge the success of our hard work and efforts by the reactions of both our client and his opening ceremony guests. We may believe we are wonderful at what we do, but if our client isn’t 100% delighted with our efforts, then we have – I believe – failed them.

Fortunately that has never been the case – we have no place for arrogance or self-importance – as we always put the needs of our customers first.

Thankfully, Boris was more than delighted with the choreographed firework display, telling us that his guests all agreed that the show ‘was fantastic’! Ok… NOW I’m happy!

The sequencers performed very well during the show, and showed their worth during a particularly frenetic bit of the music, which would have been difficult (impossible) to keep up with (fireworks-wise) by manually pressing buttons! Great bit of kit those sequencers, and we may well be investing in a few more over the coming months.

I will try and get some video of our New Year’s machinations up on the site, but, untill then, keep smiling, and enjoy the pyromaniacs main night of the year… New Year’s Eve…. YEEEEE-HAAAAA!!!

Still buzzing after meeting ‘Mushrooman’ (his nickname) I came home to be welcomed by the three pooches and my various assortment of birds… all screaming for food (it was past their normal feeding time), and then my good friend Bom turned-up to tell me about the full eclipse of the moon later that night. So – after feeding the animals – Bom and I settled down with a few Gin and Tonics to wait for the eclipse to start. Boy was it worth the wait!
As the moon was around half-eclipsed (is that a word?) there were firecrackers (and a few guns) going off all around us… people ‘shooting at the moon’ for good luck! Truly amazing Thailand! lol

The Firework Shop, that’s who!

No bullshit, no big egos, no arrogance… just the safest, most exciting, and best value fireworks and firework displays on Koh Samui… shot by a trained and experienced professional-minded staff team.

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