Luke's 4K post: How to GTFO! (And into Thailand)

webjedi said:
Granted I have never been to Thailand, I just know I ain't Thai and would always be foreign no matter how well I spoke the language.
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This is true. Of course, I've heard people in the US say the same thing even though they are native speakers of English.

webjedi said:
For me, I am thinking New Zealand. I blend in better being white and its more advanced (I think, I always think of grass huts, eating insects on a stick, tons of rice, bicycles, pollution and garbage when I think of Thai).
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Grass huts: check (on the southern beaches)
Eating bugs: check (northeast Thailand villagers)
Tons of rice: check
Bicycles: Nope, very few in fact, which annoys a lot of foreigners who can't find a bike shop in most towns
Pollution and garbage: check, Bangkok is filthy, Chiang Mai choked with smoke from burning fields 3 months of the year, beaches often fouled by garbage tossed on them by tourists and locals alike. Elsewhere not so dirty.

That's little stuff man. Bigger issues about living in Thailand are things like you can never get permanent residency or citizenship. Sure, there are laws on the books saying you can. But nobody is ever approved because Thai government people are xenophobic. There's a 10 year stack of qualified permanent residency applications sitting on the desk of the head of immigration who will not sign them. The best you can ever do is get a long term visa that has to be renewed each year and requires a report to immigration every 90 days about your address, and hope they don't change the requirements for extending your visa each year (like they did a few years ago doubling the bank desposit requirement).
 


You can literally grab a nice rental house for less than $100 a month here. You could likely live on $250 a month just fine.
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Curious. How much does your monthly spending average, OP?
 
geomark said:
Note that you will almost certainly not be able to get any kind of credit card in Thailand - they simply don't extend credit to foreigners.
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If you need actual CREDIT, then right, you're going to have a rough time. However, I think pretty near all ATM cards from Thailand banks have a VISA account attached to them. It's not actual credit, but it's a VISA card, and the money is just instantly taken out of your checking account.

Anyway, a few extra if anyone cares:

Culture Shock -- Prepare yourself for this one. I've lived in various countries, and without question, Thailand was the hardest one to deal with in terms of culture shock. Took me about 2 years, but I'm extremely glad I'm still here, because now that I'm 100% comfortable here, there's no way I would trade this life for some luxury condo in some metropolis again.

Obviously, it depends how you live though. If you live in some luxury condo downtown BKK, and spend all your time at Western megamalls, steak houses, Irish pubs, and Starbucks, it obviously won't be very difficult. If you integrate yourself into a Thai neighborhood & society though, and live with other Thais in your house / condo, you can expect some culture shock. And remember, culture shock comes in phases over a long period.

Privacy -- Depends where you live I guess, but if you're in a place without many foreigners, expect to have almost zero privacy. Expect everyone within a 5km radius to know who you are, where you live, who you live with, what you eat, what you drink, if you fart when you shit, what you wear, how often you sleep, and so on. It can take some getting used to, but once you're used to it, it's great, or at least I enjoy it. Everyone knows each other, you see each other several times a day, everyone gets along and helps each other out as needed, etc.

No Fighting! -- Never fight with a Thai. Just don't do it. If you end up in an altercation, it doesn't matter who's right, just respectfully back down. Trust me.

Don't get angry -- There's just no point. For example, if you're angry at some store, the internet provider, your landlord, or whatever, keep your mouth shut, and don't bother expressing it. If you do, it's going to fall on deaf ears, nobody is going to give a shit you're angry, and it's going to make it 10 times harder to get anything done. Just relax, take it as it comes, and don't worry about it. Flirt with the cute girl in the store instead of yelling. It'll work.

Prejudices -- This is a pain, and one you'll always have to deal with. If you have white skin, everyone knows you shit bricks of money, and millions of dollars just magically appear for you every time you sleep. So when meeting new people, you constantly have to listen to whiny assholes go off about how poor and hard done by they are. However, once people actually get to know you, and get past the fact you have white skin, they're great.

Learn Thai -- Just go learn it. A whole new world opens up for you. Not to mention, you'll gain immediate respect when meeting new people. Don't ever learn using the transliterations you see in books though, because you'll end up talking like a retard, and nobody will understand you. Learn just as if you were 3 years old. Alphabet first, have a Thai sit with you and ensure you're pronouncing each character properly, then move into words, reading, writing, etc. If anyone wants, I have a few movies (Inception, Limitless, Avatar, etc.) that are in Thai, with both Thai and English sub-titles on at the same time. Works great for helping learn!
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
If you need actual CREDIT, then right, you're going to have a rough time. However, I think pretty near all ATM cards from Thailand banks have a VISA account attached to them. It's not actual credit, but it's a VISA card, and the money is just instantly taken out of your checking account.
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debit card?
 
Awesome posts, I'd love to move to a different country one day and I hear a lot about people moving to and living in thailand. Certainly looks like an awesome life style, being a beach bum with a wicked villa would be brilliant haha.

How long have you lived there ?
 
dmnEPC said:
In some circles some people may find this post to be a "belligerent" act.
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Which raises an important point. If you are going to make the move, anywhere not just Thailand, you better do it sooner than later. It's not going to be long before you can't. I'm thinking about two years or so.

It's not because they will stop you at the airport (although they might). It will be because the US tax regime has become so aggressive and overreaching that no other countries will allow you to have any financial assets there (Google FATCA and read all the blowback from it). Without the ability to open a bank account or make investments the only thing you can do is use your debit and credit cards. Fine as long as you want to be a tourist but not good enough if you want a long term visa or anything else more substantial. And with capital controls on the way you will be severely limited in how much you can move offshore in the future.

So do it now, get a big chunk of your assets moved offshore so you can continue to have unfettered access to them. Be sure to be aware of FBAR and FATCA reporting requirements. Depending on where you go you may find you realize a big gain against the dollar as it continues to be debased and also find that you can own physical gold without limitation, reporting, or risk of confiscation. If you don't have much money saved already and are counting on balling with teh internet monies rolling in future months/years then it may be too late to move as you may not be able to access those monies from offshore in the future.


Also:
Kiopa_Matt said:
Yeah, that. Sorry, guess I'm just used to explaining it to Canadian banks, while asking if they have it yet. I think Canada is the only country who still doesn't have VISA accounts attached to their debit cards yet.
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Yeah, Visa International is the network that normally processes ATM/Debit card transactions. They're the ones who charge the 1% network fee I mentioned previously.
 
Kiopa_Matt's discussion of the soft squishy issues like culture shock and prejudice is right on. He is obviously speaking from experience living here.

Let me point out a connection between Prejudice and Learning Thai: If you get to the point that you can speak Thai with a solid Thai accent, people start engaging you and sort of forget they are speaking to a "farang" (caucasian foreigner). They hear a Thai accent and respond in a Thai way rather than the usual biased way. I found it damn difficult but I learned the same way Kiopa is talking about, not from those crappy "romanized" spellings of Thai words and tapes, but with a tutor who started me with the alphabet and pronunciation. You need a real teacher/tutor because the pronunciation with tones and all is baffling to English speakers. Once you get the foundation you just keep on paying attention and working on it, copying the speech patterns of locals, until you get so you can almost speak like them. Takes a long damn time (for me anyway).
 
Doesn't sound like moving to South East Asia is much different than when I did it over 20 years ago (with the exception of the online tools) Have fun! And dodge the ping pong balls.
 
geomark said:
If you don't have much money saved already and are counting on balling with teh internet monies rolling in future months/years then it may be too late to move as you may not be able to access those monies from offshore in the future.
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So you're saying the IM dream is dead?


How much money saved is necessary to make the jump? rough guess? You're pretty much saying that unless you have all teh monies you will ever need saved..then you can't move?
 
lose lose win said:
So you're saying the IM dream is dead?


How much money saved is necessary to make the jump? rough guess?
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What's the IM dream? Just making lots of money online, right? No problem, you can still do that. Just in the future you will have to live in the US (assuming you are a US person) while doing it.

You can travel and visit other places (probably). But if you are a "US person" (check the definition of that, includes more than just citizens) you will have a difficult time living outside of the US due to FATCA (starting now) and capital controls (coming soon).

Americans will be economically trapped in the US and slaves to all that is coming. The ground work has already been laid with the laws on the books like the "beligerent" designation, imprisonment without due process, stripping of citizenship, and aggressive confiscatory tax regime. As the debasement of the currency continues and the government pursues greater and more aggressive asset confiscation you won't be able to escape it because you are an economic prisoner.

How much money to make the jump depends on your age, lifestyle, family situation, connections in your target country, how you might be able to structure offshore asset protection in light of the rapidly changing landscape (even Singapore is saying they will probably submit to FATCA), and probably a bunch of other things. Hard to even ball park it.
 
Timely thread. I've got a few BKK specific questions if anyone can answer them. I've rented a serviced apartment in Nana for the month just to dip my toes in.

Where to eat proper meals for relatively cheap in Bangkok? Specifically along Sukhumvit near to the BTS or Nana? I'm spending about 150-500 baht per meal, depending on the beverage that accompanies it. This is only slightly cheaper than buying meals in Australia. Also this may sound stupid, but why is it so hard to find Thai food here? This is unlike Pattaya, Phuket or other touristy areas where Thai restaurants are abundant, here it seems to be Indian, Japanese, Italian, Mexican all over the place.

Where do most anglo/euro expats live in BKK? I've met a few from around the Soi thirties. Where I am now seems to be flooded with Indians and Arabs, makes me feel like I'm back in Melbourne.

What is the deal with food coupons at food courts? Why even have them?

Any good gyms? Any that are open 24/7?

In regards to "visa runs", I should just cross the border to Cambodia or Laos then come back to be eligible for a new stamp on arrival visa. How much to budget for this exercise? Why does everyone go to Cambodia and Laos and not Malaysia or Burma?

How much would it cost to rent some office space and to employ a full time programmer or designer? Can I even do that as a foreigner? Do I need to setup a Thai company?
 
I lived in Bangkok for 2 years but that was 8 years ago so can't give you current info on where to eat, play, gym, etc. But yeah, lower Sukhumvit isn't the greatest for you. I lived out at Suk 103 but didn't know any other expats in the area.

Never did the visa run thing since I'm here on a non-imm "O" and never have to leave. But I know that people in Chiang Mai go to Burma for their visa runs and some people go to Malaysia if they are in the south. Otherwise a mini-van to the Cambodian border is inexpensive and only takes a (long) day from Bangkok.

Those food coupons at the food courts are so the building owner can take a cut of the sales from each vendor who rents their little space.

The Thais are stupid about making it easy for a foreigner to setup a small biz and hire a couple of Thai people. They require a lot of paperwork and a lot of money to do it. They are just trying to fleece foreigners rather than try to do something good for the country. I think Kiopa_Matt has some experience on that so he might comment.

One thing you will probably find is that hiring good talent in Thailand is very difficult. Really poor work ethic in general. Almost universally poor English language skills except for Thais who have worked abroad and those guys aren't going to be cheap if you can even find them. Hiring foreigners legally is out of the question due to ridiculous capital registration requirements plus ratio of Thai to foreign employees. Truth is you should probably outsource to the Philippines or similar. So your Thai outsourcing would be outsourced to the Philippines...yo-dawg-i-heard-you-like-outsourcing.jpg
 
10's of thousands of websites are blocked by order of the Thai gov. WF is not (yet) one of them. But then, what's a little thing like a block on a website? Just use a proxy, right? Oh, use of a proxy is illegal in Thailand and a lot of web proxies are blocked. VPN anyone?

Which is another good point for anyone planning to run a biz from here. Better have a backup in case your website(s) get blocked. Happens by accident sometimes to innocent sites. Even YouTube was blocked for a few months a couple of years ago.
 
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