gearbox

Seems you have figured it out. The police is not there to police anything, have you seen a speed camera anywhere? They don't care if a motorbike or car is registered and whether the drivers have proper licences. It benefits them to have more accidents to "mediate", which results in mediation fees. In the mediation process it is important who has more money to be milked and who knows bigger khun. Why would they be pressing charges? What's in for them?

Another option is Amaysim, they have prepaid sim with PAYG $10 credit valid for 365 days. This can also be bought as esim (Aldi doesn't support esim yet) so in theory you may be able to buy it online and activate in Thailand, but check with Amaysim first, it varies across providers. Your phone must have esim support.

It is not...Aldi mobile PAYG credit is valid for 365 days.

Has anyone been in a road accident and settled the case in court? Seems that most of the accidents here go through "police mediation", with the corresponding brown envelopes. If a person doesn't have a driver's licence at all or drives unregistered vehicle would that be considered "person at fault" pretty much all the time? I think in Australia that is probably the case, but here it seems the driving licence is not important. A person I know has been involved in an accident, so with Samui being a war zone wrt accidents I better get to know more. Seem the chance if accident here is "not if but when".

It depends how the DTA is interpreted. From what I read if you are not Australian tax resident your super may be taxable in Thailand. If you are a resident in both countries there are "tiebreaker" rules to determine primary tax residency for specific cases, e.g pensions. Again, it seems that the only amounts taxable in Thailand are the one entering the country, so if you transfer nothing, nothing will get taxed. This is different from the Oz taxation, if you are resident you get taxed on worldwide income, it doesn't matter if you transfer it to Oz or not. I'm starting withdrawing super sometimes in 2025, to remove any doubts I'm planning to spend 7 months back in Oz.

Phuket - Bangkok is one of the cheapest domestic routes in Thailand. Prices can go as low as 100 baht (not including check in baggage) during sale times. Planes are not like buses, prices go up a lot if booking a flight next week.

Logic dictates that if one can't swim and doesn't have a life jacket flotation would be difficult... Looks like the guy wasn't alone, I wonder why the other one just didn't tow him to the shore instead of going to look for help.

In Australia most of the apartments are not condo types, no swimming pools, gyms, security guards, etc, the strata amounts are way lower than your numbers. Also our age pension is means tested and the own residence is exempt, so having 500k and more as means tested assets may reduce his pension.

1m cash or equivalent assets will bring way more income than the OAP itself. Would be pretty dumb to keep 1m cash at zero earnings in order to claim OAP.

Many Thais don't have insurance at all, and also driving unregistered motorbikes without a licence. Expecting payments from them is not realistic. The Aussie insurance companies won't deny payment without solid justification. Usually in these "news articles" there is no mentioning of the exact reason why coverage was refused. If he had motorbike coverage and complied with the policy rules they can't refuse payment, even if he is at fault.

https://www.medicalrepublic.com.au/docs-versus-crocs/8448

In many policies motorbike coverage is not included at all. Below is the wording of the last policy I had, I had to pay extra for coverage. "Motorcycle/Moped riding Claims involving participation by You (during the Journey) in motorcycling or moped riding for any purpose are specifically excluded from this policy. If You wish to be covered for this activity during Your Journey and be able to hire a motorcycle (including a moped) as the driver or a pillion passenger, You must pay an extra premium. Please ask for a quote. Even if You pay the extra premium, You will only be covered if: • the engine capacity is 250cc or less; • while in control of a motorcycle or moped You hold a valid Australian motorcycle licence or Australian motor vehicle driver licence; • while You are a passenger the driver holds a valid licence for riding that vehicle; • You are wearing a helmet; • You are not participating in a Professional capacity; • You are not racing; and • You are not participating in motocross. Note: No cover will apply under Section 17 Personal Liability. This means You are responsible to pay costs associated with damage to the motorcycle, moped or property or injury to another person"

All the insurance policies I've seen don't mention anything about bicycles. There is no "bicycle licence" as well.

It is pretty light actually...if the offender was an Indian/Chinese/Russian/Arab/African the racial slurs would be flowing stronger than Mekong.

You are testing my extra thin builder knowledge....it was just extra concrete on top of existing concrete driveway. The truck was normal concrete mixer, I was told they fit in 5 cubic metres.

Because 4 cubic metres was more than required as per calculations The tradie was calculating 2 cubic metres with his height, it looked thinner to me and said to my gf to order double.

Easy...they just pour the concrete and give you official invoice for 4 cubic metres. BTW concrete mix in Samui is 2600 baht per cubic metre, but apparently there are different types of mixes, this one had a lot of small stones inside.

I had visitors at that time who happened to know quite a bit about concrete calculations, but even for my not trained eye the concrete was way less. Another truck is on its way with 1 cubic metre, it would be harder to scam with this one.

My gf ordered 4 cubic metres concrete mix, but by my estimates the truck delivered no more than 2.5 cubic metres. Is there anything she can do about this? How widespread is this practice?

400k for unit in Perth, 10-15k for a car, 80k stand by cash in high interest account like Ubank and full OAP... should work ok for you. You don't need to be tax resident to get a pension and seems that you lived long enough in Australia to qualify...just turn up at Centrelink and demand pension asap. You can set up camp pretty easily, probably would take you a week or two to get Medicare card and open bank accounts.

Some people have been watching Hollywood trash for too long and also never seen government or banking backend systems. It is not easy and there is difficult legislative framework for it. In many cases the money and effort put in this kind of analysis can't be recovered with the potential revenue of tax collected and fines.

I'm not a tax person but I've done some technology work for large overseas entities involved in these areas and know a few bits and pieces. The amount of funds transferred this way would be quite limited. I would say 500-600k baht won't raise any flags, but if you try to withdraw 1+ million and above, your own bank may lodge suspicious transactions report with the authorities in the home country. It is their judgement, but the AML legislation has a lot of requirements and the banks are getting penalised if not identifying suspicious transactions. Moderation Note: removed a para advising how to evade tax.

Whatever you wrote just confirms what I said. The card number and the issuer banks are known, and nothing else. A foreign government can make request to obtain the identity of the card owner only if serious criminal investigation is underway. Even the home countries revenue offices don't have access to this data. The CRS doesn't exchange data to such details, the AML agreements do, but in many countries like Australia the foreign ATM withdrawals do not need definitions of international fund transfer and are not captured.

Whatever you state is simply not true. Withdrawing cash from ATM with a foreign debit card does not provide enough data to the Thai authorities to attribute the withdrawal to a specific person. The only entity that knows for sure that's you who got the money is your home country bank, and in many countries, including Australia these transactions are not reportable to the home revenue service (tax office) either.

According to the US statistics the median net worth of the 65-74 years age group is $409k. If that seems low it is because a lot of millionaires moved to Pattaya