gearbox

Not much the Thais can do about it. In fact it may help the car industry. BYD is opening a factory in Chonbury next year, and would avoid any import tariffs if the Thais decide to implement them. I guess a lot of BYD cars will go to Australia as we have FTA with Thailand. Other manufacturers would eventually follow the same path.

His rental is probably one of the rare cases when the landlord doesn't have the financial incentives to raise the rent. I knew people in Sydney renting like that, the landlord was on partial OAP and would lose his health care concession card and whatever else with higher income from his apartment.

Forex forecasts are like weather forecasts, but at 25+ AUD didn't seem to me to have much more potential to go further up, so I moved quite a bit of money from Oz to Thailand.. around 2 years worth of living expenses.

It depends where your "condo" is...in Sydney any 2 bedroom apartment within 10km from the beach will swallow your OAP completely, and many would cost a way more.

Currently in Europe, the Aussie is at around 14 years low against the Euro. IMO China would probably need less resources in near to medium future, so I expect a slow trend downwards. Also China is installing massive capacity of green and nuclear energy, so coal demand may be reduced too in the next 5 years.

Exactly. The OP is not buying professional services, he wants a job quoted. Quoting is cost of doing business and should be absorbed in the pricing, same as the bookkeeping and accounting costs. Usually people or companies take a couple of quotes before making up their minds, in the corporate world heaps of work is done via competitive bidding and tenders.

It is a proper island. If the transportation was too cheap it would be overpopulated. I'm a beach person and do often kayaking and open sea swimming. Samui has the best weather pattern in Thailand for this, with around 2 months of wet season. Air is clean. No way I would live in a smog infested areas like CM or Bangkok.

The transport costs are high for tourists, not the residents. I use mostly a bicycle to go around, but we have 2 cars and a motorbike too. The fuel is around 5-7% more expensive than Surat Thani.

The emergency health care is free for Oz citizens and PRs, and that's what costs a lot and matters. One can stay in ICU as long as is necessary, and pay nothing. The elective procedures won't break the bank. Many are also free in the public hospitals but there is long waiting list.

AUD is a dog at the moment, it is at 14 years low against the Euro. You would think there is a war in Australia not in Europe. Between 2018 and early 2020 it went down nearly 20% against the Baht. The OP thinks it will go up in an year, I'm not so sure at all.

AUD.

Mygov is easier to use with the Mygovid app, once set up you can use it with the fingerprint on your phone. From recollection it scans your passport and driving licence to verify identity. Can be used on 2 phones so you can have a backup.

Aldi Mobile, top up once per year with the minimum top up amount of $15. You can use the top ups to buy a monthly plan when visiting Oz. If you travel a lot it may not work everywhere, for example it didn't work for me in Albania. I have 2 Aldi Sims, one is spare in case I lose my phone.

We were 2 foreigners, my mate was a tourist, he paid the foreigner's price, I paid the local rate. However similar to the immigration offices different rules are probably applied at the different Nat Parks.

I have the pink ID card and was charged Thai prices at 3 different NP in the south last Jan/Feb.

Seems the OP is travelling with a Thai female, I would say close to zero chance to convince her to do 1500km bicycle trip. For a starter most of them don't like sun exposure, and there would be plenty in a typical cycling day. Long distance cycling or "bikepacking" is not popular here compared to Europe, and most of the people I've met on the road were foreigners. You can cycle hundreds of kms without seeing another cyclist, in Europe there would be many more. Folks in the villages are not used to see people travelling with bicycles, you would hear from time to time "farang ba leo!" when passing.

No it is not appropriate to walk over dead bodies, but then again Everest is a special case. It is attempted by a lot of people who are not real mountaineers in spirit, but trophy chasers. You won't see them in the Annapurna or K2 area.

It takes around 3 years of preparation and climbing lower peaks, nobody is allowed to climb Everest starting from nothing. The info from a friend who was planning to do it, the whole thing of 3 years costs around 200k AUD beginning to end. This was a while ago, probably higher with the inflation now. I stopped going to higher peaks at 5600m, I don't handle well altitude sickness. It is difficult for outsiders to understand the mountaineers and what drives them to go higher and higher, sometimes resulting in death.

Thai tiger mother... probably not a common case here. Usually in Oz they are from Chinese descent. If you divorce you won't have any problem finding a new one who's is too busy with her FB selfies and have no time left to force your next kid to study.

You need mid to long term strategy in order to come back to Thailand and enjoy life with an adequate financial buffer. Do you have any marketable skills? I've read the unemployment in UK is very low now. The best is to find a job with a local employer, which can be also done remotely from Thailand.

All the "external people" can be contacted and chatted with online. I've hired people before to do graphic design and marketing materials from Nepal, China, Croatia, Russia. Replying to emails with proper reply-to recipient is trivial. And as this seems to be a tourist oriented business the customers may leave reviews on Google or TripAdvisor which may need answering. If his wife hires locals to do that stuff it would cost her way more than the money saved by hubby doing low skilled work. Best is that it can be done sitting alone at home, zero chance to get caught by the immigration. There are many thousands here working full time online without any permits, and the immigration can do nothing to stop this.

He can...as long as the authorities are not able to pin him. For example doing the bookkeeping, internet marketing, replying to guests emails and reviews etc. Definitely not meet and greet or anything where a pic or video can be taken.

Picking up was 5 min, you just go straight to the counter 4, they take a photo and give you back your passport. The submission is longer, however when I went back to get my passport there was a very short queue downstairs, so it probably depends on your luck how long to wait to submit.

If you use Linux you can boot from a live USB key and use a tool called "shred" to shred the whole disk from sector 0, no mucking up with partitions needed. You can choose how many passes to overwrite with random data.

Even the governments don't use that many passes. With the 21st century large capacity hard drives 3 passes are enough.