gearbox

If the government was doing a great job Thailand would be like Singapore, and most retirees would have self-deported themselves due to high cost of living.

Most of the issues above can be sorted with enough funds applied...wrt the government who cares, we are not in the electoral roll here, as long as they don't bother me all is good. I've been here more than 5 years now, the only time I had to deal with the police was to file a report about lost driving licence in order to get a replacement.

Following your logic above two corrupt states shouldn't co-operate. Maybe corrupt states should cooperate only with non-corrupt states?

Nothing is black and white... however how many doctors, engineers or scientists have you seen in your home country with their hands or neck tattooed? Mostly uneducated low class settles here. Russians are maybe an exception but they have their own issues.

Xiaomi Redmi, I used them since 2016 various models. Buy from the Xiaomi flagship store on Lazada, but recently their stock is rather depleted. Avoid Apple junk, you can't install any proper ad blocker or script blocker there. Ublock origin doesn't work there, and many plugins for Chrome and Firefox don't work.

Google it, not all trains take bikes, I think the "rapid" trains do take it. From what I remember I paid around 120 baht from Hat Yai to Surat Thani last year.

https://www.ft.com/content/87196fa8-6289-4f9c-9353-cdf18d5fabc8 These estimates were nearly 2 years ago before the war in Ukraine. Also previous post alleged that the Saudi cost per barrel is $17, which is way off the mark. The estimates are $3-5 per barrel.

Looking at this graph, where do you think a war is going on....

Where did you get these numbers from? 44$ per barrel would be for shale extraction, even that would be expensive. According to this post the cost for Rosneft is around $5 per barrel.

He is in Western Australia, the power bills would be way higher than Thailand.

Probably most are 60+...but how is this relevant to the topic?

Which one is the Samui beach in the OP photo? I haven't seen a beach resembling this one.

His insurance probably won't cover that kind of hospital stay. Money wise the chav would be better off in the prison.

TiT...if everything was perfect you would be paying $20 for a noodle soup. Adjust to the local reality. In regards to motorcycle riding it means drive defensively and slowly, and don't ride without a helmet. I drive a pickup very often in Samui, the motorcycle accident capital in the country, and I'm amazed how recklessly many farangs ride, young and old. Heaps without helmets, looking phones for directions, speeding, overtaking on both sides. Yesterday was waiting to pass through a road nearby bike hire shop, and observed how the shop owner was giving a middle age woman a lecture of type "Introduction to scooters and basic control" She is a danger to herself and the others.

Go back to your home country, there should be teacher job vacancies paying well above Maccas money, with superior benefits like high quality free health care. Time flies and you'll end up here near pension age with little or no assets.

Great for the business. The Chinese come to shop and eat, they are not much interested in water activities. They are spending well at the restaurants, not like the riff raffs sharing a portion of fried rice and a bottle of water. The flights from Chengdu to Samui seem fully operational now, in fact there seem to be heaps of inbound flights to Samui now.

"Normal working people" are not entitled to have holidays in far away countries and roam on motorbikes in the middle of the night without helmet. Going out to buy food? Yeah...

Russia had record trade surplus last year, so some of that money probably went to the pockets of the citizens. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-current-account-surplus-almost-doubled-2022-central-bank-2023-01-17/

Prior to covid the Russians were the largest permanently living nationality in Samui. Many seem to work online or have a businesses here. There are many more now, some seem to be tourists, but quite a few are settling for longer time, I've seen quite a few red plated cars recently. Some seem to be YouTubers trying to make money with movies with not much regard to other people's privacy, the next time a Russian is flying a drone in my face I'm going to call the police.

Thailand is not a good country for refugees, there is no welfare system to be abused. I think the Myanmar refugees close to their border are having pretty hard times here. Many of the world refugees want to end up in a country like Germany.

If there was a such crackdown there would be some collateral damage for the ANF members, esp the savvy "investors" which get "high returns" on 800k baht.

The insurance companies are for profit organisations which employ actuaries and statisticians to set premiums, and age and pre-existing conditions are probably the most important factors. Especially age - you may think you are healthy today, but could be very unhealthy in a matter of day or week. https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/retirement/once-you-hit-60-its-time-to-take-carpe-diem-seriously

You most likely will reach your destination but not at the date or time you expect.... cancellations and rescheduling are fairly common. Last year January/February my flights from/to Sydney with Jetstar were recheduled multiple times, with days difference. Nowadays as the flights are pretty full they reschedule mostly for technical issues. However both Qatar and Qantas did pretty much these same with my bookings as well, so I have low expectations for pretty much any airline. I'm lucky to be able to handle these changes pretty easily, but if I'm on tight schedule Jetstar would be ruled out if possible.

It happened to me a few years ago with one of the major banks in Australia. The card was sent to my postal address and was stolen from the post box. They somehow activated it via the bank IVR system and made nearly 2k of PayPass purchases under $100 which don't require authorisation, before the bank anti fraud system detected unusual activity and blocked the card. At that time I was outside the country, the bank refunded all the charges. It turned out there was an organised gang breaking post boxes and stealing personal correspondence including mailed credit cards. And the bank's activation procedures were totally unequate. One should assume that their name, date of birth and address are widely known due to a number of security breaches at major companies and vendors, and can be used for identity theft and card activations.