gearbox

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

George's dream is totally unrealistic, to be a qualified psychiatrist in Australia minimum study between 11-13 years is required, and the entry requirements are very high. Dreaming about getting rich is much more doable. Or reinventing himself as a bar owner...plenty of others reinvented themselves that way.

George...I think you definitely need to see a psychiatrist yourself.

Thanks Mike for all the work you have done to clarify the upcoming tax issues. Myself can't be bothered with that much complexity, as long as they can't track me I'll do the minimum I can get away with. Cash in hand through the borders and ATM withdrawals are the ways to go in my circumstances.

In Australia the foreign ATM withdrawals are not considered international file transfers and the banks are not required to report them to the government. The govt can have access to them only if there is ongoing investigation. If I withdraw money from my Aussie debit card in Thailand there is not enough info for the Thai authorities to resolve definitely my entity, there is no passport, DOB or address info associated with the withdrawal.

There are definitely travel insurance policies in Australia covering motorbikes, from my memory it is only $20 extra to get cover with Medibank Private travel insurance. Of course there are rules to get valid cover, like the requirement to wear a helmet. When driving in Samui, in a 20 minutes car drive I would see probably 100+ foreigners on motorbikes without helmets, many don't even have shirts.

If you make more than X amount of $ in Australia you are going to have Medicare surcharge if you don't take private health cover. For income of $180k plus the surcharge is bigger than the private cover premiums. I think Lil Johnny introduced it.

There are plenty of good interest groups on Facebook, you don't need to have friends or post your selfies to participate. I got heaps of great advice about cycling long distances, kayaking and sailing.

You can subscribe to YouTube premium or Netflix via VPN from Turkey or Argentina, it is times cheaper than Australia.

The old, bigger and IMO safer Tigerline ferries serving these transfers were retired and now it seems all the transfers are done with speedboats. These are fairly small, I would say most are fibreglass made, with a couple of powerful engines and a lot of passengers packed in...looks like a sea bus. With high speed and high waves the boat will thrash into the water with high force, so this one probably either had a building defect, was overloaded, or was going too fast in high waves in order to break. We were early this year in the area with expedition sea kayak, we lost 5 rivet joints from constant thrashing in high waves. Hopefully they got the passengers' possessions in dry bags, otherwise all the passports and phones would be gone.

The article is about the domestic tourists, not international arrivals. The "visits" are probably the nights spent in hotels.

The Thais have much better deal than most of the countries in Europe, they don't pay anything, only collect. Compare this to Europe where millions of so called refugees from that shole Ukraine are collecting benefits for almost 2 years. No wonder the far right is rising fast everywhere there.