gearbox

I was asked sometimes ago to contribute to a similar case by a friend who knew the family personally. Turned out mom and pop had well paid jobs, own house plus investment property. I politely declined.

The parents can't find 30k?

Thailand has nothing to do with the poisoning, it provides health care. It happened in Laos. Wrong headline. It was similar in Sydney Morning Herald, later they corrected it.

How do you classify someone as a leftie? Most of the self proclaimed "righties" are more on the left than the lefties as they are first in the queue for government handouts. I have little doubt that you'll be back in Canada when time comes to claim state pension.

The forward non-subjective tourism data statistics for Samui is pretty much never available, so it is mostly personal anecdotal evidence. However unavailability of flights is not a bad indicator. I flew back to Samui from Europe last Friday with the first flight at 6am. November is the lowest season, and I was expecting pretty empty flight, to my surprise the flight was full, and mostly with tourists.

Honestly if I had to go there I would just drive to Kuala Perlis, leave the car in paid parking and get the passenger ferry which is every 45 min until 7pm. It is around 400km from Donsak to Kuala Perlis, just a bit more than driving to Phuket. You won't depend on anyone for timing.

The most convenient way to fly to Langkawi is via Singapore, but it will cost you...on the way there you can get a single airline ticket with Scoot, retuning back to Samui you need to fly with different airline to Singapore to avoid overnight layover. Batik Air should be OK, they used to be known as Malindo. Sort of between full service and budget airline.

I walk and cycle here all the time, and last month came back from 3300km cycling trip in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Never had any issues. In order to stay alive you just need to assume that there are no rules, that's all. A lot of Thais bought their licences and never learned the rules too. Heaps drive without licences at all. By the way I've seen a lot of foreigners breaking the rules as well.

Further to that....as everything else there are grey areas. https://www.expattaxes.com.au/medicare-for-australian-citizens-overseas/ It is not very clear what happens if you are tax resident and pay Medicare levy but live overseas. As discussed in the above article the government may take Medicare access as a factor when deciding on tax residency. And also one subtle thing about travel insurance - all the insurers I know about require the policyholder to be a resident of some country for medical purposes. It is usually the country of citizenship. If the ongoing medical expenses are piling up, they may decide to dump the policyholder to the national health service and terminate the cover. So it is not clear what happens if you are in trouble, have travel insurance, but not Medicare.

From the government source: https://www.smartraveller.gov.au/before-you-go/activities/retiring-overseas Living overseas and Medicare Only Australian residents can use Medicare. You can access Medicare for treatment in Australia up to 5 years after you move overseas. After 5 years, you won’t be able to access Medicare unless you move back to Australia to live. You’ll need to re-enrol before you can access payments. You must show proof you intend to stay in Australia to re-enrol. However this doesn't seem to be tracked and enforced at the moment. You are ok as long as you have an address in Australia to get Medicare card sent to. There is no guarantee it will be the same in the future. The government has the data from the border to track and enforce, but it seems low on their to do list.

AFAIK we lose Medicare access after 5 years of absence, but in practice it doesn't seem to be enforced.... probably there is no data matching yet between the border control and Medicare.

Well I'll keep taking photos with my Sony, and you take photos with your "white man camera", post some photos here to see how it goes.

If you have time at Suvarnabhumi airport there are fairly good exchange boots at the lowest level just before the train entry. I always buy AUD there. Otherwise the green exchange office in central festival on the second floor opposite the bank offices.

Not all the facts are known about this story. Anyway I wish them luck. In their circumstances I wouldn't move to Thailand without a few millions of income generating assets.

Manly is way overrated, they were paying more than 67k per year for rent there. Going to work to the city from there is pain, crowded ferries and slow busses. My kid rents a terrace in Newtown for nearly half the money and walks 10-15 minutes to work.

If Fred is 60 he could get all his super as a lump sum tax free.

I don't think so...I pay $2100 AUD per year for hospital cover in Australia, it would cost me more here, not to mention the big yearly increases after 60-65.

I can just enter a real world shop for hi-tech goods and see myself...for example my Sony Alpha III camera is a real masterpiece backed by numerous patents. Only distinct goods I see from UK are bottles of single malt whisky. Huawei just produced a phone which can be unfolded and used as a tablet. There were many core inventions in the past few centuries by the Europeans, but the world has moved on. The Arabs also invented the numbers, and so on, but that was also ages ago.

According to the WIPO statistics Singapore has more residential patents per 1 million population than UK. Three out of the top four nations in the rankings are from Asia - South Korea, Japan and China. Most of the innovations these days are incremental, long gone are the days of the fundamental discoveries. Anyway, being proud of country and race is popular with the low class...as they have nothing else to be proud of.

Here are some stats about the millionaires in Australia, I would say the figures for NZ, UK and Canada won't be far off these numbers: https://www.theadviser.com.au/borrower/45872-house-and-land-prices-bolstering-household-wealth-abs "As a proportion of net household wealth, residential property accounted for around 67.9 per cent." Also some figures for the US...more or less as expected: https://www.pewresearch.org/2023/12/04/the-assets-households-own-and-the-debts-they-carry/

The superior German products were the real reason for the WWI, Germany had to be "contained". That also led us to the WWII. Now another country needs to be contained, prepare for WW3.

That's rubbish...by this logic the Chukchas in Siberia would be the most innovative people on earth. Singapore on the equator is far more innovative and developed than many countries in Europe, they have two universities in the top 20 in the world, outstanding achievement for a country of 5 million people. And in the world IQ ranking most of the countries are Asian, none of them near the North Pole.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_millionaires Most of the wealth of these millionaires is tied to their home, illiquid asset, so the majority of these millionaires need to stay where they are, and pay "millionaires" prices for everything. For example if 5% of these millionaires try to sell their house and move somewhere else, they may find that they are not millionaires anymore, as the house prices will plummet, as there are not enough millionaires to buy them.

My gf has people in the family with durian farms claiming they are having quite a good revenue, but I'm quite suspicious. I haven't seen a profit and loss statement from a farm, so I suspect they count the revenue as profit without deducting expenses. If a small farm generates 1 million in revenue but 3 people work full time and has heaps of other expenses in the end there is not much money left. On the other end I've seen a major newspaper article about the durian farmers in Thailand and Malaysia making good money and buying pickups with cash. IMO a farm to make some money here need to be big enough, in the south that probably requires 10-20 million baht investment.

My Thai gf would be investing. Her home country is Thailand. Investing in different jurisdiction other than your home country brings tax complications.