PeaceBlondie

Which new immigration rulings are you referring to? The salary ones? Or the income and asset ones?

As a government teacher, I don't think the salary minimums apply to me. I don't think the income and asset rules apply to a B visa. Right?

I have. I bought a new bike for cash. Had to go to immigration to verify my residence, and they saw that I had a B visa. The title is in my name only. I did not have to have or show a work permit.

And, in my opinion, anyone who doesn't see that helmets save lives, must be a complete fool.

Wearing a helmet restricts a drivers vision / hearing etc. Don't think so, try wearing a helmet while playing basketball.

This restriction, some believe causes more accidents. Deaths on a motorcycle aren't caused by not wearing a helmet, they are caused by having an accident at usually high speeds with high blood level acohol.

Given a choice, I wear a helmet on the highway at higher speeds, no helmet in town at lower speeds. And absolutely no alcohol. Not a drop.

Bottom line main factor, the governemt has no right to tell me to wear a helmet.

Even many of the Thai cops don't wear helmets, and they are the government. lol

Nemesis, could you give us a real citation for that first quote you had, prior to the "Goldstein Report" which wasn't about whether helmets save lives?

Wearing a helmet only restricts a drivers vision if you are "The Fly" as in Jeff Goldbaum. I have been wearing helmets for the last 150,000 MILES, with vision in only one eye, and I've had no problem with side vision, nor any accidents attributable to it, partly because I use both side mirrors and I turn my neck a lot. Helmets do not restrict vision, period.

Deaths on motorcycles are caused by not wearing a helmet, when you have injuries to the cranium. My best student died 15 february from brain injuries sustained from an accident at ZERO miles an hour; he wore no helmet. But that's just an anecdote to counter your all-inclusive exceptionless statement, which was fecal.

Crashes at unusually high speeds, and at high alcohol blood levels, are even more injurious than hitting the ground at zero miles per hour forward speed (adjusted for the speed of gravity, as your head rushes to the pavement). I fell to the ground in Chiapas, Mexico, with a full face helmet that sustained three serious blows, and had no head injuries.

You need to support your claim that helmets increase the likelihood of having an accident and sustaining a more serious injury. Give us a real, scientific, proper, relevant citation, Nemesis. Mine is called "The Hurt Report." Google that.

Matayom and prathom schools also have an abundance of females, usually middle aged, who are bored with teaching the same thing every year and are prone to gossip. Don't make opinionated statements, esp. negative comments, about coworkers. Lie and say they are all "nice." When the lady walks in with a stunning dress (which they often do) don't just say it's a nice dress, say she looks very good in it. "Sweet mouth" is a better reputation than "black heart."

Steven, excellent, as always. Lots of what you wrote might be considered common sense, even in the West, but it's not obvious until you've been here a while. Likewise, I've worked with almost 40 Thai English teachers now, and we don't discuss lesson plans, methodology, educational philosophy. Not even much about how to evaluate (except at the end of the term, and then it changes with every interpretation). It really doesn't seem to matter much. E.g., once I asked how I should substitute for an absent English teacher. The man next to me said, "just ask the class leader where they are in their text and workbook, and go from there."

Maybe in Bangkok, with a BA and a TEFL cert but little else, they might get $800 per month starting (32,800 baht) for ten months. In the provinces, 25,000. Chiang Mai, 19,000. Then subtract either A) tax of about 900 baht/month; or visa runs every month.

Since we ARE being pedantic, which happens on a subject like grammar or income tax law, let's back up and think about our target audience. This month I was teaching count/non-count to Matayom 2. They're beginners. If I were teaching MA-Tesol grad students who think they understand English, we'd get very pedantic because the students would think it matters. Ernest Hemingway and t.s. eliot probably wouldn't have cared.

Methinks the poster meant "800 to 1,000" American dollars. But a starting salary of 25,000 baht per month is about $615, and in your first year, you might not get 12 paychecks (I got 9). You probably won't be making US$1,000 every month until 2008, unless you already have an M.Ed or its equivalent, in which case you could be making $4,000 in Texas.

It's crazy: the demand for decent teachers is high, but the salary is still low.

Your descriptions of where you live remind me how Texans do it: "Weeel, I live in southwest central Texas, between Buda and Dripping Springs, and my brother lives in far southeast central, where the Piney Woods meets the Big Thicket swamp."

Always keep smiling. Making your voice in tones that are both soft-edged and yet somehow firm (?)

A. Oh, I'm sorry, I can't.

B. I'm not a bank.

D. I already loaned money. Man not pay.

E. No have money for friends. No money for family.

Of course, the last one only works if they don't know what money (assets) you have, or what income streams you have. So, never tell 'em.

Start out in standard English. If that doesn't work, talk Thailish, or a third language that they don't know. If they keep repeating themselves, keep repeating yourself. No. Sorry. No. No. No. No. You can say "no" a thousand times; they might even get tired. But always - keep smiling. You might develop a nervous tick after repeating it the fifth time, and keep the tick going, along with a crooked smile. Drool a little.

Deer missed-her Gaytz,

G its shur nyce 2 fine ally meet missed-her Microsoft.

When Warren Buffet cumz to Bangcock, u"l want to budget another 5000000 baht for the Bentley Mulsanne Turbo R, unles of coarse u preferr the Phantom 6 double cowl cabriolet, or the Lamborghini Murcielago.

Aynd bye th wai, snakestick, did u no that medical expenses kan ron lotz of muny?

Also, did you know that Murcielago is not only the name of a famous Spanish fighting bull, but also the word "bat" in Spanish, whence it is the only word in espanol to contain all 5 five vowels, including a dipthong?

Wells Fargo charges me $3 overall for each ATM withdrawl, so I try to max it out at my daily limit of $300 (12,000 baht). Not sure if they hit me with any foreign currency exchange fee, and the rate looks okay. But if I buy something (goods or services, not cash) with my debit card, they charge me 2%, so I don't use the card for purchases.

It's a great list, as are several other helpful lists that IJWT/Steven has provided in the past year. However, some of them are partially "wish lists," that aren't too practical or real-world for the newcomers, some folks in the provinces, or those who don't already have solid gold authentic credentials.

The crazy national bureaucracy has made it very difficult for any school to do everything legally. So, of course, a non-Thai teacher gets caught in the Catch-22 situations.

The way Thais (even with Master's degrees in education) answer questions, it would take you several hours of interview to get clear answers to all those questions. And the process might brand you as a troublemaker. I'm not sure I know all the answers to that list yet, at either of the schools where I've worked at least one semester.

I got lucky. I didn't ask nearly enough questions before starting at either school, and I hardly got any reliable answers. Somehow, we've muddled through it all, so far. But then, I can afford to get by without some of the perks, and don't have all the same problems that most newcomers have.

Nah, let's not stop; this is more fun than...cleaning septic tanks.

I like hamburger meat, which isn't countable. When they're prepared as a type of meat sandwich, and countable, I like to eat one or two hamburgers.

As for teaching methods in Thailand, the "count" or "noncount" concept seemed to work very well on about 500 Matayom 2 students this month. But I'm new at it, so surely there's a better way. The trouble with the Thai teachers of English is that so many of them are Aristotelian, thinking that the world makes sense if you can just sub-categorize it like some federal lawbook. No - language is a flexible, ambiguous, artistic mode of expression, not a diagram.

and the crackdown is aimed at the penniless, visaless lowlives anyway.

Do you mean the illegal English teachers?

I agree.

Okay, so that's a legitimate criticism of visaless English teachers who are lowlifes, illegal, and penniless. It just doesn't fully apply to MOST of the English teaching foreigners in Thailand. Oh, it's easy, for those of us who have bank accounts and foreign income streams, to get all haughty about those who don't. But Thailand has this weird supply and demand imbalance for foreign EFL teachers. The employers at both private and govt. schools pay the newbies no more than 30,000 baht per month, and then expect them to live on it (without being legal, of course).

But since this is about a visa crackdown - yes, it will probably cause a small percentage of the illegal penniless visaless lowlives who teach English, to leave the Kingdom. And it will make it harder on the illegal but not penniless, not lowlives who teach English, to survive. But, if they time their 30-day (or 90-day) visa runs to the day after payday, they could show 10,000 baht. Even 20,000 would be hard to show, though, if they'd jsut paid thier rent. Maybe some lowlife penniless illegal buddy could lend them 10,000.

...am investigating resources (thai/farang partners) for similar project and hope to succeed sometime near future.

What makes me think a bit pessimistic is not the money necessary to be invested but the patients (50+) facing the thai climate/humidity

That is in fact a huge difference to retirement/nurse care - holiday homes already existing in southern europe (and - btw - making unbelievable high profit)...

Well, high heat and humidity didn't stop the state of Florida from becoming a retirement mecca. South Texas and other places, also (although Arizona is extremely hot and dry). Air conditioning solves all that. And the warm winters should convince lots of people north of the 35th parallel to "come on down!"

But if you're trying to market the retirement homes to Europeans who don't know how to battle heat and humidity, that's a real problem, especially if they've never been to Thailand.

This discussion is really impressive and informative. Indo-Siam and p brownstone, thanks so much.

Steve, about those overland trade corridors you mentioned - how do goods go from Kunming, in southern China, to centrral Thailand? Does it require new superhighways? What about rail shipping, intermodal transport, and fully modernized intermodal shipping ports? I don't see freight trains going from Chiang Mai, southward.

brownstone, your sobering analysis is a counterweight to Steve's optimism, and you both stated your positions well. Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain and benevolent leaders.

Without seeing the figures, it makes sense that a 60-something Western retiree, with a pension of more than 80,000 baht per month, would see the difference in costs for retirement homes.

The retirement scene in Florida is very expensive as you get older, because most of the costs are related to labor, which is many times greater than labor or construction labor costs in Thailand.

I think that my mother had to pay US$25,000 for a little apartment that had all kinds of full services, and that guaranteed her full care for life. They moved her into their "hospital" when she got cancer. But she paid something like $1,400 per month to live there (maintenance fees and 3 meals per day). You could do all that in Thailand for a fraction.

On Friday morning, Thai time, I withdrew 12,000 baht from my Wells Fargo account in the USA. Cost: $294.10 plus the $3 transaction fee! That's a rate of 40.80:1, and the $3 fee brings it down about 41 satang, to 40.4:1.

Does this mean you'd have done better taking it out every 25 hours at 12,000 baht per withrawl? Hmm, I think I'll keep doing that for the time being.

Perhaps they learn how and when to be organized, as they attend school. The teenagers may not come to class on time, may have forgotten their textbooks, etc. But when one of those special days and special events comes around, oh boy are they ever organized! They've got those gold presentation bowls for the awards ceremony, even the ladyboys know how to curtsey and bow, they stand in formation and sing the songs on cue, they're impeccably dressed, etc.

It depends on priorities. General rule I've formed: if the store doesn't have it in stock, walk out empty-handed.

Thais are slightly better organized, overall, than most places in rural Latin America. And perhaps countless places in central Africa.

I was in Amway in Texas in the 1960's. Then as now, they promoted it as a typical pyramid scheme, not emphasizing actually going out and selling the products (they were too good for that). But they promoted it as a sales network that would expand by at least 50% or 100% every year. Later, when calculators got better, I realized that if their expansion predictions had come true, the world would now have about 24 billion Amway distributors, although world population is only 6 billion!

Thanks, phormio, for the advice. I probably know enough about general investments to realize, e.g., that I have too much of my assets in cash now (and none in real estate). About half is in a mutual fund, which is risky enough, in my opinion. International investing? No thanks, since I don't have advanced degrees in the economies of those countries.

Futures contracts/options cost money (fees, commissions, etc.). Aren't there a lot of expatriates, in Thailand and elsewhere, who have bank accounts in two or more countries? Can't we hedge easily enough by simply maintaining balances in each country?

But I don't have any plans to use 100,000 baht or more within Thailand in the next year or two. I'm planning to stay here for many years, and that gradual decline of the US economy that you mentioned is a real concern for my dollar-denominated investments and cash.

Regarding the cost of transferring the money across the ocean: it runs me about 1% and at a favorable exchange rate, in batches of 12,000 baht at the ATM in Thailand (never mind which ATM's!).

Perhaps nobody has exactly said so, but it appears our pro-Thai contingent is accusing the USA of singling out Thai nationals but not other countries' citizens. The law is clear that all foreigners/aliens must prove that they will return home and don't intend to stay past their permitted stay. Buses with wire on the windows are a common sight in south Texas - returning Latin Americans south of the Rio Grande.

Perhaps, in practice, Thais are given more scrutiny than White Caucasians. So are Latinos and Africans, I suspect.

Methinks it was the endless stream of aliens from countless countries, wishing to immigrate to the US (many of them by any means possible), that caused Congress to legislate as it did. It wasn't just a few Thais who spoiled it for the good Thai tourists.

Your question raises a related point: how much, percentage-wise, of one's assets should be in each country? Financial advisors always say we should diversify the nature of our assets: cash, stock market or mutual funds, bonds, real estate, etc. But for expatriates and world travellers, I think we should have roughly proportionate amounts in both of the currencies or our homeland and the country where we live - IF BOTH CURRENCIES are reasonably stable.

I've started putting some of my US dollars into my Thai baht account, but so far I haven't transferred even 5% of my cash into Thailand. Then again, an advisor would tell me I have too much in cash, anyway. I'm afraid this high exchange rate (41:1) won't last long, so I need to protect myself against the dollar strengthening against the baht. But I trust the dollar more than the baht for stability. Does anyone here think that 20% of my cash should be in baht?

Whoever dubbed the categories "countable" and "uncountable" may have been a genius. I had to teach this about ten times this month. I proved it by seeing IF YOU CAN COUNT THEM.

For example, a growing Thai boy goes home after school and says "Ma, give me a rice." She gives him a grain! You can't count rice; there are too many grains. Same with popcorn at the cinema: "Give me one popcorn please." She gives him a kernel!

You can't count liquids, or something like a piece of chalk that used to be the cliffs of Dover.

If you're talking about individual pieces/units of strands of hair, you can count them and they can be plural or singular. But if you can't count them - concepts like "acceptability" or "patience" as a general virtue - or grapefruit as a food category - then they can't be plural.

I went back to the photo of the proclamation.

I think the critical words are "... for the issue of a visa in a passport...."

If you already have your 1 year extension and a re-entry permit, you will have shown that you have funds.

Also you are not being "issued a visa", you already have it, and are re-enrering under the same visa!!

I wonder what they propose to do with people who do not have the cash?

They cannot go back into the country they have just left, they cannot enter Thailand?

Catch 22?

Thanks again, Astral. Are you saying that a one-year multiple entry B visa (which requires exiting the country every 90 days and reentering without any sizeable fee) doesn't require another visa? Just a stamp in the passport? So the 20K shouldn't apply? But does that agree with some of the things the immigration officers there have been telling our posters?