dave111223

I took several accounting courses at Thammasat University. They use TAS (Thai Accounting Standards), whereas i was used to GAAP, so there are some differences. But basically the courses were very similar to what i would have been taking in the US, (and so i'm sure not far off from the UK either).

(Courses were taught in English, although the rest of my class mates were all Thai)

** Edit **

Heres a link:

http://www.bus.tu.ac.th/english/index.asp

Lots of info there about courses, enrollment etc...

Hi,

Tim's post is (as usual ) spot on, as are the other posts referring to company set-up for the gym.

However, if you live in a rural area, such as where I am (Isaan), things are rather relaxed, possibly more so than in major urban areas. My wife has a small business, with a full-time staff of four, set up on some rented land. No registered company, no papers, no tax paid.

If you had use of land, and built a gym on it (no planning permission here either), and just started running it, then as long as you had the blessing of your local community (especially the poo ban or village head man), I don't think you would encounter any problems.

You could probably build (but not equip) a building a simple building suitable for use as a small gym for 100,000 baht. Not knowing your requirements, call that 200,000 baht (US$5k). Write that off as a cost, not an asset, if your ownership status is dubious.

Cheers,

Mike

Key words 'My Wife', he would get a much different reaction i'm sure if he were to open up the gymn in this manner as 'the owner'.

I would expect to see many a policeman arrive with their hand out should you go this route.

If a Farang sets up their business in this manner all it would take is 1 phone call from a disgrutalled local to send the whole thing crashing down.

You can get a bungalow for 25K, but as others have mentioned you'll need go jump through some legal hoops in order to do so.

ie. You need to setup a company can have the company own the property.

The gym that you want to setup, as others have mentioned, also has quite alot of legal hoops, such as 1M (or was it 2?) paid-in capital. But this could work hand in hand with your property purchase, as you could use the paid-in capital for the bungalow.

Visas on the other hand, depending on your age you may be able to get a retirement visa. Otherwise you'd need to first be staying on a tourist visa, until you got your business setup at which point you could get a work visa.

If you talk to a legal advisor on the above issues you'd be able to get all the exact costs and stuff.

50K should see you through for the company setup and bungalow purchase.

Try the jazz bar on the corner of Soi Rang Nam, near Victory Monument, called "Skytrain" I think

Yes I second this, the jazz bar at the Victory Monument is a good bar to hang out.

(And excellent live music)

What area are you staying in?

bighting tecaher is bad

And it's clear they are getting a top notch education

Due to the work permit restrictions i'm also in the:

'Sorry cannot say' category. :\

How do you predict 1 million and get 2 thousand members.... that is a big whoops.

I wonder what kind of analysis they did to come with a million?

You may be right about the 56% as this is a very limited poll.

However I do know more than a few people in the situation I mentioned.

I'd be interested to know how many farang males you know who are supported by their working Thai wife?

How much money on average do you give your wife per month.

*Only cash which she can spend freely on whatever she wants.

I thought Thai style ear cleaning was to grow your pinky nail long

I think this decision is pretty stupid. Obviously it's not a lot, but many Thai people will see it as huge and will think that generals did not do it for the sake of the country as they claim, but for the money.

After all, nobody asked them to make the coup...

Members of the CNS should have kept their salaries as generals, and not getting more for becoming coup leaders.

Concerning members of the NLA and other bodies, their salaries seem pretty standard.

Agreed.

It doesnt make sense to me that a military general can take control and then collect a check as both a general and a coupe maker.

If the military want to get government admin paychecks then they should quit the military and join the administration.

Adding Insult to Injury

I checked the accout this morning, and they've charged me twice for the payment.

When checking out the first terminal 'had no signal', when apparently it did...

The real kicker is that the first charge went through in THB, so its a lower amount, which means when i called the bank to say there was a duplicated charge, so they said 'well the amounts dont match, so we'll need to investigate', whereas normally they can just cancel one of the duplicate charges.

:@

That comes out to about 3% which is what many places will tack unto a credit charge use.

Its not really the amount that bothers me, its the fact that i see they have the option to charge in THB, so your paying 3% just because they pressed button B instead of A, and you gain absolutely nothing for this.

Also as other people have said, its the fact that they dont even say they are now going to rip you off with this exchange rate before they do it.

Sometimes it's the little things that bug me...

I went to home pro today and they billed the credit card in USD and gave me the exchange rate 35.3, which is a total rip (real exchange rate 36.7).

Especially as they have the option on their terminal to select either Baht or Dollars, and they manually switched it to USD, despite my specific request to charge in Baht.

I just dont understand where companies like this get off charging this kind of rate.

I'm just glad they seem to be the only company that has decided to do this.....so far...

Set up a corporation in your home country. Send yourself 20k a month from the corporation as a dividend (out of the 5mil in the bank).

Then just stick that money in the bank here.

So that would boost you up to the 40k requirement.

*You'll probably be required to pay tax in your home country based on the 20k you are sending yourself. I'm not sure about in Europe, but in the US you wont really end up paying any tax to $12,000 income a year anyways.

It amazes me that some mugs must actually fall for this, i mean they are still there so it was be profitable?

1 born every minute i guess.... i can just picture some idiot talking to them and thinking to himself "Yes a game of cards with this nice bloke does sound like fun!"

I love all the people in here praising the US press and claiming 'They could be #1 soon!'.

Ya right! The press in the US is a joke, WW3 could be starting in Europe and in the US the media would still be publishing stories about sex scandles and coma victims getting their machines unplugs by ex-husbands.

All the news networks are totally commercialized by their massive partner companies, when watching CNN or Fox, in the US, its hard to distinguish between the 'News' and the commercials.

The odd thing is CNN seems like a totally different network here on UBC... maybe the rest of the world just wouldn't buy it?

Be sure that both you and the seller have a clear unstanding of who is paying the taxes at the land department. This can add up to a LOT of cash. And you dont want to get to the land department and have them say "So you got the 150,000 to pay for the tax?" (and already be holding your 10%)

(Obviously make sure you get a contract with all the details down on paper before handing over the 10%)

We didnt use a lawyer, but just paid close attention to detail, and didnt have any problems.

You'll be fine,

Get a decent 1 bedroom appartment for like 8000-10000 a month plus electricity/water.

So maybe 19,000 left for food/living etc... so thats more than 600 a day, with is spently for a single person, especially if you dont mind eating 1 or 2 30 baht meals a day.

I've spent similar periods of time on a similar budget, and had no complaints

As to the alcohol rules: Seems like some were going overboard....setting 25 years as the drinking age would obviously reduce tourism and also mean that even a couple of years out of university some could not drink........this seemed unreasonable so it got sent up the ladder to higher authorities.

Boosting the drinking age up to 12 years old, would probably make sense before going all the way up to 25

Introduce a hefty late payment charge. This will make them pay up on time in stead of wait until they have to when they sell the unit.

There is already hefty fine for late payment (or atleast what i think it hefty). 10% per month on the total late balance (so the balance is compounded at 10% per month).

But i almost think this encourages people not to pay if they havent paid for awhile. As after a few month of no payment, this total can add up pretty quickly.

Thanks for the comments, i should be able to join the 'condo committee' at the beginning on the new year, so hopefully at that point i'll be able to get some changes enacted.

Some condos have written in the condo by-laws that the management have the authority to stop access to units where the condo fee have not been paid, others shut off the water and electricity supply to these units.

Cutting electricity and water are both good ideas, 'stopping access' seems too a bit to confrontational by Thai standards, not sure if i'd be able to get people to agree with that one.

These methods would work for the really cheeky b*stards that actually live at the building without paying the service.

But i'm still wondering about the owners who dont live at the building, and have just 'abandoned' the unit, what recommendations do you guys have with respects to these units?

This poll translated:

29 - Rent property in BKK

21 - Own a small condo in BKK

19 - Own a medium size condo in BKK

3 - Own a large condo in BKK

5 - Are idiots

Threads like this seem are so pointless, as everyones 'advise' is just totally biased by their current situation.

Try searching the different banks websites, each bank usually has a property department for condos repoed by the bank, (so good deals).

Or try searching some property sites:

http://realtyworld.co.th/ (dont view in firefox, their site sux, but lots of property)

http://property.th.com/

http://bestbuycondo.com/

Alot of the good property websites (with lots of condos listed) are in Thai, so the search boxes etc are hard to use, so either get a Thai friend to spend an hour at the PC searching with you, or use this:

http://www.thai2english.com/