MrWorldwide

Exeter, I didn't pick BA because it was the cheapest - I picked it simply because it was British Airways. The argument made by one wag earlier was that I wouldnt see a queue out at Swampy because 'many Brits wouldnt be able to afford a ticket home based on the current exchange rate !'.

By nominating a higher figure than you might pay to fly with another carrier, I believe I've covered the bases. I've made it public in several threads that the day my net worth is less than 10K baht cash, the exit bag comes out of the bottom drawer and its Adios, Amigos (the money is for a last meal and a bottle of Mehkong - the rest will be left for the unfortunate person who finds my carcass). No calls to the Consulate, no hanging around Patts or BKK panhandling - go out with my boots on. I know that prospect rankles many here, but nowhere near as much as the sight of destitute Farang rankles me. Fly home and rejoin the nanny state ? No thanks, but that's a personal decision. Till then, live every day as thought it WAS your last !

What would 220 pounds buy you in London in 2013 ?

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224.146 GBP

Works for me, Professor.

Even if you *did* have money and a nice villa, how many would want to live in a country like this ?

http://www.dw.de/spains-unemployed-find-treasure-in-others-trash/a-16598222

5 million unemployed. I dont want to be the 'rich' foreigner in the middle of that much misery - particularly in the country that spawned Torquemada

Fair enough. Difficult to imagine the USD going any lower, but the Euro ? Ironic that the focus on the US 'fiscal cliff' seems to have taken the focus of Europe's woes - its interesting that no-one seems willing to use the 'D' word, but looking at the unemployment rate in countries like Spain I have to wonder how much longer they can avoid it. Must be a windfall for Chinese Ferrari owners, though.

Come and see this really special short-time hotel I know about ....... yes

KL - fine, Vietnam - no way. We all have our limits.

You've shown graphs illustrating the decline of the USD. EUR and GBP against the baht, and asked whether 'all others will follow ?'. Given that these are STILL very important currencies, I'm curious as to what you mean by 'all others'.

We've already had an extensive discussion in the other thread re the strength of other Asian currencies, and I haven't seen much discussion on South America's currencies - so that leaves Russia and Australia. I could post the graphs, but I have a feeling you've seen them. The ruble has gone from 1.4 baht in 2005 to somewhere slightly below parity in 2013, yet there are more Russian tourists (and more Russian investment) in Thailand than any of us can recall seeing. We can talk about package tours and heavy discounting, or we can accept that the Russian affair with southern Thailand isnt based purely on the exchange rate. As an Australian who was in Thailand when our dollar slumped to 26 back in 2008. I'm less sure of our 'commitment' when the going gets tough - not when Bali is closer and cheaper.

Is it really so long ago that India, China and Russia were considered economic basketcases ? Some might argue that they still are, but I'm guessing their emerging middle classes aren't buying any of that. Decades of wondering when their time would come, and it has.

HS,

Good points all - I wonder how many of the Brit retirees who were living in southern Europe have had to bail on their dream ? Given the other woes in that part of the world, one can only assume that selling their assets wont be easy either. A perfect storm, but nothing the Irish haven't had to grapple with for several years. We have quite a few young Irish guys in my little town - good workers, but I think they are being taken advantage of here. Still, better to be able to send money home and get pissed on weekends than sit around Ireland waiting for the economy to improve.

Just consider me conservative. I don't like the thought of being robbed, beaten or perhaps being killed. I'm just not that adventurous.

- I had about a hundred Ringgit, no passport and no ATM or credit card on me

- you can get beaten up pretty much anywhere in an Australian city (granted, getting into a stranger's car is going to improve your chances)

- no-one lives forever

- would anyone risk life imprisonment for the sake of a card scam ?

OK - that might all seem a bit flippant, but I think I had a better chance of all of the above going down in that BKK club. We came out to find a guy being ushered into a cab, bleeding from a stab wound, and his friends in a shouting match with the cabbie (he didnt want the guy bleeding in his cab). Classy place.

(If I can be allowed a moment of speculation, I wonder if my Malay friend may have gotten himself in a little too deep with a casino and been told they needed a few dumb Bule in the club. He made a big show of opening a fresh deck of cards, allowing me to shuffle/cut the deck etc - all standard stage magician stuff - but there were times when he seemed genuinely surprised by the cards he was flipping over. He may have gone into a casino full of misplaced confidence and come out on the wrong side of some very hard men. Or I might have watched one too many Guy Ritchie films )

In my humble opinion, anyone who accepts an invitation to go to a stranger's home should not be permitted to be out on the street alone.

Based on that, the entire backpacker industry would disappear overnight. Hmm ....

They were Malays - I know the difference between Bahasa Malaysia and Tagalog. I've lived with Malaysians in Oz and worked with two Filipinas as recently as 2008. My opinion is that they were beginners - that or dad was some kind of nut. It was amusing either way.

As for getting in the car with two total strangers, where is your sense of adventure, people ? Tell me you've never hopped in a cab with a Thai woman for a trip to some godforsaken part of Bangkok only to find yourself in a dark club surrounded by surly looking Thais ? No - just me again, right ?

(OK - fair cop - it was a brain explosion that I don't plan to repeat. At least not sober.... ).

Just ran the numbers on the BA site - 'best price' later this month - and you can fly from BKK to Heathrow for less than 700 GBP - any Brit who doesn't have that kind of scratch can't afford to live in Thailand anyway, IMO, unless they are overstaying their visa and living illegally. I'm betting that the plane fare would look miniscule compared to the cost of re-establishing oneself back in the UK. I don't know too many men over 50 who want to move back in with family, and I'm willing to bet that there is more than one Brit expat in Thailand who burnt some serious bridges when he left Ye Olde Country. Some may even be returning to paid accommodation at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

I accept that people are hurting - I just don't accept unsubstantiated claims about Brits 'leaving in droves'.

Wait until the rice scam goes belly up and watch the Baht weaken.

Another dreamer with a wishful (nonsense) comment. Been seeing them in untold numbers of threads, on this site, since the 2008 US and Europe economy and bank bailouts.

Can someone point me to a single post from the last fortnight where a Brit has actually booked plane tickets and / or started wrapping up their life in Thailand ? Plenty of talk of a mythical queue at Swampy, but I havent seen any evidence of a single BM who is actually packing his bags and getting out.

Probably cannot afford the ticket price with such a poor exchange rate!

I looked this morning and the GBP seems to be making a small recovery so lets hope it continues.

If you go to the BA site and book a flight from BKK to Heathrow, they will give you the price in GBP. Unless someone can show me that BA have raised the price on that flight over the last two weeks, I dont see what the problem is for those looking fo return to the 'Good Old Blighty'.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/70688-libraries-in-bangkok/

Wait until the rice scam goes belly up and watch the Baht weaken.

Another dreamer with a wishful (nonsense) comment. Been seeing them in untold numbers of threads, on this site, since the 2008 US and Europe economy and bank bailouts.

Can someone point me to a single post from the last fortnight where a Brit has actually booked plane tickets and / or started wrapping up their life in Thailand ? Plenty of talk of a mythical queue at Swampy, but I havent seen any evidence of a single BM who is actually packing his bags and getting out.

The Aussies are laughing ...

No exchange issues there ... near an all time 10 year high against the Baht.

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10-year high would be up around 35 baht - granted, we are clinging to ~30, but I dont consider that 'near'. Still, I accept that many here would be happy to have our 'problems' ....

If anything, the AUD is trending down against the baht atm on the 10y chart, having been well above 30 for the majority of the last 2 years.

http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=AUD&to=THB&view=10Y

Ministry of Som Tam, or whatever your regular board name is,:

I had a detailed response typed up, but I know where that would go - pages of keyboard warriors tearing into one another. Suffice it to say that you think I'm an imbecile, and I think you are a sanctimonious, patronising <deleted>. If you want to lecture me on Cambodia, go right ahead, but my knowledge of Forex (<deleted> ..) and international finance in general has nothing to do with you or this thread. The 'brown bags of cash' line is beneath contempt - it speaks volumes for the spite you want to bring to this discussion. My advice is to cut back on the purple pills.

16 posts that were clearly designed as nothing more than thinly-veiled barbs. Last time I checked, that was considered trolling.

Between this and that crazy German guys thread about someone stealing 200 Euro he left in easy reach (and plain view) of the hired help, I am beginning to see the whole Thailand expat gig as one of attrition - you don't have to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but you do have to be sharper than the bottom 20%.

It's natural selection, and I guess I owe a certain psycho Thai woman a perverse debt of gratitude - until you see that madness for yourself, secondhand accounts seem embellished. Thai men must be very quick on their feet.

All of this confirms what I've been told since I first started reading Thai-based forums - never tell them where you live.

Noooooooo, where you important stuff is.

One psycho camped outside your apartment will change that 'important stuff' mantra. I tend to place more value on my genitals and internal organs than my passport - ymmv.

All of this confirms what I've been told since I first started reading Thai-based forums - never tell them where you live.

Rural towns in Oz used to be like that - kids could basically rock up to another kid's house and walk right in (adults obviously showed a little more decorum, but locked doors were rare). All that has well and truly changed over the last 2 decades.

I read an interview with a 'career criminal' years ago, and he claimed that the only thing that would deter him from breaking into someone's car was the presence of a dog. It's a pretty ordinary world when you cant go anywhere without your four-legged theft deterrent growling at everyone who walks past your car.

_{As I said, to many I must seem a paranoid crackpot, but I was robbed in Guilin after withdrawing money from an ATM. The bastards followed me to a chemist where I removed my wallet to pay for something and, en route to my pocket, the wallet disappeared into someone else's hand and into the crowd. Very slick, and I felt nothing during the 'transfer' - as of now, I use the ATMs inside the banks when I absolutely have to, and even then I check for skimmers etc.}

OK - clearly, I've dug my own grave on this, but I use ATMs as a last resort. I take AUD to Thailand and exchange it to baht for my holidays, and I will be using Forex for larger amounts in 2014. Setting up a Thai bank account hasn't really been worth it up till now, although I did consider it during one 3-month stint in 2008.

In addition to the fee the owners of the ATMs charge, my bank here in Oz rapes me on every transaction. They charge me for an 'overseas withdrawal fee' or similar, and they ream me on the foreign exchange transaction. I know I will have to pay a Forex trader, but I fully expect to get a better rate than my bank gives me (I couldn't do worse ..) and I wont be paying two sets of ATM fees. I also have a problem with the increasing number of scams in and around ATMs in Thailand and other parts of Asia. Much happier using the ATMs in the bank during working hours, but that isnt always feasible. Even the currency exchange at the airports is usually several points off what I can get closer to my hotel.

Paranoid cheapskate ? Maybe, but I get pissed off any time I feel that my bank is having an even bigger lend of me than usual - Australian banks are notorious for their high fees. Of course, once I follow the suggestion given in another thread and convert all those nasty Pacific Pesos to Thai baht, my problems are over, right guys ? Er, guys ? <sound of crickets chirping>

OK - you had a wallet full of USD when you got off the plane in Cambo. Most of us just aren't that fortunate.

If you've ever watched 'Hustle' or pretty much any George Clooney movie, you will now that there are some clever scams out there, and some less clever scams. This is one of the latter, IMO.

I found myself in the middle of this gem a few years back in KL - even then, I had a pretty good idea where it was going, but more on that later. I'd be surprised if no-one else here had ever come across this, but it seemed like a lot of work for - in my case, at least - very little reward.

There is a very common and standard card game scam played on tourists in Malaysia. The tourist will be shown a foolproof system to win a game of blackjack or poker after being invited to a locals house for dinner. Once the traveller is continuously “winning” under the hosts guidance, a rich friend of the host just happens to show up. (Sense where this is heading?) Once the rich guy loses a few hands, the traveller increases the bet, even making confident trips to the ATM until the host and his mates uncover their foolproof win system, resulting in one poor traveller.

It's surprising travellers fall for this old trick, but locals are smooth talkers so take any games played as a bit of holiday fun only.

The saddest part about this is that our con man friend had recruited his adult children to strike up a conversation with 'the tourist', invite me back to their place for lunch etc. I was very wary, but these were clean-cut folks with excellent English : stark contrast to every other female who had approached me on the streets to that point. This wasnt the southern Phillipines, and no-one seemed to be brandising a machete. I think there may have even been some mention of 'see how real Malaysians live' or somesuch. Of course, it didnt hurt that the girl was a hot 20-something, but who would send an ugly girl out on a mission like that ?

As soon as I got back to their house - which seemed normal enough - I met their mum and dad and everything seemed reasonably above board. Till the cards came out and everyone except dad disappeared. He told me he was a dealer at a casino, but that he was only ever called in to deal for high-rollers. He proceeded to demonstrate how easily he could manipulate 90% of the outcomes without (to my untrained eye) cheating. He also claimed that the high rollers didn't give a damn about the money - it was all about ego and the thrill of the chase yada yada. All of which explained why his family lived in the equivalent of tract housing out in the 'burbs, but you don't go to a man's house and knee him in the groin, do you ?

Throughout most of this, I sat back with my hands on my lap repeating 'That's fantastic, but I don't gamble', which is the truth. Eventually, dad seemed to lose interest, his family magically re-appeared and gave me a lift back to the city. His daughter asked for a few Ringgit for fuel - which was fine with me - but that was the extent of my 'losses' from this fairly odd afternoon. The guy and girl seemed a little embarrassed by it all, but it was still mostly light-hearted banter on the way back. Certainly no attempt to extort serious money from me - their part in the whole thing appeared to be purely as the bait / transport and dad was the criminal mastermind. OK - would-be criminal mastermind.

In hindsight, I believe he was setting me up for a trip to an underground casino where the only Blue in the place would be allowed to win a certain number of hands by his dealer 'friend' - a variant on the scheme outlined above - before the trap was sprung, but hearing 'I don't gamble' made him cut his losses. Every scam I'm aware of relies on the notion that its possible to get something for nothing - when you dont buy into that, the scam is useless. At least the card scammers do have some skill - this guy clearly knew his way around a deck of cards - but another Malaysian crew reportedly spikes one of your tires in the carpark, approaches you as a 'Good Samaritan' willing to help only to rob you when they get close. Not a whole lot of skill there, but hanging around carparks waiting for people to return to their cars seems awfuily tedious to my way of thinking. At least our Blackjack Wizard can keep himself amused while waiting for his kids to return with another potential customer.It has to be a scam : no-one is that keen to show the world that they can manipulate the outcome of a Blackjack game. No-one.

Malaysia - nice country, beautiful women, dumb crooks