pdebuck456

Yeah, but unlike when buying gold, where you do have a point that a cashiers cheque is sort of impractical, when buying a car it isn't. EAsy to determine amount to be paid and get a cheque for that amount. Even if something pops up such as a slightly higher insurance premium, that difference can easily be settled with a small additional transfer or atmcard payment.

Did I say "term deposits" anywhere"? The only thing I am saying that it is very well possible that at the time one suddenly needs cash gold might be 10% or more lower then where you bought. Between august 2007 and october 2011 Thai gold was pretty mucht non stop bullish. Almost tripled in value. Everybody was buying gold because everybody was making solid returns on investing in gold. Heaps and heaps of people bought late october 2011 all the way through the following year, where the value mainly stayed the same. Those people have been solidly in the red (like -20%) for the next 7.5 years before they started to break even' There is absolutely no reason why this scenario can't repeat itself, especilally considering the extreme fast reached peak we are at now... Just repeating myself, yes, you can invest in gold, just make sure you are happy to take the loss if you overinvest and need to convert back to cash at an unfortunate moment.

Inconvenient? Yes, absolutely. Impossible? Nope. And I hope you do realise your "yserprofile" is far far away from average! And not sure where you hail from, but where I am from you'd end up with pretty much the same issues, albeit higher amounts do to the general higher cost of living. If your bank account doesn't get blocked due to "suspect activity".

I don't seem to have problems with the facescan (Kasikorn)... Only very seldom it doesn't work the first time. Guess my face is "special" enough 😁 On that sentiment of "the Thai banks do not have to control on what I spend my money", they actually don't. What they do control however, is control through which channels you have "free and full access" to (your own) money! At the moment that is only in person at the branch. The limits pertain mainly on "online" channels, be it their website or their app. It was pretty annoying in the beginning, when suddenly I could only transfer 50K Baht, and could not get my ATM limits higher then 20K Baht/day both for spending in shops and in-store purchases. Typical Thai kneejerk reaction on the abundance of people getting scammed. However they seem to have addressed that, as withouth any input from my side they have upped the max levels to 200K Baht (obviously needing the dreaded facescan to do that). For me, more then enough, the odd time I need to do more, such as buying a car or some such, I can always go to the bank and get a cashier cheque... I hear other people with obviously different spending habits then mine, getting higher limits in line with their useage profile. To be honest, it's no different in my homecountry, my phone app is also limited, as is online banking, obviously higher limits more in line with spending levels in my homecountry. On the sentiment of pulling all your money out of the banks (apart from short term spending money and visa requirement funds) and sticking it all in gold, seems to me like extreme bad investment advice. Gold can indeed be a good investment, but mainly in the long term (say >5 years at least, preferably >10 years). It has seen a steady growth over that long term. However, gold tends to soar in price when the world is on fire, and tends to re-adjust to it's "normal" level when things in the world go sort of back to normal. Right now we seem to be at one of those "world on fire" moments, what with Ukraine, Orange man with his trade wars and the iffy Thai political stability (or rather the habitual lack thereof and associated military "interventions" in the Thai democracy). A look at the 10 year graph seems to prove this point, with gold at an all time height, but the current high being way higher then what the "natural" growth would dictate. This puts today's buyers at a much higher then average "schort term" correction risk. If you want to set aside funds not needed for at least the next 5 or more years, not a bad plan at all to stock up a bit. If there is even the smalles possibility you would need to re-convert to cash in those first few years after acquiring, in my humble opinion, buying gold would be a "very high risk" investment indeed. The high risk does not correlate to a high possibility of extreme high returns! By all means diversify on where you put your money, different banks in different countries, and if investing, keep in mind your short term needs! Lots of people here are in the "rather advanced" age group, investing (what buying gold still is) as a long play simply is not that smart... Just as much as there are people having bought gold a year ago having a blast of a return, there can be people buying now seing the exact opposite in a few years, or even less. When things steady out in the old US of A when for example (just hoping) democrats regain house and/or senate control at the midterms and the US trade policies get back to their normal sort of predicteability, their is a fair chance large scale investments are going to pick up again worldwide, and to fund those there will be a sunstantial amount of gold going to get sold, putting the price of it under some serious pressure...

Also here no problem. Just last week had to do a bigger transfer, first raised the limit (with facial recognition working first time), then did the actual transfer, again with facial recognition (as over 50k Baht) working first time. Then reduced limit again for general account safety. So to say it's a general software error seems weird, but it would not be the first time a help desk worker gives a totally made up excuse just to "save face" for themselves and the bank! Bit of a typical Thai trait...

Is it possible to squeeze in for a marriage extension without having an appointment at Chaeng Wattana? According to their online booking systems they'e full for the next few weeks. 2nd question, I see several posts needing a full 12 months bank statement, I only got 3 months from my bank, along with their certification letter? They insist it's sufficient for marriage extension. Also cannot really find this on the website from CW immigration, where they only state below: I'd rather not have to argue with immigration, so best to get the correct paperwork with me based on "experience based" evidence, rather on then on what they ask on their own website! It's just 100 Baht for the statement, so no probs getting that if needed. I am a bit late with the application (last 2 weeks of my 90 day stay) as it took until now to mature the 400KBaht tot the full 2 months...

Got into crypto purely out of a nerdy interest, namely the mining of them. Started when cpu mining still worked, and the very early days of gpu mining. Must been 2010 or something like that. Just the kick of getting it all set up, was rather challenging in those early days, and have a computer actively generating money just churning away on numbers!. Never made much out of it, living in Europe back then electricity was too expensive to make it really worthwhile. So sold most of to cover expenses. A few years ago I did find on an old backup drive a word file with the recovery phrase for a wallet, actually was able to reinstall the app and restore the wallet an found a few tens of mBTC in it. At the time probably a leftover from a rounded of sale and left there as virtually worthless at that time when I was mining. Found out it BTC was worth over 40k$, so sold them mBTC for about 2000€. Now I don't hold any crypto, to close to gambling for me, just as any US stock at the moment under Taco Trump 🤣🤣 Had fun with it, never really considered it as something really moneymaking (was obviously dead wrong there 😁 )

Cool, missed it, good reporting!

Thai version as received directly from the CAAT:

For those of you who fly drones "off the books" in Thailand, be aware there is a general flying ban at the moment due to the Cambodia issues. This is already a little while, as I have been traveling just found out now. Those who fly "legally" will have received a Thai language mail on the e-mail adres used when registering with the UASportal from the CAAT. Myself I also seperatly have received a warning from my drone insurance (FEIC). So flying around now is going to stick out a bit, and fines can be steep, including risck of jailtime!

Can see it in the app. At the bottom you have a tab called "Cards" after you get a menu. One of the items is called limits....

Net worth should always generate disposable income! If you own a 100 million Baht home and you have absolutely no disposable cash, you live above your worth. Renting it out at a very conservatieve 2,5% should generate 200,000Baht/ month income. Or sell and do something smart with the 100 million.

Don't get mixed up by median and average net worth! Quite a substantive amount of Thais worth waay more then the average Farang retiree... So compared to the median net worth, farangs would do well, compared to the average net worth, most farangs are probably considered piss poor 😄

Just to add... There are not that many reasons to specifically buy abroad, but there sure are some! Most importantly, for me anyway, as a French native speaker, is the keyboard. Most English speaking persons are anyway used to QWERTY (which is the base for the Thai keyboards), for us it's AZERTY. Quite a few differences making switching between the two absolutely not intuitive! Add to that we have quite a few very commonly used accented letters (éèçà), PITA on a QWERTY. Guess its the same for Germans (QWERTZ) and Scandinavians! Them silly stickers don't do it for me, especially on backlit keyboard! Shipping I won't risk, I'd just plan it with a family visit and put it in my carry-on luggage (like I guess a major percentage of today's travellers carry a laptop)! Unless you'd take 3, on the very slim chance of being checked t the Bangkok airport, unlikely they would make an issue out of it.

If you can, make online reservation: https://www.immigration.go.th/#serviceonline

I got one just last week at Chaeng Wattana: FYI, am here in the first 90 days of a non immigrant O based on marriage. Needed paperwork: - passport copies (id page and last entry stamp) - copy of e-visa - TM30 receipt - Lease contract - Copy of the housebook of the owner, important page was where the address was, and has to match perfectly with the adress used on the tm30 report. -filled out application form

Indeed it is! Face scan works perfect for changing the transfer limit after which a facescan is needed, to maximum 50000 Baht. But you cannot get the daily limit higher then 50000 Baht, so you are never able to do a transfer for which a facescan is required!

When you get that banner you have been put on the new limits. Even with facial scan that cannot be increased, so total of max. 50000Baht daily through your app (transfers etc) and 20000 daily with atm card.

They are also limiting the "terminal" transactions, so called "spending" limit, whereas the "withdrawal" limit is for cash withdrawal at atm's. Both at 20,000 Baht at Kasikorn for those who have been hit with the "farang" limits. For those emergencies I have an Amex Platinum (current 25k€ limit) with lots of insurances included (up to 3 million $ equivalent medical), but once I move more permanent over here I likely will have to stop that as it is tied to my current European income and insurance coverage only valid for trips less then 90 days...

Please check in your app if you get the red notice "you can increase the limit up to 50000 Baht" when you enter an amount greater then 50,000

I think it is stated many times here, with screenshot proving facial scan and the works are in order. There are 3 groups: 1) limits as usual (in which group you obviously are) 2) people going in for an update, might be to do the facial scan first time, might be an update because of new passport, ... Then walk out suddenly hit with lower limits, unable to change them. 3) people who up to a few days ago had the same high limits and able to change them (using facial scan to confirm changes), suddenly noticing the limits have been greatly reduced and not being able anymore to change them back to the old levels, with for example the app clearly stating that the maximum daily limit can be increased to maximum 50,000 Baht. Highlighted in red font in the app! Plenty people from group 2 and 3 have visited their branch and called Kasikorn's K-center (with and without assistance from branch staff), and across the board got the same answer, big apologies but those are the new limits as imposed by the Bank of Thailand. Just because you happen to be in group 1 does not give you the right to ridicule people in group 2 and 3 as scaremongerers. It is not only here on this forum, plenty others on reddit etc as well.

On two of the 8 attempts the staff actually called the branch manager over. Very apologetic and insisting this is all new since the last few days/weeks As with many things in Thailand, maybe the rule itself not that new, but the enforcement of it is.

Was one of the reasons I got taken by surprise, also read that and always assumed being married would be sufficient (along with regular requirements such as the COR). Again, current restrictions/non immigrant B requirement is much more recent, that article is from when Bangkok bank first cracked down about 2 months ago on account holders without visa and/or tourist status after catching that corrupt branch manager.

Did have a COR from Cheang Wattana immigration, opening a bank account AFAIK never has been tied specifically to where you live. My wife also holds accounts opened in Bangkok (although she never officially lived there, as many Thais she is still registred in the family home tabien baan). Those BKk branches where she years ago opened accounts were the first we tried and got refused.

Is basically what we done, apart from the local COR. Still bounced on the non immigrant B requirement. At both banks we tried here she had accounts (like for ages)...