keestha

If you want to work, others will post the requirements but I don't think it is easy unlessyou have a Thai wife or child

Good luck

Just to prevent any misunderstandings......having a Thai wife or a child, does not give you the right to work in Thailand. (That's probably not what Krub meant anyway). If you have a job offer, you can apply for a work permit, actually the employer should do this for you. First step towards getting a work permit is a non immigrant B (business) visa.

I have fond memories of a night restaurant that went out of business a long time ago. Sometimes during heavy downpours the place got flooded, and then the rats came out of the kitchen and then invariably turned left. Not so easy anymore these days, to find this type of atmosphere.

After my passport was washed away in the 2004 tsunami, I went to my embassy for a new passport. At immigration in Bangkok I got a replacement for the one year non imm. B visa extension right away. They also had my last entry in Thailand on file. You will at least be able to get a copy of your last entry stamp. In case you got a multiple entry visa abroad and you didn't use all the entries yet, I would simply ask them at immigration if they can give a replacement for the visa that was in the old passport. Certainly wouldn't count on this being possible, but you have to go to immigration anyway.

My business is registered on the name of my company, and every month I pay the compulsory staff insurance, which is 5% of the salary, up to a maximum of B1,500 for an individual employee. Half has to be paid by the company and the other half by the employees. Legally, I am also an employee of my own company, so I also pay the monthly insurance for myself, which is the maximum amount of B1,500 per month.

The last time I went to see my bookkeeper, she told me that the law has been changed. She said that now those who own a business through a company construction are not obliged to insure themselves anymore. She also said that if I never used the insurance, I could even claim back premiums paid already.

Would like to know if this is true. For me the compulsory insurance does not make much sense. I could go to the government hospitals for free, but because of the very low standard of the government hospitals in the province where I reside, I always refained from using their services.

One of my computers, which is running on Win XP, needs to be reformatted. When this computer is used, continuously all kinds of error messages pop up.

I reformatted computers running on Win 98 or ME many times, going into MS DOS and using the command line format c:/u. With XP this doesn't seem to work. Using the command line format/? produces the advice that the volume label has to be added to the command line, but I have no idea how to find the volume label.

I also tried pressing delete when the computer started up, in order to go into advanced settings and put in the original Win XP CD as the first boot device. As first boot device is listed LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-, starting up with the Win XP CD in the CD ROM drive does not make any difference though.

I know that sometimes a start up floppy disc can come in useful for reformatting, but with Win XP it doesn't seem so easy to make a start up disk.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hello Skippy,

I live in the small, but up and coming beach resort Khao Lak, Phangnga province, just north of Phuket.

Interesting thread, I have thought about initiating a thread about this.

Why don't you kick in a poll that roughly runs like this:

Do you live in

1) Bangkok

2) Pattaya

3) Chiang Mai

4)Phuket

5)Hua Hin/Cha am

6) Koh Samui

7) a smaller touristy place such as Ao Nang (Krabi) , Koh Phangaan , Koh Lanta or Chiang Rai

8) a non touristy city such as Suphanburi or Chumporn or Si Saket

9) a village or completely out in the sticks.

"ja tai" (the a pronounced long, like the last a in Alaska), it means "will die". It is used in combination with an adjective to make kind of a superlative. First I thought it could only be used in combination with adjectives which usually have a negative meaning, like nak (heavy) ja tai, or na klua (frightening) ja tai. Later I found out though, that they are also saying things like na rak (lovely) ja tai. Maybe I am dead wrong though, the word "tai" could have more meanings than the ones I am aware of, which are "die" and "south". If a native speaker or somebody who is more fluent than I am can correct me, he/she is more than welcome. As a last note I might add that I heard this expression being used both by Isaan people and by people from southern Thailand.

A number 4 with a number 8 or 9 is going against nature. What have i got against cheating the system? Well nothing i guess, i've cheated too. Am i proud of that? Not at all. It's why i keep my relationship as low profile as possible.

Try to find out if your girlfriend appreciates it that you keep the relationship as low profile as possible. ( Whatever that is supposed to mean, do you lock her in a cupboard when the doorbell rings?)

Saw your other post.....for a regular employee you have to submit Pho. Ngo.Dor 1, and pay income tax if the salary is above a certain amount. Insurance for your staff is obligatory, it is 5% of the salary, half paid by the employer and the other half by the employee. You might consider using the services of an accounting office.

When I was carrying out a large construction project, I had to submit the Pho Ngo Dor 3 every month at the tax office, and pay the appropriate amount, I don't remember exactly what percentage of labour wages paid. Pho Ngo Dor 3 you have to pay when there are people working for you who are not really employees, such as construction labourers who as a team accepted to carry out a certain task in exchange for an agreed payment.

Don't like it when somebody rudely puts another person down, just because he posted something that he doesn't like to hear, or for @@sake because the grammar was not correct, it's just that some of us were not born to grow up as native speakers of English. Sometimes you see people getting quite personal, assuming things about the other poster they don't have a clue about. Must admit that I have thought often enough that I certainly wouldn't like to come across some of these people in real life. But then, maybe behind the keyboard some people just assume another personality, just like people's behaviour can change drastically when they are sitting behind the wheel of a car. I think normally I am a polite and soft spoken person, but when I am driving, I am continuously cursing other motorists because of their erratic road behaviour. Oh well, maybe the poster who comes across as quite unsymphathetic could be a nice guy in real life, whilst the poster who seems like a pleasant person would get on your nerves instantly if you would meet him face to face.

One rule of etiquette that is less well known, is that it is impolite to stretch out (arms or other body parts). I had a hard time to get rid of my habit to stretch fairly often. Another observation: I saw many westerners overdoing it trying to be polite the Thai way, for instance by wai-ing the waitresses whilst going into a restaurant. A Thai might in some cases wai the owner of a restaurant , but never the waitresses .

I hope I am in the right spot. If not, please forgive me and move this message to the right section.

If the Original of a Thai Document is lost and/or has to be changed, the Thai person then has to go to the corresponding place and have that document

re-established.

I do know that this can be done with supporting documents and for this procedure the Thai person does also need 2 Thai citizens who guarantee that

endeavor.

Now my question: Do the 2 guaranteeing people have to be

a) 2 Thai officers or

1 Thai officer and 1 Thai citizens holding a Thai ID card, or

c) 2 Thai citizens holding an ID card, or

d) whatever combination of Thai ID card holders

I am quite sure some long term members of this board know what I am talking about. Thank you for your replies and if I was not clear please let me know.

Gzu,

I think there is nothing for you to worry about, you are making it far too complicated. I lost all my Thai legal documents (work permit, company book, land paper, and so on) in the 2004 tsunami, and I got replacements right away by going to the proper government offices, such as the land office to get a new chanot (land paper). Absolutely nowhere they mentioned a rule of having to turn up with 2 guarantors. You do need a police report though, that states you lost the document, or that it has been stolen or whatever. Maybe you don't give enough details to describe the situation, what document exactly do you need?

It is never easy to live off assets alone. I think you would need about 500,000 pounds invested in good dividend stocks and rental property to live in pattaya.

500,000 pounds, let's say it brings 6% interest which would be 30,000 pounds per year, which translates to 2,010,000 Baht per year, which is 167,500 Baht per month. Yes I think you can survive on this, and many of those reading this get by with considerably less. Discussing how much money per month is needed to live doesn't make much sense, people's situations and lifestyles just vary too much. The guy with the fat expat salary maybe thinks that 100,000 Baht per month is barely enough to scrape by, whilst the English teacher gets by on 28,000 Baht per month.

Name of the shop is Phuket plastics, I bought perspex there to make a sign, they are on Bangkok Road close to Chaofa Fa road.

I observed that in places with a large number of expats, they tend to mainly restrict their socializing to those who share their cultural background. English speakers meeting up in places with names like Dave's Bar or the Dogs <deleted>, whilst the German speakers congregate in Alt Heidelberg, Wunderbar or whatever. The more expats there are, the more outspoken this phenomenon gets. In a place like for instance Pattaya there are places that are so ostensibly geared for Bavarians and other south Germans, that nobody from northern Germany would even think about going in there. There will be also places then where only a minor language like Dutch or Danish is spoken. For a long time I lived in one of the major beach resorts, still go there every year. The two biggest groups of expats there are the English speakers and the German speakers, contact between the two groups is very limited. Strange that people move half way around the globe in order to settle in kind of a bubble which is populated by their fellow countrymen, or at least people who speak the same language. There are extreme examples, like the German or Austrian restaurant owner who has been in Thailand 20 years already. He doesn't speak Thai, and he even hardly speaks English. He is speaking German with his customers all the time, and all the communication with the outside world, like government institutions, and even with the staff, is handled by his Thai wife with whom he communicates somehow.

Those who initially fill their time with girls and nightlife, usually sooner or later end up having a wife or a steady girlfriend. When they continue visiting bars, it will be mainly to talk to expats who share their native language. Then finally their life will be more similar to the life of a fellow retitee at home than they at first would have thought possible.

Bugs me the most when people too easily accuse the other poster of being a troll. The most tried and trusted trolling technique is accusing the other poster of being a troll. True, sometimes people describe situations that seem improbable, or maybe the post seems so naive that it is hard to believe the poster is genuine. But unless it is very, very obvious, I prefer to give somebody the benefit of the doubt.

For addresses/phone numbers of for instance accounting firms, go to the website of the Phuket Gazette. By the way a lot of the paperwork you can do yourself (cheaper), just go to the appropriate government office and enquire, they will give you a list of documents you have to submit. For company registration: an office called panit changwat, for the work permit the labour office (leng ngaan), and the immigration office for the visa.

Possible options are:

1) Have your girlfriend registered as the sole owner. Disadvantage is that if your relationship with her goes down the drain, you might loose your investment.

2) Establish a company limited, needs to have 7 shareholders. You as a foreigner can hold maximally 49%. But only a limited number of people have the right to sign on behalf of the company, this can be only you and your girlfriend, or even only you.

3) Partnership. I believe that it has become more difficult to get a work permit on the basis of a partnership.

You might still not be aware of the fact that a work permit only gives you the right to do a specific job that the work permit has been applied for, such as general manager of your company limited, or maybe employee in your girlfriend's business.

Poona (India), 1992. On every floor of the hotel there was an attendant sitting in the hallway behind a table with a telephone on it. These guys were being rung up by the frontdesk continuously, I could not only hear the ringing from my own floor, but also from the floor below and the floor on top. To add insult to injury, directly across from my room a guy was maintaining some sort of office, and also his phone was ringing 6 times every 10 minutes, till deep into the night. I felt like the place was fitted out to prevent me from having any sleep.

Lukez,

Also if you are running the business in the background, maybe doing the bookkeeping at home, it is safer for you to get a work permit which allows you to work as the general manager of this shop. Having a work permit could also be useful for your visa situation. Does the deal come with an existing company limited? As stated by a poster above, be careful taking over an existing company limited, because it could have liabilities you are not aware of.

Thanks for the ongoing avalanche of interesting answers! Myself, I live and work in Thailand 15 years now. Most likely I will also eventually end up in a retired or semi retired mode here. But then I would prefer to settle in one of those cities with a large farang presence, such as Chiang Mai, Hua Hin or wherever. There at least you can go to the bars and socialize with other farangs. Of course besides expat oriented bars there are also other possiblities to socialize. Even though I speak Thai, if I only communicate with Thai people for a long period, I start feeling a bit isolated. The retired farangs living in the countryside do not seem to have this problem. But most likely the vast majority of the retirees is living in one of those big centers.

How people treat you, depends on your own attitude. If (usually because of being ill adjusted) you mistrust the Thai people, your attitude towards them will be none too friendly, and you don't give them a chance to approach you in a positive way. Of course after 16 years here, I have had bad experiences with some Thai people, but the same goes for some people I had to do with whilst still living in my native country. Funny that discussions like this often lapse into a black or white type of argumentation: some posters moan about everything Thai, whilst others declare everything holy which has written the word Thai in front of it.

There are quite a few expat retirees on this forum, and others who aspire to retire in Thailand. Often these people are not so old at all, just fifty something or even younger. The retirees, are they happy here and don't they get bored? Living here, they are far away from their family, and also building up a satisfying social life here is probably more difficult than maintaining the social life they have in their home country. In general, I'm just wondering how they keep themselves occupied, in other words what they are doing with all their time.