marcodigio

I would try something like:

2 Rai of mushroom houses.

8 Rai of fish.

10 Rai of hydroponic organic vegetables, to sell to restaurants / hotels etc.

Hi Mark,

I like your way of thinking.

Do you find it easy to find buyers for your produces?

Say you had a nest egg Capital of £500,000 back in the land of the soap dodgers (I'm an Aussie)

Your calculations are spot on mate....the only problem is I haven't got £500K

Trying to work and save hard, but life in UK is very expensive! Hopefully the house prices keep going and I could have a nice equity!

please please dont take this the wrong way i dont mean anything bad please believe me,

but if you fancy doing pigs you go for it and keep your money in the bank, buy 20 rai or something on that and sit on that, that will be plenty,

dont be listening to the family to much, why should you be buying hundreds of rai, this believe me could be a face thing, and insurence policy,

like i said 20 rai you could do so much with, pigs fish ducks, amny things, you dont need hundreds of rai, all you will be doing is buying work,

please dont take what ive said bad, i dont mean it to be,,

this family didnt have hundreds of rai to get by on before you came along,,they managed, yes help a little i do with my wifes mum a little every month she helps us a lot, i also buy grandpas medicine for his tummy, i get that becouse i love the old guy,

just be carefull

jake

Hi Jake...please don't worry, I didn't take it the wrong way. I appreciate your advise very much. Buying land was entirely my idea, I never mentioned to my wife that I wanted to buy hundreds of rai. I trust her, but I don't trust her advice if you know what I mean. She is not in the business of farming nor is her family. I'm sure if I asked her how much money we would make with 100 rai she would say 200-300k a month. She wouldn't try to deceive me, but they got the mentality that is very easy to make money. She may be right in the sense that we may sell the cassava for that price, but she wouldn't know how to calculate all the expenses. That's why I came to TV forum, I wanted a clear opinion from guys like you that live over there.

Her family never asked me anything (so far!), I just thought it would be good to give them a way to help themselves.

I'm just trying to find a way to make a living over there. I thought farming was a good idea.

Now I think farming is not such a good idea.

But I like your idea of pigs and other animal farming.

Listening to you guys, my idea is already shifting. It seems too much investment and work for 100 rai of land to get a return of 6K baht/rai. You would be much better off sticking the money in an investment fund with an income of 5-6% and some capital grow as well.

Fish or/and animal farming seems a better prospect, although more research is needed as my knowledge at the moment is very limited.

we do pigs as you will see if you read the pig thread,

the reason you dont need much land, there not hard to keep, i can do our in a couple of hours in the morning and night,

but draw back you have to be there every day, we get mama to help if we go out,,lol

its all down to you, if you want to be hands on or leave it to the family,,??

then you have to ask questions,, are they good with money? do they really know what there on about,? not all thais can farm,, but listening to them you would think they new about everything,lol

are you going to live on your farm,? if not whats the security like?

theres loads of things to think of mate,

sit down with your wife and look through the farming topics and ask her questions too,

wishing you well

jake

ps dont go rushing into things

Pigs sounds like a good idea, I have mentioned it to my wife few weeks ago. Her reply was that a some point the pigs would need to be killed and that is bad karma for her. She would rather get involved with producing something.

That's her way of thinking, but I quite like the idea myself and maybe with time I could convince her.

Your question about being hands on? Definitely, 100% yes. The reason being that I always worked and don't want to suddenly stop, also even if I am not used to working in the heat and probably will not be as productive as a thai person, I will be the one paying all the expenditures, so I NEED to know what is going on. I always liked working, I always want to learn, so the idea of sitting down and see other people work doesn't appeal to me. The reason I want to get the family involved is because being married I see them as part of my family too. My wife works and helps her mum out a bit every month. I would like to offer them the opportunity to work (not her mum obviously!) and earn the money.

Like you said....lots of thinking, that's why I'm starting years ahead :-)

Thanks

marco

Hi, thank you for all your replies. I agree with you, I have to lower my expectations. The only reason I mentioned a figure of 100K is because I'm still thinking with a western point of view. Paying up-front a quite big sum of money for 100 rai, one would expect a decent return from it. I understand this is not necessarily the case in Thailand, and that's the reason why I asked advice.

Rubber seems a good idea. Especially considering the fact that living in UK still I wouldn't need an income for the next few years.

Hi Jake,

Thank you for your reply. Yes, unfortunately (or fortunately) I know that is very hard. I have visited Thailand many times, and for sure even with my limited knowledge I can tell there is no silver bullet. I thought to minimise the risks with a long term plan. I have been reading the forums, especially the ones about rubber and cassava. A very good guy (sorry can’t recall his name) even posted a spreadsheet to calculate the profit of a cassava field, but to me it seems to yield an extremely low return of investment. A yearly profit on a 100 rai field is quoted to be 650k Baht. I am starting to think if it really worth the hassle. The reason I have asked the question is because I thought that real life returns, that forum users have had over the years, would be more encouraging.

Or I should ask...How long a piece of string is?

Hi...I would be grateful if somebody with experience in farming could give me some advise. First, just a bit of background information to explain the question. I'm in the mid thirties and married to a thai lady. We still live in UK, but have a medium-long (7-10 years) time plan to move to Thailand. There are many reasons for that, but at the moment I don't want to bother anyone with an excessive long post.

We are trying hard to come up with ideas that will give us a decent monthly income. The best plan so far entices to save money and slowly buy enough land until we think it would be enough to get a monthly income of about 100K baht.

Once we reach that goal the plan is either to rent or sell the house in UK (keep the capital invested) and move to Thailand and work the land with my wife's family. At the moment I am really not sure of what is going to be planted on the land, it will very much depend on what will give a good yield at the time. The land will be around the Aranyaprathet area, the main crops there seem to be cassava and rubber. We have already own 10 rai. At the moment it is difficult to gauge how much income we will get because we had the land for just few weeks and we are not there to check costs and monitor that everything has been done properly.

To come back to the original question, How much land do you think is necessary to own for a farang of medium abilities to make a decent living out of it? 50-100 rai? or much more?

thanks for any advise

marco

Hi Berkshire...I agree with you on having a capital before coming over there. Moving to Thailand with little or no money hoping to make enough to conduct a lavish lifestyle seems folish to me. But with a net worth and some investment ideas that offer a decent Roi that idea doesn't seem so crazy anymore. What is in your experience the minimum capital that one should have before making the move? (I know everybody is different....but I think would be useful to hear from people that got experience) cheers

A TEFL course is not a requirement and has not been for several years. A post-graduate diploma in Education can be earned in one year and should, in addition to a B.A. or B.S. and the Thai Culture Course, get you a Teacher's License.

TIT and all of the above requirements could be changed tomorrow.

Hi...I have a BS degree and would be interested in teaching in Thailand. Am I correct in saying that I would only get the waiver for two years? From the above posts I understand that if I complete a diploma in education I could eventually get a teaching license. Working full-time, the only possibility for me to get a teaching diploma would be through distance learning (ie open university or like), would this be recognised in thailand?

thanks

marco