alohatodon2

This beleagured 90 year-Don, an invalid, who posted his plight on this Forum before, is leaving Thailand on 2 May.  In an attempt to get ex-pats over age 75 a waiver to be able to stay in Thailand, I wrote letters to the Head Generals at Bangkok and Phuket Immigration and a letter to the Head Police General here in Bangkok  Not one one of them had the courtesy to answer my letters!  So, what to do?  Not having a 'home' or relatives to go to and alhough I had lived here for many years, I played tic-tac-toe on a globe of the world.  I wrote many letters to many cities. After many months, declining those cities in cold climates, one city with a warm climate said they would have a place for me.  Submitting a many-page application and sending e-mails back and forth, they accepted me.  So, on the morning of 2 May, I will somehow,  using a cane or a walker, board a plane to leave what used to be called "The Land of Smiles".  It certainly is no longer that.  Thais no longer smile and they only having their hands out wanting money.  If you are an ex-pat farang, you are and always will be an unwelcome foreigner.  I closed out my account at my bank and the lady asked why I was leaving at my age. I told her it was all because of Thailand Immigration.  When I told her the banks would suddenly become richer because of the influx of many deposits of 800,000 baht, she just shook her head and said she hadn't thought about that and that old people should be exempted.  I just smiled, took my receipt and hobbled outside onto the uneven 'sidewalk'.

I would like to end the conversation thread "New retirement extension rules forces expat, 90, to leave Thailand". There are now 56 pages of comments, some surly, some pompous, some sympathetic, some nasty, some offering advice and others that go on ad nauseum.   Because I don't want to start page 57,  I am starting a new Title and, hopefully, ending all further comment.  I am Don, the 90 year-old and, yes, I am a real person.  If you go to Page 1 of the 56 pages of comments.....and read what I said......you will see that I did not say "forces expat".  That is someone else's word and an interpretation of what I actually said which was, simply, "I am leaving".  Here is a reason: heretofore, with anyone's notarized letter from their Embassy, truthful or not truthful, it did not require an individual to keep an excessive amount of baht, 800,000 or 400,000.....totally stagnant.....in a Thailand bank for the banks to use as "float"and make money for themselves.  Multiply those hefty numbers by the number of ex-pats who are/will be so kind and generous to the Thai banks and you see who is getting the use (float) from all that stagnant money that belongs to you. As for the 65,000 baht monthly deposit regulation, I have lived here for years, comfortably, on less than that.  Now, any excess would build up in a Thai bank, again for the bank to use.  To periodically send it back to a bank in one's country, as you suggest?  Go ahead, jump through hoops, play the game, spend the time and pay the fees back and forth; that's up to you.  Why no Plan B, you also ask?  Plan A was made years ago by this 90 year-old Accountant who retired at age 54.  36 years of daily living have now past; inflation and cost of living have increased and there is still a bit of nest egg left.  Could you have done as well? Blame me for being 90, nothing else. Thailand has been "home" but I will leave; it's just that I do not have a place to go to. Address books of friends and relatives get very thin as one outlives them.  There is, of course, an ultimate option (and it was hinted) of going to any one of the shopping malls that have high balconies.  Thanks, but I have acrophobia and am afraid of heights.