Stevemercer

Lowering interest rates won't help at this stage. As others have said the solution is for the government to simply print more money and spend, spend, spend. They could improve the country's infrastructure and buy off all those troublesome farmers in Isan. They could get real about a fair dinkum stimulus package for the good of the people of Thailand and really make a difference in peoples' lives.

It would still take 6 - 12 months for the Baht to drop to realistic levels so the Elite would have time to finalise their overseas purchases and investments and get ready to liquidate overseas assets and bring the money back to Thailand to invest once the Baht is down. They can then make another killing repatriating their foreign money.

So everyone wins!

For those of us who have taken out health insurance, I wonder how much the premiums will go up?

I think the government is indifferent to expats. They do have some concern for those of us on married visas because they are aware of the disruption that would occur to Thai families if we were forced out. 

As I read recently, while Thai society may be lacking in discipline, there is plenty of the opposite known in Thai as mug ngai. Mug ngai roughly translates as a tendency to take the easy way out with little concern for the inconvenience caused to others.

Hence frequent changes and knee-jerk reactions with little thought to the long term (or even medium term) consequences, and no clear overall objective/goal. 

16 hours ago, Beggar said:

I have been living here more than 20 years and never needed an agent. The immigration here in Pattaya was always very helpful. I think it is not the end of the world to stay legal and do the retirement extension again. I have to renew it every year... 

Sometimes mistakes happen. A friend of mine was returning from Australia to Thailand a few months ago and Australian Customs seized his passport saying it had been tampered with (the page with personal details had been laminated many years ago, but he had not been stopped before in his many travels).

He had to get a new passport and returned to Thailand on a visa exempt which, of course, cancelled his current retirement multi-entry 12 month extension. He has tried in Australia to transfer the extension to the new passport, but the embassy would not do it because customs hadn't returned the old passport.

Needless to say he has to start the whole retirement extension process again. So far, the custom seizure has cost him about $5,000 Australian (100,000 Baht) in airfares, hotels, incidental costs etc.

I'm just saying that mistakes and oversights can happen even with a 20 year record of no problems. I, for one, am grateful to the OP for sharing the story so I can learn from his experiences.

If it had happened to me, I must admit I probably would have tried slipping the IO 3 thousand baht to see if that made a difference.

Same here near Mahasarakham, heavy rain over 2 days. Two ponds the lowest they have been in 5 years and now nearly full (which normally takes a whole wet season).

On the negative side, one collapsed concrete wall over a length of 50 metres where the bloke next door filled his lot more than a metre higher than our property; and one large sinkhole (5 metres across) about 2 metres outside our wall and threatening to collapse the wall. The dirty water and rubbish on this guys property is now flowing underground via the sink hole into our house dam. 

1 hour ago, spoon1967 said:

My advice, go visa exempt/tourist visa as an interim, sell some of that land (or take out a loan on it) that's seems to be a money pit, and raise the 400k, once seasoned re-do marriage visa, don't mention your "employed" self or not, ever again to immigration. 

 

 

'sell some of that [farm] land' - Ha, ha. Easy to say, hard to do. It is a buyers market in Thailand except there are no buyers.

Besides, many Thais have rural roots and love the family farm. They are not going to sell at any (reasonable) price.

6 hours ago, DumbFalang said:

LOL - on re-reading, 'Discuss it' does seem to contradict that she is Thai. I guess 10 years in the UK, 4 in Oz knocked a bit of the 'Thainess' out of her.

I think it takes about 25% of the time a Thai has been overseas, and has returned to Thailand, to fully re-enter the cult of Thainess. If your wife was overseas for 14 years then she will have just about regained all her Thainess in 3 or so years.

Why do Thai people travel to western countries and only eat Thai food?

9 hours ago, Yinn said:

If thai can go to your country and must not have fill out document, then I will help you ask the thai government to do same for you. Is fair.

 

98% of foreigner come to thailand don’t even know about this 30 document. Because the hotel do it for them.

 

I can confirm that a Thai national travelling to Australia on a tourist, study (or any visa for that matter) does not need to fill out any paperwork or otherwise report where they are staying to Immigration.

Once they pass through Customs at the airport they are free to go where they want and travel as much as they want with no reporting requirements.

Australian Immigration does its vetting when deciding whether or not to issue a visa and believes it to be a waste of everyone's time and resources, as well as being an unnecessary inconvenience for non-residents. in tracking foreigners' movements.

The exception is for a Thai national married to an Australian citizen and applying for permanent residency. During the two year qualifying period they are meant to report any change in their permanent address. They don't need to report temporary addresses while travelling, visiting/staying with friends etc. After 2 years, if they are still married, they will receive permanent residency and all the rights and Government benefits of an Australian resident. There is no English test or other requirement.

Maybe the Thai Government should legalise gambling and start building casinos. That'll pack the Chinese tourists in. 

I only drink Coca Cola from a can or glass bottle, and consume it in the one sitting. In my opinion, true connoisseurs would never drink coke out of a plastic bottle. That is for the masses and people who simply do not care about preserving the best taste. Next you will be saying you can't tell the difference between coke and pepsi!

I note you are watering using bore (underground) water? This is often mineralised and, while it will keep everything alive, lawns and plants do not thrive on it. However, natural rainfalls will bring everything back to life as well as rapid growth. Your lawn will bounce back once you get a few weeks of decent rain.

3 hours ago, clarky cat said:

It’s become the norm, hence why I question any sickness on here first

Yes, unless you are so sick you can't do normal day to day stuff a doctor probably can't help. What are they going to do?

It's like going to the police after a burglary. What are they going to do?

Everything you need is on the internet (somewhere).

When I have some seemingly incurable minor ailment (like a stubborn fungal, viral or bacterial infection) I try to keep it at bay until I take my yearly visit to Australia. A few weeks out of the tropics and into a clean, dry, cool environment and these sort of ailments tend to disappear.

Well, I hope you feel better with all those symptoms and no diagnosis.

Isan has always been hard scrabble. Drought, floods and irregular seasons. This year is very bad. Like others I wonder if long term trends mean dry land rice cropping will be finished in the near future. There seems to be <deleted> all money in it.

Your last paragraph. When in Rome. Can you give me an example of an unwrtten rule.

If you want to live in Thailand, you should obey all their rules, unwritten or not.

I think that if any Farang wants to live in Thailand, they should always obey all the rules.

There is no doubt that farangs are outside the Thai hierarchy of things. We are a bit of a question mark in terms of status and often get tolerant treatment in social situations because no one is certain just where we stand.

As an example, it is possible to mildly flirt and even kiss a lady you meet at an official party goodnight without offense in many situations (but not all and judgement is needed). A Thai man cannot do this in a public situation and certainly not with someone of more status.

I know this is a trivial example, but there are many unwritten cultural norms that farang can (wittingly or unwittingly) sidestep.

As someone previous suggested, get the Land Office to make an appraisal. Their appraisal will be very pessimistic (normally one quarter of the price a seller might ask for) and do the deal at this price to keep transfer costs low.

I reckon at 18 Baht to the dollar, day to day living costs in Thailand and Australia are about equal.

The main exception is housing/rental. If you don't own a house in Australia, housing costs back there will still be prohibitive compared to Thailand

4 hours ago, Runamile said:

The rate cut in itself is not significant but final admission that the Baht rate is too high may possibly represent minds concentrating and concentrating on a range of measures. So potentially good news, but as only a marker, way too late for many collapsing businesses and, of course, the many that have already gone under.

Yes, what is needed now is for the Government to say that they believe the Baht is too strong. However, who can speak with authority for the Government, and does the Government think the high Baht is harming the economy. I suspect not.

Can you run one of the bores using a wind mill? That's the way we usually do it in Australia for farm animals.

However, I haven't seen this in Thailand, maybe it is not windy enough (this year being exceptional.

You should look at a 100,000 litre fish point that one of your bores supplies. This way you can build up a reservoir for your farm endeavours to use when outflows exceed solar inflows. It is much easier to pump water from the pond then to extract it from underground if you need a larger volume quickly.

I take the attitude that everyone likes to see a neatly dressed woman, someone who has put a little effort into her appearance.

I guess it is the same with blokes, especially here in Thailand where first impressions really seem to count.

Sure, Thailand has high foreign reserves.

According to the International Monetary Fund, foreign exchange reserves are defined as:

“Those external assets that are readily available to and controlled by monetary authorities for direct financing of payments imbalances, for indirectly regulating the magnitudes of imbalances through intervention in exchange markets to affect the currency exchange rate, and/or for other purposes”  

This is the main reason why the Baht is high and why Thailand is open to charges of currency manipulation. 

Of course, Thailand's foreign reserves were depleted in just 2 or 3 weeks during the 1997 monetary crisis. 

I note that the Government’s budget for 2020 is 3.22-trillion with a 489-billion-baht deficit. So the deficit (presumably borrowed) amounts to 15% of the budget.

According to the Minister, the budget will commence January 2020 and Government operating costs (salaries etc) for the period now until January will come out of the 2019 budget, more specifically from the investment budgets of state enterprises, public-private joint venture projects and the Thailand Future Fund.

In other words, day to day operating costs will be paid out of future investment/infrastructure funds meaning less and less for future capital projects which will need to be increasingly funded through deficit budgeting (or borrowing from China in real speak).

So, the Thai budget situation is not getting better, but still the Baht gets stronger!