SbuxPlease

The only thing you need to know about the average traveler coming to Pattaya: Every hotel in Pattaya demands a cash deposit in case the guest steals something from the room.

And with a stroke of the pen, 30% of all mobile banking accounts will suddenly break? 🙄 I'm totally sure the banks and phone companies are ready to handle the customer calls and visits tomorrow. According to the article there are 30 million "horse" accounts out of about 107 million online mobile bank accounts. Jimminy Christmas... If a fraudster can open a bank account with someone else's ID they can surely do it with a SIM card too.

When it was declared that weed would now be legal in Thailand, I swear that very night I saw a dude sitting on my soi selling out of mason jars. Within weeks, there were fully stocked shops opening their doors. The market has always been here. The market will always be here. The taxes, however, may switch from the government's coffers back to the policemen's coffers.

Strangely... not always. Have you ever walked past a shop in a super busy area that is selling nothing interesting, looks untended, has cheap prices, dim lighting, or maybe it's just boarded up most of the time, and yet the rent in the are seems like it would cost a fortune? Those places are often owned free and clear by people with generational inherited wealth who have no business acumen or any particular skills of note. Metaphorically they don't need any money but grandma needs something to do. Yet for some reason, being a landowner - in that area - is more important to those people than perhaps cashing it out and putting it to a better use so they will never sell or rent to an enterprising person who'd like to have a go of something there. There are a LOT of "businesses" like this in the LOS. No need to make money, the family already has enough. No need to worry about the customer, they are just annoying. No need to work hard, why bother? Never really saw anything like this before.

My blood pressure must have fallen by 20% once I finally stopped frantically asking "Why do or don't the Thais do it MY way" (insert whatever your way is here). I'll be straight, it took me from my 2nd year here until about my 4th until I realized my problems with Thailand were me problems and I was only causing myself stress. For those expats who come from continuous self improvement, time = money, and hard work is a life well lived type of cultures, we no doubt are aware of ways of doing things that by many objective measures are better, more efficient, or please the masses to a greater degree. If only the Thais would adopt our ways of doing things, imagine how different they could be. Obviously this is a pompous take - the Thais who are in charge and empowered to change the place are universally aware of how it's done elsewhere and aim to keep things as they are. What most of us can do, however, is use our impermanence as expats to float about wherever we want by patronizing the places that see things our way.

Seems like such an event would likely improve conditions (more or less) for those retired or expats with foreign income. Some industries might even prosper - such as tourism companies that have mostly foreign customers and Thai baht expenses.

The crux: Tourists are not equipped to make adequate go/no go decisions and rely on the captain of the ship to make such assessments. This is what regulation (i.e. right to carry passengers for hire license, captain's licensing) is for. I have some doubts if such licensing is adequately checked. What the governor might be really saying: We don't know what these bozos running the boats are really doing - watch your own back out there! 🫠

Sheesh, both are driving like reincarnation is inevitable. Driving in Thailand: motorcycles turning right in front of you without even looking at oncoming traffic cars just merging into you in an evident game of "chicken" or tailgating like they just tried taco bell for the first time. Defensive driving works if at least one person is being defensive. Unfortunately, it stops when both drivers are ignoring the road 😅

I think the photograph on the front of this is a bit old - from what I remember the guy seen is the husband of the Thai owner of a large visa agency. I think they found something like 100 cannabis plants upstairs (this was before it was legalized). After some negotiations he was released and the visa agency re-opened.

I think your embassy would issue a renewal passport without any mention of your current immigration status. If the person you talk with at the embassy notices your overstay they might explain what you need to do to handle it. I highly doubt they'd "tip off" Thai immigration. As others have mentioned, after you renew you're now just a typical case of an overstay, which Thailand is quite efficient at handling. Bring your 20k to the airport and go. They'll stamp your passport, ban you for a while, and you'll be home free.

Cost of living in Thailand year round is going up. If there's even an ounce of enforcement on this scheme, I suspect many are going to measure that tax (and the PITA of filing a tax return) next to the cost of spending the other 181 days in other places.

It's interesting the main suggestions are basically like: -don't get yourself into this situation -use some form of physical intimidation It's like the "law of the jungle" theory where the more intimidating party or the one who has less to lose will always win. As foreigners a lot of us probably take for granted coming from places where the legal structure is dependable and that alone keeps people playing fair. It's hard to imagine how a society could ever hope to grow up without that dependable system, because of course people will consider resorting to violence if they have been deeply wronged and there's no other pathway to make it right again. In the American system we have a small claims court for small money amounts where lawyers are not permitted and the rules are accommodating to people who aren't experts with the law or process. This all makes it fairly easy to get in front of a judge quickly, force the other guy to show up, hear your case, and get a judgement. For cases where landlords don't return deposits or Joe the Plumber doesn't dig the pool he promised it's all pretty efficient. Even if Joe can't pay today, the judgement follows him until he can with increasing interest accumulating along the way. In fact, you don't even need Joe to pay up directly as you can present the claim to his bank which can be ordered to give you his money. If Joe has a provable habit of operating this way the judge can even order Joe to pay a whole lot more as punishment. I think all together this keeps the "Joes" of the society at a minimum, making life better for all. I have to believe Thailand has something like this too but perhaps it is inaccessible and lesser known. I feel like foreigners aren't always welcome to use the same remedies as locals.

Yeah this is the kind of comment I was looking for. I guess the condo association decided it's worth it to pursue even if only 15-25k. Maybe the lawyer didn't ask for too much to write up the complaint and go argue the case with the judge.

Would you volunteer for the frontlines of any random war that the leader of your great country decided to start?

That's a great question, and would the new owner need to jump through all the hoops of re-qualifying as well. These cases may be so rare that few have ever attempted to do it.

What if we hypothetically say the guy is loaded - not a "hi-so" name but it seems like he might have a side business out of earning revenue from these "deposits" We used to occasionally need to send threat letters in the US - sometimes it worked and sometimes it resulted in getting another threat letter back. Those always relied on the threat that we could sue which might result in him paying attorneys fees or punitive damages, so it's better to sort it out ahead of time. Not sure that Thailand recognizes any of that stuff.

Say that you enter a contract with a pool company and make a 50k deposit. The next week he changes this mind and doesn't want to dig pools any more, but feels your deposit was a nice gift and doesn't think he needs to pay you back. Of course the best answer is to not have made the deposit in the first place. But sometimes even reputable parties disagree. How are these type of civil disputes handled in Thailand? Is there a way to handle claims this small? Most legit Bangkok lawyers I've worked with want that much money just to think about looking at the case, so using a lawyer feels like giving it all away a second time. But trying to navigate your way around the district court system yourself with a translator seems like a task that will take so much energy and time that you'd actually pay 50k just to avoid having to expend that amount of work. I guess this probably means the 50k is toast.

I own a treaty of amity business. Initially it is set up just like any other Thai limited company, but then the Treaty approval takes about a year() and lot of additional documentation. My lawyer charged about 40k for this component and I've heard some charge upwards of 100k to get the treaty of amity approval completed. It's possible that the more they charge the more they know what they are doing but you can never be sure. Once you have the business, you still run into all the typical issues with running a Thai company. There is a lot of ongoing filing work to keep a company alive in Thailand which is often not exactly transparent before you start. Unless your Thai partner is an accountant or experienced admin, you'll hire an accountant to do this for you for like 8-15k baht a month even if you have no business activities at all. The rules for getting a work permit include hiring 2-4 thai people and paying their SSO and handling their taxes. Perhaps between your nanny, your maid, your GF and/or their friends, you can find 4 people to work with you. I say 2-4 despite the most often quoted rule being 4 because my work permit was accepted with just 2 Thai employees initially. Overall maintaining these employees means maintaining all their records of employment. This is not trivial - the accountant will create several filings for you to sign and submit monthly. Maybe they can do it and sign for you - if so great because it will save you time. All in you'll likely spend 50-100k to set up the company and at least 150k a year to hang on to it. Every year when it's time to renew your work permit and your B visa, you or someone who works for you will need to go around to several government offices collecting official receipts/copies that prove you're filing your annual return, your business financials, your audit, paying taxes for employees, and official/updated copies of business location, a hand drawn map to the office, photos of you and all the staff at "work" and in front of the company official sign. When this is finished you'll have 100 sheets of paper evidence that you should qualify for a B visa, that you take to Chaeng Wattana at 6am so you can be the first in line, only to find that you're the 100th in line already. The immigration officer will find a strange looking signature on page 32, 44, at 65 and reject those pages making you sign again, so you physically must be there. Then they'll find you forgot to include a letter about why you stopped working at your last job, which despite not being anywhere in any list of required documents, is being asked of you today. So you leave, write the letter, and do it all again the next day. The next immigration officer doesn't care about that letter and finally stamps your passport at 7:48pm on a Friday night, and now you get to fight Bangkok traffic back to your condo. All in, using a Thai company to maintain a visa in Thailand isn't as easy at it first sounds.

He's holding a 100k deposit. I have not paid December's rent yet (50k), and am thinking about not sending it but that runs the risk of things escalating too. It's really tough to know what happens next when people start getting weird like this. Maybe I pay to refurbish his place and he still never returns the deposit, which I now fear given this behavior. I absolutely don't want to go to court over 50k or 100k, but I'm willing to work on it for a bit. I've been through some other things with lawyers in Thailand and it's easy to start spending 10k, 20k, 30k fighting this kind of thing with no resolution. Are there any (true) stories of farangs challenging landlords about security deposits in Thailand and winning? There is a lot of hearsay and assumptions out there but I've not heard any up to date information on the facts. In my limited interactions with court officials, they are actually quite fair to foreigners and don't want a bad reputation for the country.

Thought I might pop in here to note that this idea was indeed DoA (dead on arrival)

Well, it finally happened - after a lot of years of renting places in Thailand for myself, my growing harem (lol), and my businesses, I have come across a landlord who is going to be difficult about returning my deposit money. This case involves a shop-house in Bangkok. I've had a business in there for 2 years with just a couple staff. As soon as I notified the landlord that I wouldn't renew he's gone bonkers looking for every satang. My question is about normal wear and tear. It's subjective but in my home country there's a lot of case law and it's easy to understand what is probably included. What about Thailand? Has anybody put together a guide that might explain what this is, and is it de-facto included in any lease agreement? The white walls have gained a few scuffs here and there over 2 years that don't wipe away (it's crappy paint) - landlord wants us to repaint the whole wall (in this case, all of them?!!?) There were no internet lines in this shophouse at move in - I paid a professional installer to put CAT6e + RJ45 into each room and they are installed nicely with no holes or gaps. Landlord wants me to tear it out and repair the hole, paint the wall. Seems like installing internet would be a normal activity, this request is wild. The landlord hired a contractor to repair a broken gate, and somehow in that process a part for the gate went missing. We've never been able to use the gate because it's been broken for most of the 2 years. The landlord decided I should pay to fix the gate before we leave. Meanwhile the ceiling in another part of the building got moldy and rotted out during this past rainy season, and cracks have appeared in every wall due to settling. My Thai admin is handling the conversations and I'm trying to handle our responses in a very diplomatic and understanding way, but it's absurd how much is being asked for. I think aside from the known changes that we'll fix, this other stuff is landlord's problem.

I've been in Thailand the better half of a decade and I'm starting to figure out the government playbook. The playbook: High level official has a random idea pop to mind while consuming (insert some banned substance) with his 2nd or 3rd mia. He asks a lower level guy (in their super-secret LINE group) to float it to the public as an announcement The announcement: "The ministry has decided to start (insert impractical idea). We don't know when we'll start, maybe next week or maybe never, update you soon. Also we don't have answers to the obvious questions. No, no further questions are permitted." The high level guy lays low and watches to gauge the public reaction. He periodically sends lower level guys out to make random comments to see what happens. If it starts looks like it would be a win, they assign it to the "do it next year team". If it looks like it would result in a lost election, or cost any money, they just stop talking about it. Nobody in the public knows if the idea will ever come to fruition, and the public eventually forgets about it because the next night -> (go to step 1) Edit to add: After step 4, if the low level guy is getting torn apart by the madness, the high level guy just cuts ties. "That announcement was incorrect and not approved, we don't even know that guy!" But if the public likes it, the high level guy claims the idea as his own.

She's playing you - she knows the police will do nothing but you might be uncertain enough to give her some money. She has nothing to lose either way. The police don't waste their time with bargirls like this - they know about these games too. At some of these bars it is better to act just a few notches up from a bum - no money, nothing to extort. Mention that your thai wife doesn't know you're here tonight. When you pay use a wad of mashed up 20s from your pocket and no thousands. The perceived lack of free cash flow and the fear of a worthy equally deranged opponent (the virtual thai wife) will keep them off your back.

Nobody goes there anymore, the place is too crowded

In the beginning of my Thailand life I was a bit like this TikTokker. This problem annoyed me in ways that is impolite to say. "But it's the law to use the meter!" "He should get in trouble for this, he HAS to use the meter and can't decline my ride!" "I'm going to complain! This kind of scam hurts tourism and hurts the country. Somebody should take action against this ScAmmEr!!1!" Finally, two crucial "aha" moments hit me and I've been chill about it ever since: 1) Many of these taxi drivers and service workers are, using the kindest words I can muster, not yet educated and appear to operate with what we would consider to be "13 year old brain" in my home country. You just cannot expect any more from someone who's coming from this position and that's why they only make a few bucks an hour on their best days. 2) It's just $10. I'll blow that amount on my first drink at the bar when I get there. I have serious things to stress about in my life, and this just ain't worth the heartache. I get to choose what I allow to bother me and what I don't, and that choice directly impacts my happiness. I appreciate that some people will say "no s**t sherlock" about my aha moment, but I'd like to think that I came here to grow and learn, and that's what I'm trying to do.