John V

6 hours ago, kimamey said:

I'm glad you seem to have come up with a solution.  Maybe not perfect but manageable. 

 

I work in the UK, usually for about 3 months at a time and then come back here to be with my wife. I stay for more than 6 months in the UK so I can still access NHS treatment. Also I have family I need to visit.  It's not perfect but we manage. 

As I said, wifey and I had a long talk and realized it wasn’t a question of how to work around things for as long as possible, but money. I can’t even get a job at 30K Baht in Thailand with experience and a Master’s degree? OK, I’ll go back to the UK and quadruple that, taking 700K Baht savings with me. One day the Thais are going to not only wonder where all the teachers have gone, but the retirees that helped keep the local economy going. If you think about it, someone who has 400K spare to leave untouched and an income of 40K a month means you’ve literally priced the ordinary guy out of Thailand retirement and they’ll go elsewhere. Perhaps that’s the reasoning behind it? If so, it succeeded with me.

The other day I met a fellow Brit, under 50 and he’d gone the border hopping and Ed-visa route, finally buying one of those five year elite visas for a quarter of a million. He’d practically bankrupted himself doing it and it’s due to expire next year. I asked him what he was going to do next year and he just shrugged. OK he’s still young, but imagine that happening in your 60s?

I’ve just wasted 15 months applying for positions that schools say they’re desperate to fill, yet I don’t even get the courtesy of a reply to and my patience is also wearing thin. Having thought about all this and talking it over with the other half, we’ve come to a decision. If I haven’t had a decent offer by the time the new semester starts in mid-May, my wife stays here, looks after the house and her little business and I go back to the UK, update my skills and work from there. Come back for holidays and retire here later on if I get a good job and that’s what many of the Europeans around the area we live in do now. It’s not that I lack skills in my own country, so I’ll go back there. Problem solved.    

Re: The op. I had the same problem with my wife and I think it’s the law of Buddhist karma. I feed the stray soi cats and dogs and my wife couldn’t understand why I was wasting money. Finally she told me that I was interfering with the laws of Karma and that these unfortunate animals had been put there for a purpose by Buddha. I told her that Buddha also rewarded acts of kindness and that seemed to put her mind at rest. She now feeds them too and so I think what we see as indifference or even cruelty is often just the Thai mentality based on a philosophy.

Nothing like a bit of optimism OJAS. ????

Online teaching: Don’t be fooled, it’s not the suggested goldmine it’s made out to be and I personally know people involved in it. It’s a scheme of private tutoring to individuals or small groups in their spare time, normally at w/ends or holidays and done by skype. There is no classroom full of students or software technology involved. The concept arose from the webinar. The providers are individuals or companies who have access to schools and potential adult clients, such as individual homeroom teachers themselves, or increasingly recruitment companies who are sniffing a profit.

It’s still in its infancy as once was the large well know private ‘school’ that has glass walls so people could walk past and admire you. Likewise, Internet teaching is the virtual reality of having your own personal tutor. There’s a high turnover of teachers as they discover it’s work and not a money making scheme and the clients who after the initial boasting of a personal tutor find it’s also expensive because there’s a middleman involved.

I’m not disparaging the concept and this type of teaching might well be the future, but as in all teaching the person delivering it isn’t going to make lots of money from it. Presentation, looks and performance are prerequisites as in all face to face teaching and an old man sitting in his underwear earning lots of money is the hype. If it’s a bit of w/end work you’re after it has its advantages, but you’re not going to make the 100K Holy Grail benchmark figure.       

3 hours ago, Tanoshi said:

That's 15 months!

I assume you meant valid until April 2018.

You then applied for a 1 year extension of permission to stay at Immigration based on marriage.

Your current permission to stay stamp should expire on 28th April?

Sorry, yes April 2018 and expires May 1st.

There’s no chance my Thai wife would sell the house – security and all that. I don’t blame her. She spent her earlier years living hand to mouth in Bangkok bringing up two children on her own, so she sees the house as security in her old age which I can understand. The plan was to pay the mortgage off and then continue working in China until 65 and use that money to put towards the low pension to top it up every month. Unfortunately, the company I worked for lost its government contract and I was made redundant coming back to Thailand at the age of 63 and finding it almost impossible to get another job.

I’ve never heard of a Non Imm O ME visa. Where do I get this from?

46 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

Not sure what visa you got that was valid for 6 month or allowed you to stay that long.

A non-o visa issued by an embassy or consulate can be a single entry visa that allows one 90 day entry and is valid for 3 months from the date of issue or a multiple entry visa that allows unlimited entries for a year from the date it is issued.

There is no problem with entering the country with a non-o visa.

You have a one year extension of stay issued by immigration, It is not a visa.

OK, I’ve just looked for it in my passport and got the six months wrong. The wording is: ‘NON-IMM’ visa, valid from 30 Jan 2018 to 29 Apr 2019, so that’s three months. The one year non O visa that I originally arrived on many years ago was from the UK and I’m not aware that I can get the same from outside the UK, or from a Thai Embassy.  

I’m not sure I follow the terms correctly. The Thai Embassy issued six month visa from Laos is simply an extension of stay only available from outside Thailand and I assume that's the one being suggested? The marriage 'visa' I have now is a Thai immigration issue one. The last time I got a six month visa from Laos was in January 2018 and there were signs up then warning you were only allowed so many (it didn’t give a figure, but I’ve heard it’s two) and then they ban you from entering Thailand.  

Due to travelling and working abroad, I have about 4/5ths of the full pension.   

2 hours ago, lopburi3 said:

As mentioned if the issue is only not having enough funds for extension of stay the visa or multi entry visa option is still available and expect will remain so for humanitarian reasons.  Currently the multi entry O visa is available from either Savannakhet or HCMC in the local area without financials.  Cost to obtain/hotel/transport should be under 10k from most Thai locations.  So even if you have to leave every 90 days and return this may be a good option until your pension becomes available. 

That’s a good suggestion Lopburi and it’s what I did when I first came to Thailand, plus the infamous Cambodia border hopping which most of us did. They’re tightening up everywhere now though, but yes, a couple of Laos visits would get me to retirement age, but you only get so many of those and then have to get a proper visa. I don’t think a British state pension is going to cover the necessary 40K Baht (near £1,000) minimum monthly requirement.

I suppose what I’m looking for is a long-term visa that doesn’t require minimum financial proof and so I can use that useless 400K baht stuck in the bank minimum requirement for a marriage visa to top up my pension.

But please; no online teaching spam. I’ve already had the ‘I work 30 hours a week and earn 100k a month.’ That’s 833 baht an hour and after the company takes its lions share. Online is p/t weekend work when students and adults are free. I worked in China for a number of years and I know what they earn. Ditto bit coin, writing and selling Master’s theses, dodgy business suggestions …  

Our house is in Thailand. I’ve already been told my pension DOB age group is 66. I’m knocking out applications during the holidays in the hope that when schools don’t get the twenty something blue eyed blond(e) they’re looking for I might find an opening.    

Not a technical question that needs semantics, but more an ‘advice needed’ one.

Briefly, I’m a UK citizen on a marriage visa just turning 64, which means I have another two years to wait for my UK state pension. For several years my Thai wife (age 54) and I worked abroad and I was made redundant when my company lost its government contract. We both returned to Thailand last year.

While we were both abroad I paid off the mortgage on the house and the idea was that I’d find work in Thailand (TEFL) to take me to retirement and use savings to boost what is one of the lowest state pensions in the west. Unfortunately, I’ve found that over the age of 60, teaching jobs are almost impossible to find and I’m now living off those savings.

I recently did the paperwork to renew my marriage visa and was warned by immigration those savings are getting low. They asked if my wife works and she has a little business with a net monthly income of around 10K. They also asked if I have a UK bank account and they seemed happy that I have. They didn’t ask and I think they assumed there was lots of money in it, but there’s only around the equivalent of 100K Baht. With no job, that’s it.   

I can see dark clouds approaching and the intention of staying here with my wife and growing old together fading. Having been in Asia for over a decade, the one thing I don’t want is to arrive back in the UK (which will seem like a strange country), in my mid-60s with £100 in my pocket after trying to unsuccessfully keep to the financial requirements. Is it time to consider bailing out? What do you think?  

Don’t get all excited guys, I’m just offering a situation specific to myself and not generalities. What works for some doesn’t work for others, depending on which immigration office you’re stuck with and relating to Thailand, who is behind the desk on the day you ask. Thailand isn’t and will never be a one size fits all and it’s why these sort of forums exist. If you’ve taken offence by my intrusion, my apologies and just ignore my comments.

I’m just going through all this now in the Pattaya office. I came in from China on a 30 day tourist stamp. I am told that I need to go to Laos to get a 90 day visa and then come back to Pattaya and start the application for a marriage visa. I asked if there were other way, or choices? She said, no.