Mike Teavee

And I bet you mow your own lawn as well… For the sake of approx. 20b per day, I let the experts handle my immigration needs & get on with enjoying life. Not a fool & far from destitute, just know how to use my money to make my life easier/better. To each his own… Edit: Can’t prove I’m not a fool but apparently Bangkok Bank says I’m not destitute…

Close, but 1 Soi over… Soi Post Office (13/2) ????

Day 1 sort out passport, paperwork with Agent, Day 2 Agent goes to immigration to get the Visa & do the extension, Day 3 pick-up passport with 15 months permission to stay.

I believe it’s 23,000 for the conversion/extension + 3,500 for a bank account. Maneerat include the first year’s 90 day reports but easy enough to do yourself online nowadays. After the initial extension there is nothing stopping you from doing then yourself as long as you meet the requirements… i do keep 800K in the bank but still use Maneerat to do my extensions, costs 8,000 (12,500 if you don’t meet the requirement) to make life just that little bit easier (e.g I never need to go into the Immigration Office). FWIW, I Highly recommend Maneerat.

Friend of mine who has a high paying job in Bangkok went into Bangkok Bank to ask about a mortgage & was told that it would have to be in his partners name with him as a guarantor… (NB I’m not sure if he asked about a mortgage in general or one to buy a house/land which could not be in his name). I did see a YT video where Magna Carta (well known legal firm) we’re offering mortgages to Foreigners in Thailand, IIRC these were for 1 year (can renegotiate to extend) & needed a 50% deposit.

I believe you need a letter from the bank stating how much interest you’ve been paid & how much tax was withheld. Have you registered your TIN with your bank?

I would still go to Samed Villa as it’s not that hard to get from the pier to the hotel & coming back you just pay 200b for a “private” songthaew. Failing that Koh Larn has a nice beach & easy to get to from Bali Hai pier. If you want to stay on the mainland & don’t want to drive too far then Wong Amat beach is nice… Stay at the Pullman, Centera or Long Beach hotel if you want to be right on the beach or COSI (my personal favourite) if you don’t mind a short walk.

And if he’d have gone to Immigration (or left the country) by his own volition, he would have just had to pay a 500b per day fine, do a border bounce & be back again. As he was caught by immigration so he’ll be blacklisted for 5 years (penalty is the same if it’s 1 day overstay or 1 year if you’re caught).

The GF has gone mad with me because after telling her the story, I didn’t buy any tickets & of course both 855 & 14 were winners…

In our school it was Robin laid an egg… https://youtu.be/ub9K4g_qeLs&t=24

When I used to use CW I would always give them a copy of my condo lease & it was never returned FWIW I did my extensions approx 3 weeks before the end of the Lease which would end approx 3 weeks before the permission to stay I was extending but they never even looked at the dates on the lease.

To each his own, I got tired of living in the middle of a city so choose to live on the outskirts (Wongamat), can be at Central Festival in 20mins/80b with Bolt + we get little to no flooding here. Somebody mentioned Grand Avenue, suggest they might want to dig out the YouTube videos of when the car park floods there.

I wouldn’t classify Wongamat a tourist area but my point was that there are a lot more Russian tourists around than I’ve ever seen before, even prior to Covid. no prizes for guessing why & I can’t say I blame them not wanting to be in Russia at this time.

Yes, I regularly walk down the beach as I live there & normally there are only a handful of people in the beach but yday it was rammed along the stretch between Surf & Turf & Centera Unfortunately the GF only thought to take a pic past the Centera which whilst a lot quieter than the other stretch still had a lot more people than normal…

Took a walk down Wongamat beach yesterday & it was busier than I’ve ever seen it, absolutely packed with Farangs who looked/sounded Russian to me It got to the point where the GF commented that she was the only Thai on the beach.

Up to 5million, if we start to look at places more than that then I'd probably look to buy a Condo in Wongamat (where we live now) instead.

Looking to buy a house in East Pattaya (in my Thai Partners name, I'm well aware of the fact I cannot own land in Thailand, am also aware of the pitfalls of buying property in her name & am comfortable with that) Can anybody recommend a decent website where I can search for houses for sale as all of the ones I use when looking for a condo don't show the location.... Or maybe recommend a decent agent in East Pattaya who can help us find a place. By way of background, we don't have transport so somewhere that has a mini mart, couple of restaurants & maybe a few bars nearby would be ideal if anybody can recommend any housing estates (a gym would be a real plus but I can always buy a treadmill) Many Thanks MTV

It obviously doesn't have anything to do with DVLA BUT it would show if you were "Officially" resident at that address as irrespective of whether you have to pay council tax or not all adults who live at that address should be registered for council tax there. I believe the 183 day residency requirement is for renewing the license but as been mentioned, if you're repatriating then you can renew your license immediately. I would assume that the rules around being able to prove your repatriating are similar to the ones that allow you access to NHS immediately on your return - E.g have to be able to show that you have long term accommodation available to you.

The address you have on your licence (????) is obviously of material interest to your Insurance company as somebody living in small town would pay considerably less insurance for the same car than they would if they lived in the middle of London/Manchester/Liverpool etc... a quick google search says that somebody living in the South West would pay less than 1/2 of what somebody would pay living in Greater London... https://www.comparethemarket.com/car-insurance/content/the-cheapest-postcodes-for-car-insurance/ So in the event of a serious accident (where the insurance company has to pay out a lot of money) I would assume that they are going to scrutinise all of your details including checking to see that you actually live where you claim to live & if you cannot show this then i can't see them paying out. End of the day, legally you cannot renew your UK license unless you live in the UK, when you try to one of the 1st things they ask you to declare is your home address & how long you have lived there for... Obviously you can lie & the chances of getting caught are more or less 0 but the fact remains that you cannot legally renew your UK license unless you live in the UK - I believe the criteria is you need to have lived in the UK for 185 days in the previous 12 months but I can't find where I read that now.

Mea culpa In my defence I am having a Red wine Hangover morning plus using a new phone so haven’t changed the language on the spell checker but I’ll take that on the chin (& I am a Brit ????)

If you are not planning on living in Thailand fulltime then it absolutely makes more sense to get an international policy as the Thai ones do seem pretty poor when it comes to overseas coverage (I buy travel insurance when I go visit the UK) - But if you are planning to live here full time then (IMHO) it makes more sense to buy a Thai Insurance policy from one of the major insurance companies. Re: https://www.bumrungrad.com/en/insurance/ list of insurers it was sort of tongue in cheek as the link to the International companies supported doesn't work but do be careful as CIGNA/Allianz etc... Thailand are not the same as CIGNA/Allianz international... They are basically umbrella companies for their parent brand so in effect Thai Insurance companies (arguably smaller ones).

License Ok my situation is this... I own a house in the UK that I rent out - This is the house that my UK Pink license was registered to but I am not registered as living there for any purposes except being the owner All of my UK correspondence addresses are to my parents house, this it the address my Green license is registered to but I am not registered as living there for any purposes except being the child of my parents. Could I get by using either of these addresses - YES, would it be strictly legal - NO, £1,000 fine for not having the correct address on my driving license Quick question, are you still registered at that UK address & paying the appropriate council tax there? If not then you are not resident there...

License please! I had no idea that I couldn't just drive anywhere for any length of time on my UK driving license until I went to hire a car in Singapore & was told that I needed to convert my UK license to a Singaporean one as I'd been living there for > 6 months. I think in Thailand you get 12 months before you have/are supposed to convert to a Thai one...

LicenSe... To answer the Tax point, I was in a dispute with HMRC about a year that I'd spent not being Tax resident anywhere as I was bouncing around a lot of countries with work & ended up spending less than 30 days in the UK before moving to Singapore & paying Tax on my salary there. So I decided I wasn't going to risk giving them any ammunition by claiming (by virtue of updating my driving license) to live in the UK.. Again chances of this being a problem are about 0.01% - Chances of me getting a 25K tax refund are 100% (Spent already)... LOL at the simple "Spend 91 days in the UK" as being some sort of magic formula for being or not being UK Resident for Tax

I own a house in the UK plus have all of my UK financial things registered at my parents address Plus could provide proof of ownership of that address & payment of all the utility bills (I'm named after my dad ) Reality is I'm not a UK resident & you're even more not a UK Resident as you have a work permit here. Reality #2 Is when it comes to driving license it doesn't matter.... Until it does...