Everyman

It’s not random. I eat street food ALOT and if I just picked a random place and hoped for the best I would be sick every week. As I’ve said, you pick a place with many other Thai customers.

It’s pretty good, but you should eat somewhere that has a lot of customers. They know what’s good, and the high turnover means you are less likely to be eating food that has sat out for awhile.

Then you remember there was no fee to do. That was great.

Most of the discussion about this has been full of speculation, and my own comment here will be no different. However, I think it is safe to say that if you are not a tax resident for a particular year then the worst case scenario is that you may have to demonstrate that to the revenue department sometime in the future if they inquire.

Why? What’s better about it than any other bank?

I’ve had no problems with Wise. Just sent 20k and it arrived in seconds.

The weak link in security here isn’t your mobile phone, it’s spyware and malware on your laptop. If someone steals your phone (almost useless these days to do that, actually) they are not going to be some criminal mastermind that can break into it. They’ll be some loser who is desperate. If they were some genius hacker they wouldn’t be stealing your crappy Android phone that cost 5000 baht when it was new 3 years ago. If you actually care about your data security, stop using your laptop for financial transactions and use an iphone. And don’t show me some BS article about iphones being vulnerable. they’re not.

why do you think anyone in “the government” cares about your boring life. why are there so many paranoid technophobes on here

If banks suddenly start caring about visa status for existing accounts then there is going to be a giant <deleted>storm.

Why will you have trouble maintaining your bank account? If you can get SS deposited into it directly, surely this will register as activity on the account and help to a minimum balance. You can spend the funds abroad using your debit card in the beginning, then later using a virtual card. Biggest problem I can see is transferring the app to a new phone but surely you will visit your old home every few years at least? Im following several threads on opening bank accounts and it’s worth keeping an existing account, they’re getting hard to replace.

Cue all the paranoids that think anyone cares about their lives enough to spy on them.

Your car is worth 5 million baht second hand?

I have had zero problems with Wise. But then I always use the phone app. But for people do have problems, maybe the issue is that they are using the web app on a PC, which is less secure so Wise is throwing more security measures up. I realize some of you are concerned that someone will hack your phone or something. This basically ain’t gonna happen. Your phone is the most secure way to do anything, particularly if you have an iPhone.

that doesn’t raise market cap

It’s my understanding that the eSIM is NOT backed up and saved in the cloud.

Apparently nobody cares about this issue except me, but I bought an AIS eSIM today, loaded it on my phone, deleted it, and tried to install it again from the same QR code. It did not work, so that answers the question.

I sign up for the cards and have them sent to a relatives’ address in my passport country. She takes photos of them and I load them into Apple Pay so I can use them for contactless payments. Then I get the signup bonus in the form of airlines miles so that when I travel I can fly in business class for free.

Three to five thousand baht. Shop around and you might be able to get it for two.

I have been very reluctant to adopt eSIM, and have preferred physical SIM, since I assumed that if I lose my phone I will lose all my eSIMs whereas with a physical SIM I lose only the card in the phone at the time. However, I am seeing the writing on all the wall and I may have to adopt eSIM since my next phone may not support physical SIMs. I have discovered that if my phone is lost, I can remotely erase the eSIMs from the phone. To get back my Philipines SMART eSIM, I can apparently then use the original QR code to load the eSIM onto a new phone. Anyway I would like to know if I can do the same with an AIS eSIM QR code. I did ask AIS (they said no), but they answered very quickly and I don’t think they understood what I was talking about. What are your experiences with this? Does it work? I don’t want to be in, say, China, lose my phone, and have to go to an AIS store in person in Thailand in order to get my phone number back and receive banking OTPs, etc. If I can re-use the QR code however (provided it has been erased on the old phone), this essentially solves my problem because I can get my AIS number back from outside Thailand. Thanks in advance for helpful replies.

In the year 2024 normal adults use their phone for banking and most other things. I find that the people who are the most concerned about ransomware and their phones being hacked usually aren’t tech savvy enough to know why they shouldn’t be concerned. Any hacker knows that the weakest link in security is usually the end user. “Hi this is the password inspector, i just need to verify a few things.”

Do you know of a Chinese bank that will open an account for a tourist?

What credentials do you need access the CRS database? Can I just pay $70 and look at Angela Merkle’s bank accounts?

There are no new tax laws. Only a gigantic amount of hysteria.

Well said. I could not agree more. Thailand is the hub of the government announcing ridiculous things that never happen. Anyone remember when they announced that that Thailand will host the Tour de France?

The RD isn’t going to know about my foreign accounts, they are not wizards with crystal balls. I don’t care about CRS or whatever; counties are not going to provide detailed account records of all their citizens to any 3rd world tinpot country that asks for it. The reason is because that is valuable intelligence that can be used for war, cyber attacks, kidnapping, and other criminal enterprises. It would be easy to look for accounts with large balances that are owned by people without personal security, then kidnap or extort money from them or target them for scams. If immigration require evidence from the RD that a retiree has paid taxes on their global income, then anyone with any decent income is going to run for the airport so fast there will be a sonic boom.