K2938

Instead of going down the costly way of buying an annuity try to convince the BOI that with your cash, assuming you have this, you can self-fund you. So assuming you lack $40k per annum, show them that you have 5 x $40k in additional cash/funds (since the initial visa is only issued for 5 years with an additional financial verification after 5 years) or, if this does not work, that you have 10 x $40k in additional cash/funds (since it is a 10 year visa). The BOI will probably be screaming that they need to see an annuity income, but it just does not make any sense that if this money were in your pension plan and you withdrew funds of that amount, they would count this and otherwise they would not.

Crazy to be willing to cut your life short by 10% for this. There must be some better alternative

Does anybody know when the 2.5 hours by train from Bkk to Hua Hin already promised for last year will become reality?

Realistically, this decision will probably less be made based on any notion of "fairness", but based on how to get the most money out of foreigners. Do LTR visa holders get local pricing for entering national parks? Are they protected against inflated foreigner pricing in hospitals? ...

Phone might be region locked. So you want to unlock it before sending

You seem to be not up to date with the price level of Singapore compared to Vancouver. It is not cheaper, but much more expensive for most things (excluding restaurants) https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Singapore&city1=Singapore&country2=Canada&city2=Vancouver

Not true actually....https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/90373/minimum-number-of-runways-required-for-international-airports

One month will not be enough to escape. Think more like three months really if you want to protect your health

It will reduce your retirement cost of living because you will die quite a few years earlier than otherwise????

A year or two? Are you sure? This was promised to be finished last year and then people said that it should be finished in the first half of this year with the train to BKK taking about 2.5 hours. Is this not the case any longer?

About 2.4 million people in Thailand have sought hospital treatment for medical problems linked to air pollution since the start of 2023, health officials said, as toxic smog chokes parts of the country. Bangkok and the northern city of Chiang Mai were among the most polluted cities in the world on Thursday morning, according to air quality monitoring company IQAir. There were 184,465 hospital admissions this week alone, Public Health Department Permanent Secretary Opas Karnkawinpong said on Wednesday. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/thailand-air-pollution-leads-millions-to-seek-medical-help

1) Is your smog "locally produced" or is this coming down from Bangkok? 2) And what do you get the PM2.5 level down to with an air purifier indoors when it is this bad? (This says you have an AQI outside of 158 at the moment: https://aqicn.org/station/thailand/prachuap-khiri-khan/gaia-10). Thanks.

Somebody on fb posted she told the BOI she did not have a tax return since she was not living in any single country long enough to become tax resident and the BOI accepted this

... and very dangerous country with high crime rates

The problem is not only the politicians, but also the people, a large part of the population, which does not care: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/12/how-chiang-mai-became-the-worlds-most-polluted-city

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/12/how-chiang-mai-became-the-worlds-most-polluted-city

Look up the total number of road deaths per annum in Thailand via Google, divide by 365 and compare with the Songkran / New Year numbers. I actually did this sometime in the past and indeed the numbers are not really much inflated compared to the rest of the year

The number of road deaths is of course a total disgrace. But about 80% of the deaths are motorcyclists. So as long as you only drive by car, then things actually do not look so bad. Worse than Western countries, but not off the charts

The AQI in the U.S. where this whole thing was first invented is only defined until 500, presumably because people did not imagine that values would go higher: (https://www.airnow.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/aqi-technical-assistance-document-sept2018.pdf)

Not any longer after the huge influx of Russians apparently

Not true. Hua Hin also had significant bad air this year

You mean they are not legally enforceable?

So why don't you wait until transferring your pension money to Thailand, do it only in each following year and avoid the tax in Thailand?

Do they charge for the receipt of SMS abroad?

Thank you. And what do you do if you for example were to visit your home country for a couple of months so you could not do this? Really then either live with the mold or have somebody come into your place for ventilation regularly I assume (which for privacy reasons I would not really like)?