Felton Jarvis

I am not impressed with the food in Thailand. I can’t eat fire. The women are certainly a plus, very attractive. Their motives are another matter. I am here for the cost of living, but Immigration is hard at work to drive out foreigners of only modest means. 65 thousand baht a month is considered too low. Fortunately, my next COLA increase in my pension will lift me to 100 thousand baht a month. Even THAT figure is too low for “Big Joke”. Racism has simply replaced common sense in Thailand.

I haven’t seen a single post that meets that criteria. “Corruption” is more than just a small bribe to get an otherwise legal document. Sometimes hundreds of thousands of baht change hands to get things “handled”. Many procedures are deliberately made more difficult in order to extract “tea money”.

My agent is my landlady. It is highly unlikely that she will pull a fast one. She has been very reliable for three years. Immigration seems to know her well and they go out of their way to expedite things for her.

The first time I came here was 20 years ago, so that must have been YOU that the bargirl was bragging about. She told me that the first farang ever had just won the lottery. She seemed proud of that fact. ????

I “rescued” a department store buyer with a college education. Total loser who spent too much and was nearly as duplicitous as any bar girl. If they have a vagina, they are untrustworthy.

The same as you would pay for rescuing a prostitute in America. She should be paying YOU!!!!!

Totally speculative post. I was accompanied to the bank and my agent handled everything. I was just instructed where to sign. There was no option to refuse the withdrawal. This was a very smooth process and the bank and the agent had obviously done this hundreds of times. Obviously if I refused, I would not get my renewal and would now be living in Cambodia. That is part of my plan anyway because the Thai renewal process has become too expensive and dodgy to continue. I should not be paying more than 1900 baht for a renewal and there should be someone at Immigration that can read enough English to ascertain that my income is what I say it is. This is not brain surgery. There is very little room for fraud in this process. My documents are straightforward and easily verifiable.

It’s not my fault that I don’t have 800k to park in a Thai bank for NOTHING!!! These rules came about because the Embassy imperiously decided that it was not their job to certify income statements. I moved here under an entirely different set of rules and would have gone to Cambodia if I had been able to see what was ahead. Your arrogance almost stretches the bounds of credibility. Not all of us retire wealthy. I still make eight to ten times the average wage in Thailand, I qualify to live here and Immigration apparently agrees after you grease their greedy palms. Get your nose out of the air. You are nothing special.

You are apparently developmentally disabled. If I HAD the 800K, I might consider depositing it but I DON’T, so it’s a moot point. I still qualify to be here based on my income. When I came here in 2015, none of this was an issue. I was apparently “grandfathered” in to the old income rules which did not require a local bank deposit. My landlady has hinted that this is the case but I have never had it confirmed by Immigration. They keep approving me for another year and the same Immigration officer has signed off on my renewal of stay for every year I have been here. They know exactly what’s going on and they ENCOURAGE it, by routing retirees to agents. There is no other explanation.

Merely having the income is not enough. You are required to deposit it in a Thai bank (something I refuse to do) and the envelope that’s being pushed is the income requirement. It is now 65 thousand baht a month and they are discussing raising it to 100 thousand.

Not me. So-called “corruption” makes it possible for me to stay here. There is no doubt that I have enough income to justify my residence here, but they keep pushing the envelope. With a three percent cost of living raise in Social Security, I will be making 100 thousand baht a month. There are STILL those who insist that I am underfunded and am a “backpacker” (whatever the HELL that means). The number of elitists on this forum is off the chart.

I pay my landlady 14 thousand baht every year for a renewal. Her son does most of the work these days and walks me through the whole process, including a trip to a Bangkok Bank branch office, where they deposit, then withdraw money on my behalf. The poperwork showing the deposit is then taken to Immigration along with my passport and bank book and I get the passport back in about a week with my new renewal date inside. The landlady seems to be highly popular at IO, and no wonder. I get the feeling that this cannot possibly continue this way.

I agree with this. All I have to do is compare my life with that of the average Thai and mine looks pretty good. You can’t pick and choose your supervisors and that has been 90 percent of the problem. I have watched people succeed who would do as little as possible while I put in extra hours and endured humiliation that only a wage-slave would tolerate.

As opposed to WHAT???

So sad what is considered patriotism by many right-wingers. You cannot threaten elected officials but you have the option of voting them out.

Marijuana is almost as addictive as chocolate…….BEWARE!!!! ????

My life was only made “hard” by very low pay. I was very late in getting a college degree, took me ten years working full time and I finally got a degree in my forties. I went ahead and got a Master’s Degree because I thought I might want to teach. I didn’t make decent money until the final 11 years of my working life when I worked for a public radio station, owned by a university. This actually funded my retirement. I had a sociopath boss for the final six years, who forced me to retire a year early. I bought my ticket to Thailand and was living here within a month after my 65th birthday. Many regrets, but it’s all water under the bridge. I certainly managed to avoid hard labor and marriage.

I could have predicted how this would end. The law is deadly serious about threatening the President and law enforcement.

I have not been inside a bar in three years and this is part of the reason why. Thai people can KILL you and there will be no charges filed, regardless of the circumstances. I pick up my booze at the 7-11 and take it home.

No wives, no children, no hope. My last eleven years in the work force were with a radio station owned by a university. I got state pension and an annuity on top of my Social Security at age 65. I was forced to retire by a pack of jackals that ran the most toxic work environment that I had experienced in 40 years of work. Once I agreed to retire a year early, I bought my ticket to Thailand and was gone a month after my 65th birthday. Came here determined to avoid bargirls but the gainfully employed women I was involved with, were little better than the prostitutes. When the pandemic hit, I took in a woman who had lost her job in Sriracha and three years later, we are still together. She doesn’t ask for much and seems happy to have a nice apartment to sleep in. I am 73, she is 46. It seems to work, for now.

How is the air conditioning over there in the “Ignore Zone”?

I have no intention of throwing my life away by marrying a bar girl. Ladies with regular jobs are enough of a challenge. I have found them just as duplicitous as those in the bar. All of the women I dated had straight jobs. All were very dedicated to getting their hands on my money. Only one never asked me for anything. She ran off with a Thai man. My current live-in lady asks very little and is happy to have a roof over her head.

You are required to report a new address within 24 hours, along with a TM30 report. You don’t wait 90 days unless you want to pay a fine. I agree about the reports being an easy way to generate more cash through fines. The reports don’t cost anything, but they must rack up quite a haul from fines which are assessed when reports are late. Got to keep the staff busy.

I generally go a couple of days early. Congratulations on your good memory. Some of us are not so fortunate. After brain surgery, I have memory lapses that can be very inconvenient if I don’t have a “crutch” such as phone alarms. I check the slip in my passport on a regular basis, but it’s still hard to remember the exact date I need to report.

90-Day reports are actually a “make-work” project for the artificially inflated workforce at Immigration. They don’t want them sitting idle, so they require these reports to keep them busy. Sometimes, things are less about racism than we imagine.