palmbeachblueeyes

I have been very lucky. I try to remember every day the people who helped me live the way I do. A second bedroom serves as an office and occasionally as a guest bedroom. I don't need it, but I enjoy it. Good luck to you in your academic pursuits. I worked as a part-time bank teller while trying to get my master's. I think the pay was close to minimum wage. Your efforts are essential to the hospital, and without people like you, the spread of disease would be serious.

No, Sir, I never served. Thank you for your service.

It doesn't matter where in the world you live; you need a retirement plan, and that plan has to have a major section on the final years of life. If you can only afford an extremely small condo, then you are going to be hard-pressed to afford a place to live anywhere in the world where a Westerner would feel comfortable. My large two-bedroom apartment overlooking the ocean is about a third of what I was paying to rent a place in the US and Mexico. If you decide to live in a place in Thailand where the air quality is bad, then pollution is a problem, but there are places like Pattaya where the breezes off the ocean keep the air quality acceptable. Some days it is bad, but most people have air conditioning, so stay inside, and there are air filters that can improve on that. If you move to a place like Chiang Mai, the AQ is bad. Yes, for some people, the cost of medical care can be too much. I am fortunate that my US health insurance will cover all of my medical expenses. But most people are not that fortunate. Before retiring here, this issue must be addressed. Assisted living and full-time nursing care are available and extremely inexpensive by comparison to anywhere in the Western world. It is unfortunate that Thailand hasn't had more options for the last few years of life. But they do exist, and they are cheap. You can handle all the details of staffing yourself, or go to a place where the management handles all the details of staffing. If you want to have live-in staff, you can have this for a small percentage of what it costs in the US. But have a plan. If the heat bothers you, then you are in the wrong country. Thailand has not realized that retirees are a huge source of income for the country. Not only do we spend year-round, but we also encourage everyone we know to come as tourists. If Thailand wanted to encourage retirees they would make the retirement visa much easier to get. Charge a flat 25,000 baht per year and eliminate all the hoops. Use some of the money that is generated to develop an assisted living nursing home industry. It would provide good-paying jobs at least twice the minimum wage for in-home care, it would help support the private healthcare industry, and provide jobs for nurses. But Thailand hasn't decided that they want retirees here. The TAT spends millions flying people all over the world to promote tourism, a great perk for employees, but they could make considerably more money more easily by building a website for people considering retiring to Thailand and providing them with solutions for retirees. Not all people retiring to Thailand spend their days getting drunk at girl bars in downtown Pattaya. We aren't retiring here because it is the only place we can live, because many of us could afford to retire anywhere in the world. I spend at least 125,000 baht per month, but I have a wonderful lifestyle living in paradise.

Thailand is ambivalent about retirees coming here. If they haven't taken any actions this year to encourage retirees, then you know the odds are very slim. They will ever wake up to what a lucrative market this could be for them. I don't know if the data is reliable or not, but there have been stories indicating that the low season this year is the worst it has been in 20 years. Whether that is true or not doesn't really matter. What does matter is that it is a very low season this year. There is massive economic uncertainty around the world. The Thai economy is at best slowing and the growth rate of the population is dropping. One easy way to counteract these trends would be to encourage retirees to come to Thailand. Retiree's offer a consistent source of income providing jobs for thousands of Thai people. We tend to spend consistently more then even middle class Thai people. I won't use my own spending as an example because according to Gemini my income is enough to make me upper class. But everyone I know spends more than the average comfortable Thai person. So if Thailand wanted to encourage retirees, they could make the retirement Visa process by simply charging a flat fee of say $25,000 baht per year. The entire process could be done online. The government would make a lot of money and Thailand can become one of the easiest places to get a retirement visa.

He can pass all the laws he wants, but even if wasn't a massive infringement on civil liberties, it won't do anything but create criminals. Thailand has laws against prostitution and we all know how well that has worked. This is a recipe for destroying a large segment of the tourist business, and create the world's largest blackmail scheme. The solution to HIV is PrEP and education. The first cases in the US were discovered in 1981. Have the world really not learned anything since then? The hurdles that someone has to go through to get PrEP should be eliminated. Fast blood test and immediately give them PrEP. Maybe the real problem here is the Minister can't accept that his daughter might be having sex so he threatens his potential boyfriends with jail.

This started off as a post about how your quality of life would improve and how you could escape all of the tensions of the US, and seems to be in the weeds of the retirement visa. There are many people who are professional and can help you with that here. While the advice above may be perfect, please don't rely on things you read on the internet. As I tell my doctors every time I consult them, "I get all of my medical misinformation from Google." But to add to the discussion, you can pay a lawyer a reasonable fee, and they will take care of all of this, or at least they have for me and many of my friends.

This is stupid. It is too bad that the Thai military won't give up power to the civilian government. It is in Thailand's best interest that this stupid crisis gets over as soon as possible. It is and will continue to hurt tourism. So far, it has impacted the electric power business, the gas and oil business, the internet business, farmers, small merchants, people illegally working in Thailand, the tourist industry, and god knows what else. STOP this insanity. This is exactly what the Cambodian Government wants.

The sky is not falling in chicken little. The shift in the tourist from Chinese to Westerners may mean smaller numbers but increase in spending The government is doing a lot of things locally and nationallly that will improve things. Small examples like changes in sidewalk clearings and bigger things like railroad improvements and marijuana laws will make a difference. I am not naive there will be ways around the medical marijuana rules, but maybe every other shop does not have to sell marijuana. The enforcement of sidewalk rules may be a small thing but it may be that the government recognizes that farang walk and like to walk safely. What the Tourist Authority needs to do is promote Thailand on the net. As an example Pattaya has more attractions than Bangkok and Jomtien is the center of that but they don't get the publicity they need and deserve. His weekend there is a huge gay pride parade in Pattaya yet there is still no announcement of when that is going to start. Farang like to plan ahead and they like to know when things start and end. Gay tourists spend a lot of money because they spend all day and all night If you look at gay travel blogs they only talk about Bangkok and Phuket. If they talk about Pattaya they talk about Sunee Plaza even though there are no longer any gay bars there. Only the government has the resources to publicize gay Jomtien.

You seem to have a real axe to grind, but are lacking facts to back up your theme. 1. Yes, there are two prices for some things here. But local people pay taxes and vote, so they make many things dirt cheap. Does this two-tier pricing affect the standard of living for the farang? NO, it would be nice, as it always is, to pay less, but I haven't done anything to pay for these parks and museums, so I pay when I use them. I have only been coming here since 2004, and the entire time, there was this pricing, so it is wrong to say this is new. 2. Has the retirement Visa gotten more difficult? NO. I pay someone to deal with the problems, and if the farang can not afford to pay, then they should either put up with the inconvenience or leave. Could it be easier and more straightforward, yes. I would suggest that they should just let us pay 25,000 baht per year and not require a bank account. 3. Has the nightlife gotten worse in any way? NO, the problem is that seeing the same show over and over gets boring. The show hasn't changed, the viewer has. There have been articles on this site about women getting less desirable. If you wander around Pattaya and you can not find a woman you want to have sex with, then you are gay, face it. Yes, there are some older women, but have these people complaining looked in the mirror in the last 20 years? Some of the customers are not looking for a "happy ending" but for a more long-term relationship. 3. Is Vietnam cheaper than Thailand? Yes, but if your overriding concern is the cost of living, then you should go, and no one will complain. There are so many other things that go into deciding where to live. I live in Jomtien. I have a very large, nicely furnished two-bedroom apartment with an enormous balcony overlooking the beach on a high floor of the condo building with a panoramic view of the ocean. It has high-speed internet, cable, and cheap electricity. I can shop at the local grocery store or drive 10 minutes for Lotus, or either of the two wholesale stores that are like Costco in the States. I can have almost anything delivered. The private hospital here is world-class, and the prices are reasonable for the services. The cost of all this luxury is 1/3 of what it would cost in the States, if I could even find it. I don't need a car because Bolt only charges less than $ 3 USD to get across town. But if I wanted a car, they are inexpensive, and the insurance is dirt cheap by US standards. There is a major airline hub several hours away. I can easily afford to eat out every night. 4. You complain that Thailand is not friendly. I would really suggest that you look in the mirror. If people are not friendly to you, you should look at how you are treating them. I have only lived here for two years, but I was only treated badly twice in that time. One was a Bolt driver who didn't see me at the intersection, and so she drove past me and yelled at me when I got in the car. Considering the hundreds of Bolt rides I have taken, that certainly compares to NYC taxi drivers. And an Immigration officer because she didn't believe I was as old as my form said. Finally, it came out that her father was 20 years younger than I and didn't look as good. She profusely apologized. I am a guest in their country. I am a loud American, yet they put up with me. 5. Could they make me feel more loved by making the retirement visa process easier? Yes, and I hope they will realize that we retirees try everything we can to get our friends and family to come as tourists. We are more effective than the Thai Tourist Authority. 6. Could we do more for them? Yes, I would highly recommend that they expand assisted living facilities. I am sitting on well over 10,000,000B just because I might have to move into a retirement facility in the States, and while my income will pay the monthly payments, there is a large down payment. I don't know what I am going to do when I get much older, but it would be very nice if Thailand had luxury retirement facilities in Pattaya, and if they did, I could double my monthly expenditures. But Thailand doesn't seem to realize that not all retirees are "cheap charlies" and are, in fact, gold mines. Articles like this make it more difficult for them to see that we are the gift that keeps on giving.

I agree with many of the comments that quality attracts money. Clean up the beaches. Make walking easier. Help businesses with internet advertising. Jomtien Complex is not known by the gay community around the world. But the biggest thing they could do is make the retirement Visa process easier by offering an option to pay a 25,000B fee and not put money in a bank account. Retirees advertise Thailand to their friends and family abroad and encourage tourism. Encourage long term residences who spend money year round.

My first visit to Pattaya was in 2005. Has it changed? Hell yes. But what city in the world has not? And while I am looking around at change maybe I might want to look in the mirror. The problem is that Thailand like most countries has tried to increase their tourist income by focusing on volume not quality. Most countries do the same until the locals rise up in rebellion. Airbnb has destroyed a lot of places around the world for locals because as short term rentals price out long term. My rent in Puerto Vallarta was going to be over 125,000 baht versus 56,000 for a bigger better apartment here. This tourist arrived in the lowest of low season and wonders why the girls are not of the quality he wants. Many of the sex workers are taking time off from the bars and massage parlors because they can make as much money online with less time. Or they have gone home because the money they can make this month will barely cover their expenses. There are probably more Loa sex workers percentage wise because they are more desperate for money to send home. But they too are smart enough at business to know when it doesn't pay Finally he might be looking for the most beautiful in a low price bar. Location location location. Sex workers are pretty good at figuring out how much they are worth and how to get that.

There is no news in this article and no proof provided that Thailand is tightening the retirement Visa. What they should do is require that the retire pay the government 25,000 baht per year for the visa. Why make the banks rich when the government can profit. It would be cheaper to pay the fee rather than lose the investment income There are a lot of retirees living in Thailand who are not middle class but I would think that the average retiree spends 100,000 baht per month and can keep the restaurants afloat in the low season. Retirees urge their family and friends to come visit and these are the high dollar tourist Thailand is focused on. Finally, retirees spend on healthcare. If Thailand wants a new source of income they should develop the assisted living industry. I don't know about the average retiree but many retirees are sitting on a lot of cash to pay for care in their last year's.

To whom is a 34.5 baht alarming? That was the government's target a number of months ago when they were urging the central bank to lower the interest rate. It is well below the 36 that the baht was a little over a year ago. What should the baht be trading at? I don't know but I urge the bank to try and stabilize it if that is possible. I suspect it is not. Trump/Musk have thrown the world economy into chaos. If the bank raises interest rates to fight inflation and to stabilize a troubled baht they are likely to increase the economic hardship that the threatening economic downturn will cause and the political instability that is likely to cause. The government is already weakened because growth is less than people want. A world wide recession and the instability that Trump is causing will hurt Thailand's tourism business. The loss of exports to the US will hurt all sorts of sectors of the economy especially rice sales. A weaker baht will encourage both of those sectors but not as much as they are likely to lose. While all this is going on the US Fed will have to keep rates steady or higher to fight inflation putting more pressure on the baht. I think it would not be difficult to see the baht trading for 40 in the near future. That would help the tourism, rice, and construction businesses a little.

Someone in this thread mentioned ordinary tourists coming to Pattaya, looking for temples culture etc. I would say those people are lost and they probably could benefit from Google maps. The reason that Thailand is such a wonderful place is that it was never colonized by Christians. Judge not that you be not judged never figured very prominently in their actual day-to-day religion. I think the definition of sexpat is a man who lives in a foreign country. Every man I have ever known has an interest in sex. Even if because of age or medicines or operations or whatever he can't participate, he still wants to hear about it. The Thai people though very conservative in some ways are very liberal in others and there is a realism that having a relationship of any sort for however long with a farang is highly likely to increase their standard of living. As an American, I have learned a great deal from the Thai people and have much much more to learn. I like most Americans am loud, obnoxious and impatient. Luckily the Thai people are the opposite of those. I have only been coming here for 20 years so I don't know what it was like before And I have been lucky enough to have never met anyone here complaining about other foreigners having sex. But in weird cultures around the world like American evangelist there is a desire to label everyone else as a pervert, probably because their ministers never engage in sex. And if you're stupid enough to believe that, then please send me some money because God wants me to have a private jet. When I was growing up there was an expression which was live and let live. If someone wants to label me a sexpat let them go ahead and do that. .