JamesPhuket10

I need a bit of information from you if you do not mind. You said, "I've no choice this year as I've recently done my annual extension (am good to 25/12/25) but would happily pay more to only have to jump through the hoops once every 5 years..." Just a question, it is now September 2024, how did you manage to extend your visa to December 2025. I have the visa extension based on retirement plus 800k baht in the bank, my next visa extension is due on the 22nd Feb 2025. So is there a way to extend the visa a few months in advance or do you have a different type of visa?

It is a guy who never tries to justify or give examples of what a "Real Man" is, as is the case with GG. I was doing my standard three-mile walk a few days ago in Phuket, and two huge guys passed me, for some reason I thought what would I do if they decided to be a bit nasty with me, my answer was to hope I could run away faster than they could catch me. When I was a student in London many decades ago I was walking home at 2 am, four guys spread out across the pavement in front of me blocking my path, two of them had bottles in their hands, and one said 'Let's get him'. It was lucky as I had been doing three hours of Karate twice a week, I had become very fit and it enabled me to turn and run as fast as I could, they had no chance of catching me, but they did try.

Ey up love, ow a thee. (Yorkshire dialect, N. England) RR talks of being a miner in t'North of England. In those days, 1970's and before it was standard for men especially coal miners to call each other love, now how 'real men' is that? 😃 Another thing they would say to each other is "ow are thee cock", I am not making this up. I know as I have heard it first hand myself as I was born in Yorkshire (but I managed to escape when I was 15 years old). Guys who go on about being "real men" just have a chip on their shoulder, maybe it is down to a lack of success, etc.

I have never understood the term, "a walking ATM". The girls working in bars are prostitutes working for money, and the guys can't find a girlfriend in the 'normal' way ay so they hire a prostitute bar girl, some keep them long term as long as they continue to pay for them, and maybe the girl's family as well. They mix with other guys who also have bar girls as partners so it seems normal to them, they think this is the standard Thai way of doing things. We guys and Thai women who have met 'normal' partners through business or work etc or while at university etc do not mix with bar girls or with the farangs who are with such girls and know that way of life is not at all standard. "Standard" Thai women hate bar girls and would not go anywhere near them. It is no different to the rich Arabs who frequent prostitutes in London, they come to think all Western women are prostitutes, I suppose the difference is that they are not stupid enough to marry them. I do laugh at the many stories I have heard where these farangs are ripped off by the bar girls, it serves them right. I had a friend who owned a restaurant in Phuket, he had friends who owned girly bars and he used to tell me some of the stories he was told, for example, there were three guys sat at a large girly bar, and none of them knew each other and did not talk to each other, they had each been told separately that their girlfriend had to go back to Issan as the father was sick, the truth was she was with boyfriend number four for the next two weeks, they had all been sending her money each month so she did not have to work in a bar as she told them she was now only working there as the cashier. 🤣

I said "Embassy" as I assumed it was where she got the visitor's visa from, I didn't ask her too many questions as she got the visa with no problems. I remember at the time she said she went to BKK (from Phuket) to get the visa two days before she was due to fly.

And printed on the back of the shirt you can have "Don't call me, I'll call you". 🤣

And then you wake up, look in the mirror and say, "yep, of course it was a dream". 😃

They can't even get the TM47 to work properly online and that is a doodle for us software engineers who know what we are doing to write and test. So I can't see them managing to produce a full tax system tracker, it will be well beyond their capabilities.

I have come across many a farang who need not worry about paying tax any more, they have been well and truly fleeced by their ex-girlfriend who have already moved onto the next lamb for the slaughter. I met one such type in Hua Hin years ago, we had a few beers together and he was handing out 1000 baht tips to the girls in the bar, I asked him what he was doing and he said he had lost a house and a car to his girlfriend in Isaan and was on his way back to live in the USA, he said they had taken 99% of what he had so they may as well have the rest. I gave the girls a tip of 50 baht, they said I was "kin yow" (I don't know the spelling but it means you are mean", I said no, I am "kin yow mark, and that is the way I will stay. " 🤣

I have been told that job was relegated to bar girls a long time ago, once you have bought them a house, and a car, and paid to keep the mum, dad, and the sick buffalo for a few years many farangs end up being skint, hence the move on to the next mug who turns up. 🤣

You mean I filled out all of the forms correctly (twice so far), gave them all the docs and bank account statements they needed, a guy outside the building did a quick check, and the guy inside with the uniform checked again and followed the same set of functions he has done ten thousand times, then a day later they stamp my passport and that is that. I expect the cost will be 1900 baht the same as the last two years. I wonder how they would trace my 20 bank accounts in the UK and the many transactions I make between them. I do not have to bring that much money into Thailand as I have no rent to pay as the house has been bought already, and my car is paid for, so I pay for electricity, water, beer, and food, but I cook at home anyway as I use NZ and Ozzie beef and lamb, etc as I don't like the local low-quality stuff. I have 3000 baht spending money to spend each day but that is hard to spend unless I throw half of it away. As I said before, they are after the very rich Thais who have millions of dollars hidden overseas, not us small fish whom they have no interest in.

An easy solution. Do as I do when I am just browsing and do not need their help, just smile, say "I look around by myself, Kop Khun mark clap", they then leave you alone as their job is done.

Nineteen years ago. About eight years ago, three Thai women and a Thai male visited me in the UK for a month, they had no problem with visas. Maybe things have changed. No problem for me though as my Thai partner loves Thailand and she only went to the UK and Germany to please me, she would rather be here in Thailand. I have been here nearly two years and will stay (excluding visits to the UK) until I am too old to be here anymore, 20 years from now I hope.

I have to laugh at the chip on your shoulder and the complete lack of understanding of how shopping in Home Pro and Thaiwatsadu etc works in Thailand. I have been regularly especially when building a house in Rayong with my Thai partner, they followed us as they wanted to help us with what we were looking for instead of strolling around for hours looking for what we wanted. We even took the mobile number of one of the girl assistants and used it to order what we wanted for the day and she had it all loaded onto a trolley by the time we got there. Try and understand that Thai culture is all about service. Even now when I go to the local Home Pro there is always someone there to ask us if we need help, we say we want this that, and the other and they take us to each section, you buy and then that is that, nice and easy and quick. Maybe you have a guilty conscience. 😃

I asked my long-term partner if she had a problem when she applied for a tourist visa to visit me in the UK and twice to Germany where I was working. She said she took her paperwork regarding her houses in Thailand and a letter from her job and she received the visas after about one hour at the embassies, which included processing and putting the visas into her Thai passport. I see there have been conversations here where farangs send money to their girlfriend's/wife's family regularly, I asked my partner if she knew of any Thai men including her brother-in-law who sent money to their wife's family and she looked at me as though I was mad, she said, "why would they do that?" I said some farangs do that, she said maybe it was the old men who 'hire' young girls long-term.

They couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery.

A simple question and not sarcasm but I have been told by many farangs they pay for the girlfriend and also for her family. They would never do that if they were involved with a female from their own country. Why do they do that, as I do not know of any Thai men who do that? And would these Thai women want to be a girlfriend of the farang unless they paid for them and the family? I have never sent a penny to my long time Thai partner's family, she has/earns her own money as do her family.

Oh is that it. I doubt if anything has changed in the last three weeks regarding any new information or any more understanding of what is NOT going to happened anyway. They are after very rich Thai tax avoiders not the few so called expats with their few shillings in comparison, it is not worth their while doing that.

What is it I have waited all this time for, what time? Enlighten me. I first read this article one or two days ago as I was having a break from programming, I needed something noddy to read for a change. I can imagine all of the low-income yet self-important pensioners in a panic as they think the tax people have time to chase after their few shillings.😀 I think they need to move on. 🚲

What fool would buy a house next to or on a "mountain", especially in those areas where the trees have been removed. I think gravity still works downwards😧 It has been raining more or less non-stop for the last few days in Kathu, very heavy rain, but in this gated housing complex not a single puddle on the private roads or the gardens/driveways etc due to a great drainage system (large private building company), it has been that way for the last fifteen years. But go outside onto the public roads and here and there they fail and the drains overflow.

The new tax laws are there to be able to process the very rich Thais who are hiding large amounts of overseas income, they have to propose it will include farangs to seem fair. They are not interested and do not have the resources to track farangs as most have nothing compared to the rich Thais they are after anyway, it is not worth their while to track farangs with their meager 800k income.

No please don't do that as the whole of Thailand's financial systems would collapse without your 800k baht. I can now imagine the Laos government is eagerly waiting for your entry into their country with 800k baht in tow.

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I was in a bar a few years ago and heard first-hand of a "being lost" story. A very old-looking guy was sitting next to me at the bar counter and was sobbing into his beer. I asked if I could help. He said he had won $60,000,000 on the lottery six months earlier, he said he had bought a country mansion, a penthouse in Central London, a Ferrari, and had married a 25-year-old beautiful woman. I asked him why he was crying. He said, "I can't remember where I live".