JamesPhuket10

Further info. The qualification for an increase in the next years rise is decided on our status in September each year, so if we arrive in July for example and become resident for pension status, we stay one month and then three months later in October we state we have been out of the country for three months we will have also qualify for the pension increases in the following April.

"What if everyone followed their conscience and refused, all at the same time? " What if the reality is most poor Russians can not afford to escape long term, only the rich can afford to hide in Thailand for example with their families. I don't think the ability to be able to afford to hide abroad is called 'refusing'. I do not blame them for going abroad instead of fighting though.

I was on a flight to Germany once, part of my twice weekly flight to work and back from London, I was talking to a guy from Spain. After thirty minutes of chatting he asked where I was from, I said England and he asked why I was polite, had no tattoos and did not swear every other word. I asked him why and he said he was from Spain. I told him I and others like me avoid going to Spain as it attract only arse-ole Brits is seems, he seemed to think we were all like that.

Most of them in Phuket as far as I have seen are well off so they would buy a visa by investing or buying one directly the same as any other nationality can do. I see them on a daily basis walking around the reservoir as I do, they are with wives, girlfriends and their children, they seem OK to me, clean cut. But I laugh when people say Phuket is overrun with them, we farangs as we walk around the reservoir still only make up 2% of all people walking, the other 98% are Thais. Maybe the Russians are good at disguises and there are no Thais on the walk at all. 😀

They gave me a receipt for my passport when they retained mine during a flight under similar circumstances in Bangkok. After 30+ years of being there on holiday and living there for 2.5 years I have never been asked once for my passport unless I was at an immigration office or check-in for a flight etc.

You arrive in the UK, you tell the DWP you have moved back and you intend to stay here. You will then receive the new pension at the new current rate from that day. Stay a month or so living in the UK as that is where you live. You may then decide to go travelling again abroad, if so you have to inform the DWP by their overseas branch three months after you have returned to Thailand. Your pension will then be frozen at the new current rate. This is also true of the NHS free treatment, you are entitled to use once you state you have now move back to the UK, some people confuse this with the 180 day tax status, they are not connected at all. When I say 'state', that is what you say if asked which is unlikely. You use your NHS number which is never cancelled and they will not even bother asking you about being abroad, why should they? We can then decide to move abroad again at any time.

You should tell all of your mates and as many other people that, that will keep even more riff raff away. Most of Phuket has very few tourists or farangs at all, it is a third the size of Greater London. I am just over the mountain from Patong, maybe five miles away, 99% of the people living in my gated housing area are Thai as is the case with the people in the restaurants and shops or on the road in this area. Some people come here, hang around in a small tourist area and then think they have seen Phuket, I think a lot of people do that around the world for example places like Spain. There are too many uneducated types who believe any negative thing they read on social media. But let the misinformed stay away, we who live here are quite happy thanks.

Oh no, not more incorrect info from an unqualified YouTuber, what qualifications does one need to make crap YouTube videos, erm none. There is no official rule that says:“You must live in the UK for 6 months to restart State Pension increases.” That statement is not supported by DWP or IPC guidance, and HMRC doesn’t even handle State Pension payments (that’s the DWP/International Pension Centre), so HMRC wouldn’t be the right authority anyway. When you’ve been living in a frozen country (like Thailand, Canada, Australia, etc.) where pension uprating is not applied, and then you return to live in the UK, the uprating resumes, but: Only from the date you return (or the date you tell them you’ve returned) It doesn’t backdate to cover previous years You don’t have to “qualify” by living here for a set amount of time You just need to be “ordinarily resident” in the UK again What You Need to Do to Restart Pension Increases Tell them you have returned to live in the UK Tell the International Pension Centre (IPC) that you’re now back and give your UK address That’s it. The uprating resumes from that point (or the next April increase, depending on timing) There’s no six-month minimum in any official DWP documentation. Some agents might informally suggest 6 months to “prove” you’re back, but this is more about avoiding abuse, not an official rule. Why the “6 Months” Myth Exists Some YouTubers and bloggers misinterpret what agents say Others confuse UK tax residency rules (which do use 183 days = 6 months) There’s confusion between residency for tax purposes and residency for State Pension purposes So we can come back, state we are now here to the DWP, if at a later stage we tell them we are going off again then the pension will be frozen again but we will still be paid the current rate.

Great, stay away, the Russians have done Phuket a favour over the decades, they have money, all of the ones I have come across so far during my 2.5 year stay and 30+ years of long holidays are well dressed, together with their well dressed Russian wives/girlfriends and in many cases children. They seem to have put off the tattooed, skint average farang, that means less bar girls as business is down, bars closing by the hundreds, they have probably all buggered off to Pattaya where the skint low class tourists go. Keep up the good work Russians, bring more of your friends and family with you to Phuket. Keep Phuket tattoo free. Maybe there are low class Russians about in Thailand, but they are probably in Pattaya.

Just load the app directly from ChatGTP. You probably have already done this. You can also download it to your computer https://openai.com/chatgpt/download/

I use the paid for monthly subscription, it is about £20 a month ChatGPT4o, the free version is limited. I use it to generate 'hidden, hard to find system' code for iPhone app development, it can then be integrated with my own code. But I have to check in detail every time as it makes mistakes, but it is good as a template for system code as it means I do not have to trawl though lots of manuals to find what I need. You need to know what to ask it, you can then build on the information you have been given by getting it to do more complex things, it is like working with a team of experts, as you know what you need to do but need refined info on how to do it. It allows you to avoid reinventing the wheel on most occasions.

In that case you would have had to sleep on a chair airport side. I was on an Eva Air flight from Bangkok to London, two hours in we had to turn back to Bangkok due to a very ill passenger. At the airport we handed in our passports and were given a receipt with an id number, the passport went into a box, that avoided re-entering the country in relation to our visa and then going through immigration again the next day. Free transport and a free hotel was provided, we were taken back to the airport the next day, handed in our receipt, got the passport back, no immigration needed again as we had gone though immigration the day before, all simple, nice and easy. Winging Australians is seems are everywhere.

My standard reply to that is why would an Englishman every want to go and live in a desert at the arse end of the world and leave a perfectly good country behind, if I had to do that I would whinge all day long. What is the difference between yoghurt and an Australian, the answer is, yoghurt has culture. 😃

Extra info: I just found out if I keep the flat I can come and stay in the UK for a month and update my pension address to the the UK address, the government pensions will then be restored to the then current UK annual pay rate, then I can go back to Thailand and the pay will stay the same. So it might be worth doing that every five years or so taking into account an annual pension rate rise of 3% every year.

My story is: I sold my large family house in the UK in 2021, 30 miles from London when there was a rush to 'buy space', I put some money into Premium bonds and moved the rest into eight UK online bank accounts where £85,000 per bank was guaranteed, I could control and move the money via apps on my iPhone from Thailand. Due to the rush for people to buy at the time prices were inflated, the house I sold is now worth less than I sold it for. Soon I was being paid 5% for doing nothing in interest payments and no risk from banks, I knew the property market had overheated and so I stayed in Thailand until early 2025 living off the interest and a state pension waiting for prices to drop. I have now been back in the UK since March 2025, a commuter town next to a train station where London is just 30 mins away, in an 80 Sqm, two bed, two bath luxury flat, EPC: B, I just bought for £317k cash, the original price was £360k, so prices had dropped. I am a bit worried about the lease though as it only has 993 year left 🙂 Now interest rates will drop over the next few years to the historic rate of around 3% so a lot more people will be able to buy, prices will rise due to lack of new properties being built in any meaningful way, forget about the promise from the government to build 1.5 millions houses, we do not have enough builders, 30% returned home after Brexit to Poland, and local voters in local council will oppose most of the builds. So as the returns from banks are now less (around 4.2% and dropping) I have put some of the cash into the flat, the rent will be £1800 per month minus the costs and full management by an agent at 10%. It will be a bolt hold as it is very possible when I am old and sick I may have to live there, it has two lifts right from my underground parking space and the shops as is the train and main bus station three minutes walk away. The rest will stay in cash for now. So back to Thailand for me in a month or two from now, Phuket, nice and international, good living standards and lots to do. I do live in a house in Thailand, it is my Thai partner of 20+ years, my cash and property are in the UK, her property and cash are in Thailand making for a very amicable set up, no financial dependency.

My music changed very frequently when I was young, it depended on the girl I was trying to shag at various times and so her music suddenly became my 'favourite' music. 😃

Is your name Garry Glitter 🤣

"My mother did not work after I was born. My wife did not work after my son was born in 1973." They would be considered lazy in many countries around the world, most people work if the can not matter their sex. My Thai partner is six years younger than me, she like most other Thai women do not marry guys 20+ years old than themselves, have a look around next time you are in a large shopping center and you will see. I do not know what an "aged care plan" is, we did not have any transactional or set plans when we decided to get together, we just got on so well and it became a natural progression.

extra info. Oh yes, this might be important, the whole of the suspended ceiling is covered with six inches of wool insulation, the bedroom I work in during the day with my computer etc has twelve inches of insulation, I notice when I have had the aircon for a few hours and then go out for a few hours (aircon off) and come back, it is still cool.

As a comparison, I have one aircon on all day in a room which is about 13 feet times 22 feet, I set it to 26/27 degrees as it reduces the humidity as well making it cooler. I also have my computer on all day and a 49 inch monitor. There are two large fridge/freezers. During the night there is an aircon running at 26 degrees the bedroom is about 12 feet x 12 feet. The bill is about 2300 baht a month. Now I am in the England for a five month holiday, my electricity bill in the house in Thailand is 600 baht a month, that is with my partner staying there five days a month with the aircon on at night in the same bedroom. She does not use aircon during the day.

Electricity in the UK costs 9.57 baht per unit. Average salary £29,600 per year in the UK, the minimum wage in the UK for an eight hour day is 4294 baht a day. Minimum daily wage in Thailand is 400 baht which is 10.7 times less than the UK. So I don't think the Brits are worse off.

The era you are talking about must be the victorian times as my mum who would have been 104 now and my dad 113, they worked all of their lives as did most other couples from their generation and the generations since. Yes, I agree, most of the farang blokes I have come across marry poor Thai women, the reason being they could not get a professional type of Thai so they settle for what they get, and in many cases the woman is with them for their money. Also many of these guys live in Isan and are surrounded by many other poor people, their view of Thailand is biased. I am not a snob and bigot about others, I was merely trying to balance the truth that not all Thais women are poor, there are very many who have made their own way in life, many farangs have never come across such women. I can understand farangs getting upset about the truth I come out with as they are in denial, they have probably already found out why their wife is with them.

It is not, they wanted to charge me 200 baht. Quite a few years ago in Chiang Mai I went to visit a friend from England, he was staying with his Thai wife in one room in a hotel and I was staying in a my own hotel room. At checkout the reception had added 200 baht to my bill as I had brought someone back to the hotel. What had happen is we two blokes went out for a few beers , his wife stayed home so when we arrived back at the hotel, I took my key, his key was with his wife so they put two and two together to and made 5. I soon got the 200 baht cancelled. 🤣

My thought is to ask yourself how much your life is worth to you and then suggest you go about in a Honda car instead of any death trap motorbike. You can open the windows and pretend you are on a bike, better still, wear your crash helmet as well, then you will be super safe, or buy a car and cut the roof off. 😃

And a lot of the rest of them said their partners were only the cashier in the bar so did not count in the bar girl tally. 🙂