mickj88

We are looking to move over this year from the UK. I am looking at a spouse visa I guess I need to talk to the Thai embassy in London to see what the requirements are. I am over 50 and will have some funds in the bank but not looking to retire as such, will invest in a small business enterprise or start one as we have a few ideas. Im not looking to make loads of money before the neigh sayers start but just to give us a little extra to make our funds go further / last longer. I have run a small business in the UK for the last 28 years so again before anyone starrts with the dont do it you will lose everything  I will not as am savvy in the ways of a small business.  We have a house, built in 2008 and a 5 year old HiLux with very little KMs on the clock bought by my wife from new and weve been together for 20 years so I am fully aware of pitfalls that can become ferang  but also as weve been together for so long I think the chances are no different to any couple anywhere in the world. I think a spouse visa is my best bet as I want to get a work permit providing we get a ltd company set up and meet requirements.

The headline reads Beijing not SE Asia - which is why I said China, but you took it upon yourself to assume I meant  S E Asia to make yourself seem somehow superior. You should never assume because it makes an  Ass out of U and me !

Either way it will be a long time before tourism gets anywhere near pre covid levels and Thailand becomes the land of smiles again- if it ever does.

On 10/12/2022 at 12:04 PM, newnative said:

    Visitors from western countries were about 9.2 million in 2019.  Visitors from East Asia countries, ASEAN countries, and South Asia countries were 29.3 million.   9,200,000 X your 76,500 baht western spending = 703,800,000,000 baht in western spending.  I don't have an average Asian spend but if we're conservative and use your China figure we have: 29,300,000 x 52,500 baht = 1,538,250,000,000 baht in Asian spending.  Both big numbers, but Asian spending was over twice as much.   

    If not a single Chinese visited Thailand in 2019, we still have 18.3 million other Asian visitors that year. 18,300,000 X 52,500 baht  = 960,750,000,000 in non-Chinese Asian spending.   So, even without the 11 million Chinese, still more than the western spending.  Seems the 'soldiers' can 'add up' ok. 

  

 

   

I didnt say Asian visitors - read my post -I said Chinese- where thhe money is all pre paid in China and very little hits Thailand. Do you own  a business in tourism ? just ask the hoteliers and small business owners who get the prices screwed down by the chinese. Nowhere in my post did I mention SE asian visitors . Perhaps you shuld read pposts properly before trying to make otherss look stupid !

300 baht to get in somewhere of interest in Thailand not bad - 3 years ago I went to Whitby Abbey ( owned by the National trust) - cost me £8 to park and they wanted £45 for me and the wife ontop to go and have a look around so in total £53- not exactly the £7.40 it costs in LOS and also in LOS the wifey goes in for less being a Thai national.

Is was said thatthe majority of money from the chinese never reached the Thai economy as was paid up front on package tours in China  and surely a westerner paying 4.500 baht over an average of 17 days 76.500 baht is better that 7 days average of 7.500 baht spent by the chinese visitors = 52. 500 baht , Maybe soldiers cant add up or maybe certain mps in Thailand just hate westerners ( but not their cash it seems).

Well as usual theres a lot of negativity on posts but no one has a solution. I first came to LOS in 2003 and no Yabba in the village - no canabis  in the village , the thing that sent people over the edge was loakoaw ( forgive spelling). So whether the war on drugs was a success or not,make you own minds up but in my mind people were less likely to dabble due to severe cosequences. As for some numbers put up here of only 76 deaths in 2 mass killings fair enough but in and around our isaan village alone there have been more than 20 yabba related deaths in the last 10 years but they just dont make the news / Thai visa . com etc.  I suggest before jumping on the bandwagon and slagging off plans you might formulate a solution yourself. Most foreigners on here just love to troll esp when the overwhelming populations chosen political party says anything .Yabba is a plague in the villages and towns of Isaan and someting needs to be done what I do not know maybe find the suppliers and cut the head off the snake.

RIP to all that lost their lives. This not only makes me sad but also angry, Yabba has been a plague in the villages and towns of Thailand for far too long.  Love him or loathe him at least there was zero tolerance on drugs when Thaksin was PM.  This current bunch of clowns legalise canabis which can lead to the user moving on to try other drugs and with the current price of yabba being so cheap  its no supprise that something  disasterous has happened . Its too easy and cheap to get this stuff and the punishments are too lenient. As long as thiere is tolerance and tea money fines intead of real punishment then these types of horrific things will happen . Once again RIP little ones ???? .

The reasoning behind making the NE a business hub was because the Chinese high speed railway is coming through Laos and over to Nong Khai. The original thinking was move business up there ready for its arrival meaning it woud be usable straight away wthout having to wait years for the line to be built down to  Bangkok and on to Samatprakan . I remember reading about it and even know a couple of guys who work for UK companies that have manufacturers in Samatprakan saying at the time that they may be moving their manufactring bases up to Issaan ( as they know my wife is from there). Looks like the Chinese will be tightening their belts and this may put the high speed rail on the back burner - hense business not wanting to move and therefore investment being withdrawn. Actually makes sense for a change .

In last 8 months I personally know 32 people (including me and Wifey) have been to thailand. Of these people 6 were tourists the rest were Thais and or husbands / kids returning to visit families not seen for 2 to 3 years due to covid. So less than 23% genuine tourists . I imagine that this is accross the board - certainly where ferang are concerned. So you can say that maybe 1.2 million are genuine tourists but the rest just families returning - yes they are tourists but not genuine spending tourism tourists.

 Personally I think it will be sometime before the geunine spending tourists return in the pre pandemic numbers, even then the numbers were massively Chinese who were not spending as all was pre paid in China. TOT are looking to gain a wealthier tourist but then Thailand legalize canabis- wealthy tourists are not stoners , for me this sends put the wrong message , Backpackers and younger tourists like a "toot" and they are not wealthy, Thailand need to make its mind up who its target audiance is.

Just come back to the UK after  a Month in LOS . Stayed for only 2 days in Bkk which was a pain with the masks ( had to stay due to the non quarantine - quarantine of what turned out for me to be 23 hours .This was due to no one in the hotel letting me know when my test result came back - which in turn meant I couldnt get a flight up to Issaan. till the following day. Up and down Sukumvit I would say that during my walk from Nana to Robinsons around 50% of the people be they Thai or ferang did not have a mask on. Once in the village around 70% didnt bother and even in the local town only around 40% bothered. Yes covid was rife in the village for around 10days of the 3 weeks I was there  but no one tested positive for more than 5 days and when my Mrs caught it she was positive for 4 days and on the 5th was negative. Also no one in the villagee was very ill where as when I had it in the Uk in Feb I was knocked off my feet for around 6 days and tested positive for 12 days. Obviously the strain sweeping through Thailand is not as strong as the earlier strains. I didnt catch it again even though a number of the wife's family caught it. I did wear my mask but found it made my breathing more difficult with the searing April hot season temps reaching 42 up in NE. No one in the bars had masks - no one in Nana plaza had masks . I think its more about control than safety at this point .

Totally beleivable as when you type in ASQ or Test and go Thailand on google, the top booking link is agoda. I have been on at least 50 times in the last month looking at where and when I can stay. Now have my pass {only took 2 days) and arrive on 6th April . If you use agoda you can input their booking reference now on the Thai pass application to save time waiting for confirmation from the hotel . I got my reply from the hotel nearly 22 hours after booking so in this respect the agado booking reference saved me 22 hours on my application.

I got my Thai pass through today after 2 days  heres a snippit from the email...

Travelling to Thailand

1. 1. Please prepare your documents to present at the check-in counter and to the agencies concerned when arriving in Thailand. The documents are as follows
   1. 1.1 Passport with visa (if required)
   2. 1.2 Thailand Pass QR Code (on mobile device or printed copy)
   3. 1.3 Medical certificate with a laboratory result indicating that COVID-19 is not detected through RT-PCR test (issued within 72 hours before departure). If the Port Health and Quarantine at airports in Thailand discover that you have invalidated COVID-19 RT-PCR test result or if the type of the test is not RT-PCR method, you will not be eligible to be exempted from quarantine, but you may be allowed to enter Thailand by quarantine only.
2. 2. When arriving in Thailand, please present your documents and Thailand Pass QR Code to the immigration and disease control officers.

So is the pre test cancelled or not ? My pass is for arrival on April 6th or could this just be a generic mail which will change on April 1st ?

I thought all cars made in Thailand were made under lisence for Japanese companies, surely therefore if Japan have sanctions and a no export to Russia policy then Thailand cannot export these vehicles, same goes for Tyres and other parts. I would have thought the parent companies country of origin would set any embargoes . Personally I really hope it all comes to an end ASAP but doubt it will as Putin has no respect for any kind of sovereignty.

As I see it ..

1 no one believes Thailands numbers , just seem far too low, even if they are correct it just doesnt seem that they are.

2 The UK numbers are wrong , I personally know of at least 8 deaths of other causes that were logged as Covid so god knows how many others were falsified. Before you ask these 8 are numbers from a doctor and a paramedic that I know .

3 Thai government seems to disslike western ferang and panders to China even though most western visitors spend 4 to 6 times more money that the Chinese as most chinese visitors arrive on pre paid holidays and have certain hotels and shops which they frequent where prices as screwed down so little profit made.

4 British government dont care about Thailand as have no trade deals with the country and have little reason to want one as Thailand has little to export other than spouses.

5 even if you can get  into Thailand, most can only go for 30 days and why would you want to spend 15 days of that confined to your hotel room ? Not only that but having to pay £1100 for the privellidge in a hotel that we know would normally cost less than £300 for the 2 weeks.

I am gutted for my wife not being able to see her mum and family for another 6 months so lets hope her mum stays well.

In 6 months time hopefully this will all be over  unless of course there is a 2nd wave in which case we may never be able to travel to LOS again for  quite some time .

All we can do is wait and see .

I booked our flights back in Jan to fly out to LOS on July 8th. Etihad emailed today to say they have moved our flights but same day just 6 hours earlier. I do not know if we wll be allowed to fly ( well the mrs will as shes Thai) . I messaged the UK Thai embassy today and will wait for their response. I have a feeling it will be a yes you can come but have to isolate in the Bkk hotel of their choice for 14 days and having to pay through the nose for the pleasure. If so then our flights will be getting moved  to next year as only going for 18 days, so pointless isolating then only having 3 days in Isaan with family. If I get any positive news will post here.

rasq, Id like to point out that London is not the whole of the UK and that  past the Watford gap most wages are no where near £18500 a year I'd say most people in the north and in Wales and Scotland as a usual wage would earn around £14k to £16 k  a year , sorry but anyone in London who moans about this then sell your little house for £400k and move to somewhere that yu can buy a house 4 times the size for half the money. The average rent on a 3 bed house here in west Yorkshire is £550 a month where as in London I have friends that live in bedsits that pay nearly that a week . The wages they earn allow them to do this and £18500 a year in London may be a pittance but in the real world people do not earn that a year.  My wife earns around £11000 per annum and I reckon this year I will just about hit £12500  so as you can see between the 2 of us its only £23500, As for the guy who has mates who earn £18500 in a couple of months , I guess they are the tossers in the banks that have screwed the rest of us over the last 10 years or they are in insurance or some other industry that rips off the general public.

7 by 7 that's quite interesting but I had to take all my financial records to Bangkok embassy to show I was earning over £8500 . Now this may not have been a legal requirement but as I am not a lawyer I don't know so I took it that it was . I was told that if I did not show an income of £8500 then my wife would not be issued a spouse visa and would not be allowed to come back with me until such time that I met that requirement. I remember this quite clearly at I am and was then self employed and luckily for me the previous year I had made a profit of £8900 which meant she was granted a visa. Now  as I said that may not have been legally binding but its what the British embassy informed me at that time . 2005 well before 2012 . Obviously things have changed a lot over the last 11 years , she first came over in 2004 on a 3 month visa and I was told I had to show that I had £2500 in the bank to support her stay, again I am not sure if this was a legal requirement but it was what the embassy told me. This information was also given to me in early 2005 when she came back again on a 3 month holiday visa.

When my Thai wife came to the UK 11 years ago I had to show that I had an income of £8500 so now it is up to £18500 which to me seems an awful lot of an increase over an 11 year period. I am waiting to see what happens when brexit is triggered as my wife is in the UK on indefinite leave to remain , If they start handing free ilr visas out to Europeans that have been here for 10 years or less, I am going to write and ask that they refund the £1750 I paid for her ilr visa + interest .The reason she hasn't sat the new UK nationality exam is  that again its another £1200 and if she fails she would have to pay again. I have done the mock test and I failed it ( I'm born here and have lived here 52 years). Why should she have to when she has been in the UK for nearly 12 years and in all that time has worked and paid her NI contributions and taxes the same as any british citizen and in some circumstances more than some of the scrounging dole dossers. I know loads of people who voted out so that their wife or gf could have the same rights as the EU residents, we will soon find out if there are going to be changes . It makes you wonder if the EU residents will still get preferential treatment even though where I live there a numerous Asian Drs, nurses and carers working hard while we seem to have had an influx of Rumanians who are here to claim off our social and use our NHS.

My Mrs showed me a post on FB .One of her friends on there had a visit from her husband and he overstayed by 5 weeks. From what I can gather one he left the country she was visited in the village by the police from the local tambon office. She was handed a fine of 800 baht and was throwing a bit of a wobbler on FB about it . 800 baht is about £15 to £16 , so not bad for 5 weeks £3 per week.

It all seems a bit of a minefield to me.

My wife and I are thinking of leaving the UK in the next 12 months and heading out to LOS .

She wants us to go up to the village in Issaan and farm but that would make it difficult for me to work .

I would like to purchase a guesthouse or bike rental or other business and run that .

I am thinking down that avenue as I have read that regardless of what business we go into and also be it a ltd co or partnership for me to get a work permit we will need 4Tthai employees , maybe 3 if the wife is included as a Thai employee

From what I understand I can own 49% of a ltd co but only 30% of a Thai partnership and also in a Partnership cant have a business bank account under my control( although only having 49% of a ltd co with 1Thai would be the same).

The upside of a partnership if setting up from scratch is that it only requires 1m baht investment but the ltd co requires 2m baht.

As we will only have around 2.5m baht to invest my preference may not work and I will just have to not work .

I will be applying for the marriage visa so I will have the required funds in place for that and then looking at our options .