mjnaus

I tried this a year or two ago.... however, I ran into trouble purchasing stable coins on local exchanges due to rather low liquidity (apparently not too many Thais trading stables, at least not back then). I was looking to buy DAI or USDC and was only able to buy a few hundred to roughly 1000 per transaction. Turned out to be a major hassle so I gave up. In the end, went the swift transfer route.

Have lived in Hatyai for close to 20 years. There are at least a few hundred teachers in and around town; but they rotate quite a lot. Some long stayers; busy stay for a year (or a few) before moving on. Places like The Swan and The Post are not popular anymore, except for a handful barflies. There are a couple of Facebook groups that will give you an idea of the number of foreigners and where they might hang out. As for the dangers of living in Hatyai/Songkhla; you’ll have a bigger change of drunk Somchai killing you with his truck than you have of being affected by “terrorists” (when bombs that more resemble home made fireworks than actual explosive devices intent to kill or damage).

Although what you're saying is most likely true; Wise does impose this limit. When doing EUR transfers to Thailand, it clearly states only Kasikorn and another bank allow incoming transfers of over 50k. All other banks don't. Now, whether this is something Wise arbitrarily decided to impose or if this is some Thai banking regulation isn't clear.

I don't think there's anything wrong with economy class. Business/first class is simply the more comfortable way to travel. Used to travel in economy class all the time back when money was tighter. However, when I started to be able to afford it, business/first became a no-brainer, especially for those brutal 12+ hour trips.

If flying business class, Qatar is the better option, by far (QSuites, dine-on-demand, no 2-2-2 seating, better food, etc). If economy, the differences are minimal. If taking airports into consideration (for the layover), Qatar is the better one imo, especially if you can access the Al Mourjan lounge. The only circumstances I'd ever consider Emirates again would be if I were able to get a good deal on a first class seat. Everything else, I'd take Qatar.

Strange. This was not in place when I arrived several weeks ago or the month before. If this correct, maybe they’ve reinstated those checks? Wouldn’t make much sense though…

This must indeed have been QUITE a while back, as this is definitely no longer happening right now.

Seems like nothing is requested (proof of vaccination or a negative test) when arriving in BKK. However, quite a few airlines do ask for proof of vaccination. Happened to me with both Qatar Air and EVA; asked for proof when checking in but nothing asked upon arrival in BKK.

An IDP is nothing more than a certified translation of a driver's license and is not required IF your original driver's license has English language on it (which most licenses have these days). Hence, IDP's are not often needed anymore these days.

Not a single mention of a control group? If control is missing; how can this be taken seriously?

We have been through this process ourselves in the past and it took about a month and a half (about 10 years). Also, as I mentioned in my post, I did dig through content on the forum before starting the process, however the signal to noise ratio wasn't doing me any favors; lots of nonsense and faulty information.

When my wife and I started considering selling our home (just outside of Hat Yai, Songkhla province) I started by doing some research on this very forum. It quickly became apparent that there was, as usual, a lot of contradicting and often simply complete false information with regards of selling property in Thailand. So I figured the information below might be of use to some other forum dwellers looking to sell their property. We built the house 10 years ago, in an older mooban, close to Hat Yai airport (a few km's outside of town). Designed it ourselves but built by de developer selling us the land in the development. We took out a mortgage of 2.5mil baht and added some of our own funds as well. The land plot was just a bit over 123 tarang wah which is almost 500 sqm. The house itself was about 180sqm, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, western style kitchen, plenty of storage facilities and a large garden. We maintained the house well over the years, however given the typical construction standards, it did start showing its age in places. We spent large amount of times abroad every year, but always have gardeners and cleaners over regularly to keep things nice and tidy. We decided it's time to sell the property early this year (around April) and the first step we took was having one of those banners made up to stick on the front gate. In addition to mentioning the place was for sale, it also contained a QR code that linked to a simple website I put up with high quality pictures showing all the nice features of the home and the garden. Within a few days we started getting some interest, mainly phone calls. Within a week we had some to take a look at the house and willing to discuss price. This was all a bit fast for us, as we were scheduled to head back to Europe within a week or so were thinking the house would be on the market for at least several months to a year or so and we'd come back next year to deal with the actual sale. Yet, these guys were definitely interested and wanted to make a downpayment before we left so we'd take the property of the market. We finally negotiated on a price of 4.2mil (down from 4.5mil we initially asked) and agreed to a down payment of 200,000b while they'd apply for a mortgage. They'd have 3 months to complete their mortgage application. If the application wouldn't not be successful within those three months, we'd get to keep the down payment and we'd be allowed to put the property back on the market. All of this was handled by the attorney with official contracts. So, papers signed and down payment received, my wife and I left back to Europe to wait it out. Time kept going by and didn't hear anything from the interested party of their lawyer. After a few months, my wife reached out and was told they were still waiting on the mortgage approval. Several more weeks passed and we started to get a worried about absolute silence. My wife's pregnant and the time frame in which we'd still be able to fly half way around the world and clear out our house was rapidly closing. My wife send another message to their attorney asking what's going on. He replied that it's taking longer because they had to refile the mortgage application under a different name (we assume the girl who initially applied didn't get approved). All fine and dandy, but we couldn't continue to wait much longer. We decided to inform them that we'd be traveling back to Thailand in two weeks and if they'd be able to sort out finance by then, the deal was still on. If not, we would put the property back on the market and we'd get to keep the deposit (since the original time frame had since past). Upon arriving in Bangkok last week, my wife reached out to the attorney who informed us that the mortgage was approved now and we could proceed getting the house in order to prepare for the official transfer at the land office a week later. Last Friday, my wife and I, plus the buying party's attorney showed up at the land office around 8.30. At that time, it's already starting to get busy. You're given a queue number and than it's a matter of waiting until your number's up. When your number is up, the buyer and seller sit down with the land office rep who will process all of the relevant documents: the chanote, house book, ID's, construction permit (if there's a property involved instead of just land). If the seller is married, even to a foreigner, the spouse needs to be present as well (as he/she needs to sign some documents as well). Verifying all the docs will take a while, about half an hour in our case. Once all verified, you're asked to wait until the updated chanote is ready. This took another 40 minutes roughly. Next up is payment. Since the buyer is financing the purchase through a mortgage, there was a bank rep their from their bank. After the chanote is updated by the land office, it was this bank rep who picked up the chanote and came down to meet us (wife, me and the buyer's attorney). We were handed a cashiers check and after our approval the chanote was handed to the buyer's attorney. There were some fees/taxes to be paid as well: transfer fee of 2% (either paid by the buyer or split between buyer and seller, we agreed on the latter), stamp duty of 0.5% and withholding/income tax. With regards to that last one, they consider the returns of sale of the property as income and hence it's taxed as such. The exact rules changed again recently and there's different sources online using different methods of calculating the final amount. In addition, the actual returns used to calculate the tax on are also vague; in our case the land office went with the registered value of just the land from when it was last surveyed (quite a few years ago) which ended up being roughly 2mil baht. Total fees for our side came to just below 90.000baht (property was sold for 4.2mil). Hope this info is useful.

Then, of course, there are those who believe every fairy tale under the sun. Truth of the matter is, every half decent hardware wallet comes with a recovery method in the form of a seed phrase which can be used to regenerate the private keys. I have lost hardware wallets in the past and it never was a problem. Losing both your seed phrase and the actual wallet is a different matter.

Again, the concept of a body such as the UN is apparently lost on you. It's a silly and rather simplistic notion to judge UN representatives by the governments of their homelands... At the very least, wouldn't you agree that these people should be judged on the merit of their own achievements? Would you be so critical of Nelson Mandela, simply because he's from South Africa?

You can't wrap your head around the fact that this lady is in China as a UN representative, not the Chilean government?