NancyL

The law in Thailand is quite explicit in this and a lot of other matters: what they don't know and can't possibly know or enforce is legal until you piss someone off in which case you're stuffed.

Yes, of course, that is how it works here.

I don't really see how it could be enforced if you're writing about subjects that have nothing to do with Thailand, the material is published overseas and the earnings are deposited into an overseas bank account.

Especially, if you're writing "on spec", i.e. vs. "on contract". How is this any different than keeping a journal?

Crickets. Do you need the money?

I wouldn't let anyone treat my wife that way (if I had one.) I'd grab her out of there and tell them to #$%*&@ off.

Unless I really needed the money, I wouldn't let anyone treat her that way for two seconds.

NeverSure, you;ve probably never worked at a place like Tesco where they try to bully you out before your bonus payment. If you want your wife to ride your high horse, OK, but she'll have trouble finding work again in your town.

Nope, I have absolutely no interest about driving in Thailand. I live in Chiang Mai. This may sound very narrow, but every thing I need for daily life is within 1 km, and Hubby likes to walk.

When we've taken any long trips in Thailand, it's been at the invitation of friends (and we always chip in) or with trips that we've organized with a hired van.

Oh, and while I'm at at -- the other high horse came just arrived. Not every foreigner is a "farang", The OP said something about how his GF's been using her grandmother's credit card to transact business in Thailand. I would expect back in granny's day the term "farang" wasn't used in polite company.

Nowadays it isn't just white=skinned foreigners of Eureapean origin who need credit cards. I know others of Asian, South American, and Australian origin origin who would benefit from a loan.

OK -- I'm going to be a little sensitive here. I'm an "old lady". It's not PC to call one's wife "the old lady". If a woman really wants a credit card, why doesn't she post or (better yet, as suggested already) why she think of this before she left her home country?

Crickets -- I really feel bad for your wife. I'm glad she has you and others I'm sure to stand behind her. I've seen others in similar positions bullied into leaving jobs early. Stand by her and give her all the support she needs. She's very lucky to have you.

I thought this was going to be interesting, but then I realized it was about two really boring topics -- driving in Thailand and Thai bashing. I have no interest in either topic.

Perhaps the guy was having trouble deciphering the bank statements to figure out an exact monthly income amount. The OP said the statements he submitted showed he met the "yearly" income parameters. If it was investment accounts that paid on an irregular basis, then I can understand why the consular officials could be confused.

I doubt they have problems with something like a regular monthly Social Security pension or a private pension from, say, a union or a Fortune 100 company where statements could easily be produced to show a regular, monthly income stream.

It is possible to extend the permission to stay for a O visa for 12 months due to retirement if you are over age 50 and meet the financial qualifications of having either a suitably aged 800,000 baht bank account in Thailand or a regular income of 65,000 baht/month (you don't have to spend that much each month -- just have that as income.) Or a combination.

So you can get a the same long-term permission to stay due to retirement with either an O or an O-A visa.

I think this is what's so confusing for people. There are several paths to obtaining this 12-month permission to stay due to retirement. The reasons that someone selects one and not the other should be strategic, but often just turn out to be whatever website advice someone reads or who they talk with at the time they decide they want to retire in Thailand.

No one's really answered the question about what kind of "motor" is in the tuk-tuks. I assume he means "engine". They don't all sound the same. The new red ones are much quieter.

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Then why are the new red tuk-tuks so much quieter than the older ones? It can't just be because they're newer. I think maybe they have a different type of engine.

No one's really answered the question about what kind of "motor" is in the tuk-tuks. I assume he means "engine". They don't all sound the same. The new red ones are much quieter.

Sriphat is a private hospital -- it's the "private" part of Maharaj. Same doctors and operating rooms. Different patient rooms, nursing staff, outpatient clinics. wait queues. If you see a doctor at Sriphat, you can inquire about what the current wait time is at Suan Dok.

Part of the problem with the queue system for an elective hip replacement at Suan Dok is that you won't receive a definite scheduled date -- they can give you a good "idea" of what the wait time is (and will discourage you from using Suan Dok and push you toward Sriphat because, after all, you're a rich foreigner), but elective surgeries at Suan Dok often get "bumped" out of the operating theater by trauma cases and cases from Sriphat, which have higher priority.

Nancy... one of the many reasons I love CM. SO much easier up there. Did you know that you can get into NPs and many other cultural attractions for free just by showing your Thai drivers license? I haven't paid any of these tourist fees for a few years now.

As for the van situation, I have a friend that came visit who is technically a Thai. Both parents are Thai and they both live here but he was raised and lives in the US. So no Thai ID at all. He hired a tour mini-van to take him from Phuket to Krabi and was stopped by the police. They were detained for about an hour questioning if this was an authorized tour with the van driver. Of course my friend didn't speak Thai all that great so he was no help at all. They ended up paying a 1500b "fine" to the policeman because they couldn't produce the proper paperwork.

So you're lucky in a few ways. Things are more laid back in CM and you haven't ran into a policeman in a bad mood yet. I should just make the ocean an occasional visit and move north. Been thinking of doing that for awhile now.

Yup. Us ladies were digging around in our handbags for our Thai DLs -- some had managed to produce them. A few ladies in the van were Thai nationals who had lived overseas for decades. It was evident it was going to take a while for all of us to come up with TDLs and when it was pointed out we were just transiting the park on the way to the Textile Festival in Mae Chaem, he just waved us thru the gate rather than hold up the queue any longer.

Yes, things are more laid back in the north, but I find it difficult to believe that even in the south a police officer would hassle a group of 20 ladies old enough to be his mother -- some of them Thai and others who have been in Thailand for decades. And to think there are those who think Thailand is a "man's country". Little do they know......

No, it's not that he wants to work, per se, it's that he wants to lead diving groups. I admit I don't know much about what's involved in a dive. Never been on one and don't have any desire to start now, but I've been deep sea fishing.

What's to stop the OP from chartering a boat and inviting a bunch of friends to go diving together? How is this illegal? Don't they have private diving parties in Phuket? Doesn't someone have to organize them -- hire the boat, figure out where you're going, point out interesting sites to everyone along the way.

How is this any different from when a friend of mine organized a weekend trip to the Textile Festival in Mae Chaem, sent out emails to her friends, asked them to forward to other friends and before long we had a couple mini vans of ladies going out of Chiang Mai for a fun weekend of shopping, taking in native culture and girl-time? Was this friend engaging in work without a permit? Nobody stopped us and the local town officials in Mae Chaem (and along the way) seemed to like have 20 ladies from Chiang Mai come in to spend money.

If you read the original email, showing my non-diving friends a DSD dive is the LAST thing on the list. What about the others? Like offering free weekly spay/neutering? Heck, I know someone who got into trouble because he helped another friend set up wifi without a work permit.

As for your question.... how is taking a bunch of friends diving illegal? Because you're guiding them. And that is not permitted even with a work permit. I guess the police would take your word that they are your friends and not customers, because a farang would never lie about that, right?

As for your tour, if a police officer in a bad mood decided he wanted to take someone to jail and stopped your van, you (or whoever would confess to be leading this group) could easily end up in jail or pay him an on-the-spot fine... or both... and then you would have to sort out the legalities of it later, if you can.

Again, you would probably get the same answer as I gave from the MOL. I come up with new questions like this to them every other month.

The mind boggles at the concept of a police officer stopping our vans on the way to (or better yet) from Mae Chaem and asking who was leading the tour! We'd have shown them all our purchases, told them about the great restaurants we visited, the parade we saw, the wats we visited. Enough of our group spoke really good Thai. We'd leave out the part about how one of our group (an old Thai Peace Core volunteer) managed to get us into a National Park at no charge saying we were just transiting the park on our way to Mae Chaem. Instead, we took a little detour and stopped at a waterfall for a hour photos, coffee and a little wading. Ohhh, the entire group could have gotten busted for that! Using a National Park without paying!

No, it's not that he wants to work, per se, it's that he wants to lead diving groups. I admit I don't know much about what's involved in a dive. Never been on one and don't have any desire to start now, but I've been deep sea fishing.

What's to stop the OP from chartering a boat and inviting a bunch of friends to go diving together? How is this illegal? Don't they have private diving parties in Phuket? Doesn't someone have to organize them -- hire the boat, figure out where you're going, point out interesting sites to everyone along the way.

How is this any different from when a friend of mine organized a weekend trip to the Textile Festival in Mae Chaem, sent out emails to her friends, asked them to forward to other friends and before long we had a couple mini vans of ladies going out of Chiang Mai for a fun weekend of shopping, taking in native culture and girl-time? Was this friend engaging in work without a permit? Nobody stopped us and the local town officials in Mae Chaem (and along the way) seemed to like have 20 ladies from Chiang Mai come in to spend money.

SpokaneAl -- the makes sense for someone who travels back and forth between their home country and Thailand at least every couple years and who doesn't want to bring funds into Thailand to open a 800,000 baht savings account.

As was pointed out -- there are several ways to obtain long-term permission to stay due to retirement and the routes people chose are largely strategic. For someone to say that "their" visa is the only true "retirement visa" I think is wrong and confusing. Let's call 'em what they really are -- O-A visa, one-year multi-entry non-imm O visa, 90-day single entry O visa, etc. -- all granted for the purpose of retirement.

OK, OK.

No I'm not saying to ignore the Thai law, I'm saying to be sensitive to it. If you're leading dives with a group of tourists -- i.e. taking a job away from someone with a WP, then obviously that's a no-no.

If you and a bunch of retired, resident expats form your own private club, then why can't you go diving together? How is this any different than my Ladies Lunch groups? Someone has to decide where we'll eat, make the reservations, negotiate the menu, etc. Doesn't a dive leader serve the same purpose for a private club of friends.

Find a group of people that already know how to dive, and go with them. Not sure, but if you joined the Lions Club etc. that could keep you busy, as well as GOMS ( Grumpy Old Mens Society http://phuketgoms.org/ ) which a member here Valentine is a part of. Seems there are a number of groups to join where you can give back and stay active at the same time.

Yes, this is EXACTLY the sort of group I had in mind when I was writing in answer to the OP's questions about how someone can stay out of the pubs in retirement and engage in productive and meaningful activity with friends. Now as we go on with the thread, it appears what he really wants to do is be able to is go diving with friends.

If this were Chiang Mai, I'd encourage him to form an "Outside Group Activity" within the CM Expats Club. They're clubs-within-a-club. Computer club, Bridge Club, Hiking Club, Scrabble Club. No reason why there couldn't be a Diving Club. Well except for the fact that there's no ocean anywhere near Chiang Mai. As long as no one is making money from a OGA's activities, none of them have attracted any negative attention from authorities. They're just social clubs of like-minded friends engaging in hobbies.

(I suppose if someone went to Immigration or Labor officials and asked "do you need a work permit to teach someone how to play Bridge or Scrabble or to lead a hike for a club?" the answer would be yes. But, come on, let's get real.)

There is a bookstore between the U.N Irish Pub and Vision Center on Ratchawithi Road that sells office supplies on the second and third floor. They would have box cutters.

I suppose "relatively new" would be around 10 years for my thinking. In my opinion, living in Chiang Mai was much easier then.

When I got my Non-Imm O-A, after having tourist and multiple entry Non-Imm O for some years, the conversion had to be done in Bangkok - Chiang Mai could not do them. Also, at that time they would not accept the income affidavit for the initial conversion in Bangkok. The reason the astute Immigration Officer gave me is, "you could say anything you want for the affidavit." So for a US citizen to get a converted visa at that time you had to have the money in the bank in Thailand because the US Consular services cannot verify income. This is when I found out about the Department of State's own Department of Authentications.

I ended up getting an O-A in Honolulu and it was not much of a hassle. As a matter of fact, I was expecting to get a Non-Immigrant O and then extend in Thailand. I didn't realize until I entered Thailand and they stamped me in for 1 year.

This has been more than 10 years, though.

By the way, getting what I needed in the US for documentation was no problem at that time.

As a side note, when I went to Bangkok to do the conversion, one officer was going to make the conversion with 400,000 THB in a bank which I went to the bank from there office and transferred money and got a letter. Unfortunately, when I returned to the office a superior was there (the one that knew exactly what was going on) and he said it couldn't be done unless there was 800,000 in the bank. So I went to US to do it. At the time I was making trips every 6 months anyway.

hml367, you're not describing a "conversion", but rather an extension, if I follow your story. You said you had multiple-entry non-imm O for years. You already had a visa. What you're saying is that you couldn't do your first 12-month retirement extension on an income basis because the U.S. Embassy/Consulate wouldn't verify income and the only avenue of in-country retirement extension open to U.S. citizens was via the 800,000 bank account method. I'd heard about this problem when we investigated retirement here in the mid-2000s. At the time, the U.S. Embassy and Thai Immigration were kind of in a "draw" about the whole issue of verification of income of U.S. citizens.

Actually, a "conversion" is when someone arrives on visa-exempt status and then applies for a 90-day O visa. That, too, is probably something that wasn't done here in the mid-2000s, although I think Kwaibah was talking about the same thing that I was. You're not. You're talking about an "extension" due to income.