teelac888

i feel sorry for people who have a lot of money invested in a country that tightens the cord around your neck every opportunity they get.

you are new to Thailand, take the opportunity to live here for a long time first to learn all about the people and language and customs.

you mentioned that you work online so you can be anywhere, Thailand has a low cost of living and gives you a great opportunity to learn a new culture.

setting up in another country won't be easy at all: as an American you can get around pretty easily but you can't just go to Switz for example and set up shop. you can only get a tourist visa for a short-term and yes they keep very close track of foreigners, i lived there for 13 years. for a thai it will be very difficult as you already mentioned.

you could take her to the USA on a fiance visa that's good for 90 days, then of course not get married, and she would have to leave the country, but no harm would be done and it's legal.

i would suggest not letting her take everything over with her plans to go overseas just yet. make her wait for her plans to unfold. seize the opportunity to learn about her country, she should want that for you too.

just my humble input for what it's worth!

ricky teelac

this is going to get really juicy, just wait.

for those of you who have not experienced a revolution in Thailand before, think about taking some cash out of the bank, just in case.

Would you say it was a huge age difference if it were the other way round? Who is to say that she wasn't attractive? Look at Susan Sarandon, Demi Moore. Watch out guys. You oldies may find yourselves home alone more

Come on, how often do we see older women with younger guys compared to younger women with older guys?

Let's just say I have a suspicion as to your gender and mother tongue.

it's just a little power play joke that has been played many times before.

soon it will be forgotten and everything will be back to normal :-)

not so fast - if the thai police locked up every farang who is doing something illegal, there wouldn't be very many farangs left.

Another bunch of dumdwits that think they are smarter than the system. Great stuff, just keep locking them up

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And throw the key away too.

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What exactly in woman trafficking if its what i think it is Is it done consensually

Do these women have a choice If not why is nothing doen to give them a choice

Education Jobs etc

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Read "The Natashas" by Victor Malarek if you really want to know

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Right, but Thailand publicizes itself as a highly developed country whereas India does not have similar delusions about its' identity.

That one fare in local and another in dollars is usually reserved for countries that are hopelessly poor, thus exposing the Thais to be shortsighted, slow-minded, and greedy as usual.

Domestic airfares in India have been priced in this manner for years: i.e. Indian nationals pay one fare in rupees, foreign nationals pay a higher fare in US dollars.

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Switzerland now grants immediate Permanent Residency to foreign women who marry Swiss men. Up until about 20 years ago the foreign women got immediate Swiss nationality.

My guess is that a few got lucky with cool Swiss guys, the word spread, and every girl from the village that went to work in Pattaya or BKK nailed the first decent Swiss guy she met LOL.

It can't be just coincidence that most of the farang husbands in this village are Swiss. Isn't Switzerland the country that provides a passport and citizenship soon after a foreigner marries a Swiss national? Perhaps that's one reason the females go for Swiss guys. Otherwise there would have to be a marriage bureau or two involved.

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Having lived in Switzerland for many years, most Thai women that I learned of that were living there and married to Swiss men were in some form of an unofficial separation and connected to the flesh trade somehow.

Some were even pimped out by their Swiss husbands.

I have heard of similar stories in Germany but don't know if they are true.

You can take the girl out of the bar but you can't take the bar out of the girl AND

we could replace the word POVERTY in the headline with the word GREED.

How many people in the village studied are short of food or have no house to live in? Not a single one......

Also fair to say that many of us who live abroad go in search of greener grass only to find that it is there but there are a lot of challenges as well.

I think you are hoist on your own petard.

Tourist visa's are not intended for long-timers!!

They are intended for tourists, and the immigration has been quite tolerant of the over use of these visas.

Look at Nepal, by comparison. 6 months as a tourist in one year, and that is it.

astral, thank you for my laugh of the week hahaha. hilarious hahaha.

tourist visa's have been intended for long-timers for 20 years.

this sudden shift represents a dramatic change in practice by Thai Immigration.

just watch the money, and every time the thai standard of living goes up, the foreigner who comes for several months per year spending his good money is less important, so bye bye farang.

hahaha good laugh anyway thank you.

thank you huahin!!!

the whiners are missing the whole point: what's so bad about staying for an extra day in Vientiane?

It's a great place to kick back and i have done so myself many times.

People say they move to places like Thailand to "get away from it all" then run around and get stressed just like usual. Silly.

I'll bet 90% of the whiners on this chain come from one back asswards cold island where the cold water used to come out of one tap and the hot out of another, and you know where I mean :-)

If you want to talk about a place where things don't work correctly, you'd have to put that place right at the top of the list.

what do you mean by limited company? do you mean you want to start up a company or a joint venture or you don't care as long as you get work permits?

you declare the capital of the company - you don't have to bring the 2 million in cash and put it on a table somewhere or have it in a blocked bank account.

the real issue if it's a joint venture you're after is that you have to have 4 thais as the majority owners holding 51% or more of the company.

ah up to their old tricks i see. they just like to yank the chain from time to time.

of course the whole subject is ridiculous as all they are interested in is money!!

sad to hear about that poor man.

given that one can live reasonably on 500 lbs/mth in thailand this is a sign of things to come: the Thais will keep raising the bar in inverse proportion to their need for foreigners and our cash.

Ahhhhhh, yet another process cloned from Switzerland, where his Majesty spent many years in school.

When you apply for Swiss citizenship, the cops do this very same thing: go to your neighbors and ask if you make noise after 10 PM, etc.

They also interview you extensively - what kind of books you read, clubs you belong to, etc.

The bottom line is that the Thais find new ways to remove foreigners in direct proportion to the increase in GNP.

As the standard of living goes up the number of farangs goes down and they keep inventing new ways to exclude, so that only the elite farangs who pay a heavy price will remain.

firstly, the Thai lady already has or soon will (at least as soon as the neighbors squeal to the police when they get back here) give up her land rights, because she has married a farang. so, buying that property around chiang mai will be tricky.

the other negative thing is that under no circumstances should he think he can ever get thai citizenship because he won't. there seems to be plenty of lawyers who will take your money forever based on that promise but there are never any results.

probably the best thing to do would be to set up a low-cost joint venture. since he already has 3 of the thais he needs closeby and trustworthy it will be easy (he needs a mixture of thai and farang owners but there must always be one more thai than farangs). this would give him several things: 1. a way to buy that house, 2. a one-year visa, 3. a way to do hassle-free business because someone that young isn't going to retire forever.

check out my favorite lawyer boonsom kongsri at 66 soi asoke in bangkok. guy has a long reputation of honesty and the highest standing. started with a desk in a travel agency on soi nana and runs a large office now.

good luck

firstly, you need to get expert advice from a real lawyer. best one i know in thailand is boonsom kongsri - his office is at 66 soi asoke in bangkok. he started with a desk in a travel agency on soi nana 15 years ago and now has a large company. very honest with an excellent reputation.

owning a business is one thing, your role in the business another, and your residence status in thailand yet another.

anybody on any visa can own a business. a visitor can sit in that business and watch what goes on every day as long as they are not actually working.

anybody on any visa can lease anything.

depending on the business you will need thai people to obtain the various operational licenses needed to operate the business. you will need thai people to fill all the roles operationally as well.

you could form a joint venture and obtain a work permit that way and actually work in your business. takes a while and costs a lot of money. probably not worth it.

i have been out of thailand almost 9 years now and the immigration laws have changed a lot so i have no advice there.

final word: get good advice from boonsom or another reputable lawyer with a LONG list of farang references you can check. as you can see from this chain all the armchair quarterbacks muddle everything up and mix up the 3 different subjects listed at the top.

good luck

to answer the man's question:

any Thai official that feels like it can tell him he can't support his wife on B 9,500 per month.

he has zero rights here, only privileges.

he should have thought of that when he settled down in the first place.

they will keep tightening the noose whenever they feel like it and there is nothing that can be done about it unfortunately.

i missed something here.

why would you want to meet a farang girl?

be careful of the drugged water offered by the nice middle-aged thai man with a big smile.

sounds silly but they still try it.

I would also like to know if anyone knows Tony Tonks, who owned it at one time. Nice Englishman - I think he married a local girl but I can't recall her name.

I also wonder if the Headrock is still there.....

THANKS

all another great thai illusion.

anybody who thinks that things aren't already very strictly controlled by a complex undercover and snitch network is naive.

how many times have we heard this type of discussion over the years with a temporary change, only to revert back to the status quo?

just follow the money and watch how things don't really change.

buying the house is one thing, leasing it is another.

anybody can lease a house or a building. i have leased several buildings in thailand with my signature. if the owner demands additional things - work permits or whatever - then that is negotiable between you, but not a legal requirement.

since a farang cannot own land, the only way to buy is by creating the famous 51% thai - 49% farang JV that has 7 owners, the majority of which must be thai.

those minimum 4 thai owners will always control the majority of transactions unless you have them sign an affadavit after company registration AND land/building purchase that absolves them of any say or responsibility in the company.

the cops have been known to start picking on/blackmailing farangs and lawyers that abuse the above arrangements. i know of one lawyer that made hundreds of JVs with the same 5 thais and got blackmailed big time by the cops.