merlen10002

Don't miss

1 ex witch

2 high cost of living

3 regulations

Do miss

Camping in the outback

vegemite

and a nice clean countryside

Can buy Vegemite at Big C ,, Bangkok & Pattaya

Try Thomas Udon Thai House Resort & hotel, last time I stayed there it was 600 BHT , very good, clean, nice rooms, set in a garden, only about 12 - 13 rooms, owned by a German guy, Western & Thai food, both very good, can eat by the pool, or in your room, ten minutes from the center of town, set up like a nice small motel, best value I have stayed at in Udon, stayed there many times, BUT PHONE AND BOOK, 66 42204014, 0862353663

Lots of paranoid racist remarks posted on TV about Russian tourist, my wife has a business in a big hotel that had all Russians staying there, never had any problems with them at any time, tipped well and very well behaved, most were family's with children from small babies to teenagers , not the big over weight Russian depicted by some posters on here, men very fit good looking and really beautiful women, good looking kids, nice family's. any one that thinks the Russian tourist are not important to Pattaya and Phuket is really stupid, just look at all the shops and business in Pattaya and Phuket signwriting is in Russian not Thai or English, that must tell you something, the hotel where my wife's business is has eight shops and three are already closed and my wife will close hers next month, I think the rest will close soon, absolute disaster for Pattaya. just over one year ago my wife's was great making very good money now can not cover the overheads. Russians are very important and better than most other country's tourist. people that bag them really have no idea. Russians that live in Thailand maybe a different thing.

Well it will go back to what it was like 14 years ago before any Russians were here, life was no different, just cheaper, and most are rude, you were lucky, but life and business will carry on

Stupid post, do you own a business in Phuket or Pattaya, I am sure you don't and have no experience with Russian customers, most western people don't, it is not the farangs that are not making any money from their business it is the Thai people, how can I be lucky with only Russian customers for over four years and some thousands, and not only the hotel my wife business is in but the Pullman , Central Mirage, Zign , just a few 4 & 5 star hotels that are in trouble with lack of Russian guests, and there are many more hotels suffering in Pattaya, don't know where you go to see all the rude Russians, I go to Big C a lot and Tesco a lot never see any rude Russians, don't see many rude people at all , please tell me where are all the Rude Russians, I have no great liking or dislike for Russians or any other nationally. take every one as the same.

Just went AirAsia from Bangkok to the Gold Coast, had to wait a few day more days to get a flight, all book,, both from BKK to Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur - Gold Coast, same on return, good flight no problems, all full both ways, on time or a bit early, wait at KL a bit to long, but have booked again in March back in April,

return 15,000 BHT including extras, ,, other air lines well over 30,000 BHT, Air Asia is doing OK from what I see, will go with them every time.

No it is not busy, down more than 50% on previous years , my wife has a business in a good hotel and all shops are down, three have closed, all hotels are way down on previous years, you must be in a different Pattaya to me. bar stool looking will not tell you the true situation.

House already wired up I now find, will try Sophon,, thanks every one

have a good new year

Do you live in a house or condo ?

If house where in Pattaya do you live ?

If Condo then ask your condo management.

Naklua soi 16, Free standing house, just moved in.

Have True TV and want Cable TV also who do I contact,

thanks

Lived in BKK over three years took taxi about four times a week never had one not put the meter on never had to ask a driver to put the meter on, I could always speak Thai for the destination and never went to the low bar type areas manly used taxi in the day time.

Did my 90 day report on Tuesday took all of three minutes from the time I walked in the door at Jomtien Immigration, the system is easy and quick now, back to the front counter got ticket for my extension of stay for retirement look at the ticket number on the indicator my number already on the indicator no waiting, took another five minutes then finished, told to pick up my Passport after 10.00 am the next morning, could not be any easier, coming back the next day is a very small inconvenience but I think it is a great service and always treated with respect by the officers, it will do me.

I'm a bit prejudiced as Danny California is playing at Spasso's on Sundays now and he's fantastic! Nothing like that here in Pattaya. Except at The Mood, in Pratumnak. Great place to listen to the Blues Thursday thru Sunday.

Other nice bars (could be hit and miss though) would be Hard Rock, Holiday Inn, Futurama (Jomtien, top floor with a wonderful view), Dusit D2, perhaps the Jazz Pit at PIC. Some good music at Leos in Nakula when they have their jam night also, but it's just an open air beer bar.

Unfortunately, here in Pattaya, we don't have the options you've got in Bangkok.

Thanks for that, I lived in Bangkok for 3 years before coming to Pattaya, Pattaya lacks a lot of things,

Best by far is the bar in the Mata Hari Restaurant. Extensive selection of spirits fine wines and they can properly make cocktails. Smoking is permitted, but no view.

The restaurant is really excellent.

Thanks for that, but smoking is no good, filthy stench when eating food really bad, I want a very up market restaurant with a bar entertainment and dancing like they have in some of the big hotels in Bangkok, but don't think Pattaya has any.

Are there any Restaurant & bar in Pattaya like the Spasso Restaurant & Bar in the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel in Bangkok or a very up market bar in Pattaya ?

The hotel where my wife works in Pattaya is 4 star it has 700 rooms, from March till now only 100 or a little more occupied most of the time, the reason,, protests , coup, martial law, most to blame, most group booking are three months in advance and pre paid, this is why it took a few months to take affect, the hotel is in a great position with its own beach, and a nice hotel. Travel agents in overseas countries are advising against holidays in Thailand because of this reasons. so the hotel manager informed my wife. maybe the manager may just know.

Always had the bill given to me not my wife, same if I am with a group of Thai people, Thais always know the Farang pays not the wife or other Thais, that is what Farangs are for.

I have had a simular problem with the wife. , The wife and i go out to eat together, We both order together. but a few times the waiter has brought my meal before the wife's, I sit there waiting for the wife's meal to be brought but it does not arrive i just sit and sit, waiters come up to the wife and ask is there a problem with the meal, I say yes its cold now because its bad manners to start to eat before your wife, that usually gets a few stupid looks from the Thai waiters and i make them take the meal back because its cold. Is it me .

You must be very new to Thailand, Thai people don't eat one dish each they eat all the dishes that is why the waiter will not give you the two meals together, the waiter is correct and you are wrong, if you were in a western country most people eat Thai food like they eat western food, they eat it wrong but up to them, I had a Thai restaurant in Australia and people always eat one dish each I could not educate them that they missed out on the great part of Thai and Asian food.

I pity all you lot that think playing around on a balcony and having a few drinks is stupid, you must be all dear little mommy boys never did anything stupid in your life when you were young, what a bunch of <deleted> you lot are, if I told you what I did with my mates at that age you lot would be so shocked you would not be able to speak for a month, we all turned out OK,

Have a look at the pic the balcony rail is wood and not so thick, height looks OK.

The observant drunk 24 year old Australian would therefore deduce, '' Hey i can sit on this, shout and yell,run up against it, no problem and if there is well someone else can pay for it, like mum or dad they are used to my stupidity'' At that age i was learning to ski in the Alps, having a drink in the evening with my fellow skiers without getting totally pissed out of my mind, or white water canoeing in groups in Wales camping in the countryside with a few beers...a few. A lot of Australians,Brits,Americans feel that unless they aren't suffering from a hangover every morning they haven't had a good time, some grow out of it, many don't.

I don't drink, don't have to drink to mess around and have fun with your mates, at least we are not boring up your nose better than you types.

I pity all you lot that think playing around on a balcony and having a few drinks is stupid, you must be all dear little mommy boys never did anything stupid in your life when you were young, what a bunch of &lt;deleted&gt; you lot are, if I told you what I did with my mates at that age you lot would be so shocked you would not be able to speak for a month, we all turned out OK,

Have a look at the pic the balcony rail is wood and not so thick, height looks OK.

Report was much like it is for the people and places that were on the show, maybe the people that don't agree just don't like the truth, many Australian living different lives and in different places in Thailand to the one on the TV show.

Thailand is not cheap now.....

Honestly if you are living a good life , it burns the money for sure...

If you think Thailand is not cheap your life style and living expenses must be out of control, you should get some financial help.

(croaky old man voice) Way back in '95, when I was just a young whipper-snapper looking at possibly retiring from the military with a special "buy-out" package, I thought long and hard about where I would like to retire to.

Knowing that my pension would be small, and not wanting to live somewhere where icicles would be hanging from my chin for 8 months of the year, I did 2 things. I made up a list of potential countries I might like to live in (and a check list of things I thought were important at the time) and the other thing I did was visit various Embassy's and Consulates to get first hand information.

My list of potential countries included: Peru, Belize, Costa Rica, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay. I didn't bother with Myanmar, India, any African or M.E. countries, and skipped a few that I wasn't able to (at the time) find any information about (the internet was still pretty sparse back then).

My checklist included things like - Healthcare (good hospitals, quality staff), Climate (year round temperatures, rainfall, extremes), Education systems (as an indicator of the country's progress), Infrastructure (roads/rail, power, airports, phones, etc), Politics (democracy ? dictatorship ?), Cost of living (rent, realty, food, exchange rates).

In the end I think I had about 15 items on the checklist. Using what I could from the internet and visits to the Embassy's/Consulates, I tried to grade the various countries (on a scale of 1-10 I think it was) and then totalled up the scores.

The Philippines looked OK, but at the time there were security issues, weather issues and they wanted something like an investment of 50k+ (USD) for a retirement visa (the investment could be in the form of purchasing a condo though).

Vietnam looked OK as well, except for the communist government and how their relations with China were (and still are).

Some countries were very cheap to live in, but they also had (very) corrupt police/politicians, poor infrastructure and potential difficulties getting in/out and around the country. Some were just down-right nasty - corruption, lack of infrastructure, poor education/healthcare/etc.

In the end, I picked Thailand. It had good weather, good food, good prices, decent infrastructure. From what I could gather, the education and Healthcare seemed OK. (I ended up not retiring as early as expected, made a couple trips between '97-2000 and while working in the 'stan I decided I was going to live there permanently. I'm glad I made the choice then, and I'm still glad now.)

I do find it absolutely amusing to see so many people that have also decided to live in Thailand, but have nothing but bad things to say about it. If everything is so horrible, why are they still here ? There are obviously many other, much nicer, places in the world they could be living in, yet they don't move there. Curiouser and Curiouser.

I'm also astounded that the thought of having to report your residence ONCE every 90 days is such a hard ship ! The horror, the HORROR ! Four times a year (FOUR !) they have to get off their <snip> and prove that they are still living (wherever) and aren't (dead/gone home for good/living in a dumpster by the beach).

Such incredible hardship to endure just to stay here year after year ! I can't imagine how they manage !

How dare Thailand (or any other country) actually try to keep track of all the foreigners within it's borders ! Who do they think they are ?!?!?

How dare they try to prevent foreigners from buying up the choicest land (at local prices) and then reselling it to other foreigners at prices 3-4+ times higher ! (Yes, I've talked to foreign realtors who do exactly that through their "nominee" companies. One Belgian I spoke to a couple years ago told me how he'd buy properties at local prices, quadruple the price and then re-sell them to other Belgians who thought they were getting a bargain - compared to prices in Belgium at the time I guess. )

How dare they try to prevent hordes of penniless bums from other countries from flooding in and filling up the streets and beaches with filthy beggars and thieves ! Can you imagine how great Thailand would be if they just let any and everyone into the country, and didn't care what they did or where they did it ? I'm sure that there wouldn't be crowds of broke, unwashed foreign beggars puking, crapping, panhandling, swindling and thieving all over the country (and you thought the lady-boys on Beach Road were bad).

One does not have to read many of the threads in the Visa forum to realize, quite quickly, that a very large number of the foreigners in Thailand are not that wealthy, and therefore are not contributing that much to the local economy, despite their protestations to the latter.

One estimate (from 2013) put the total number of expats living in Thailand at 3-400,000. That includes the Nigerians, Algerians, Indians, Chinese, Students, Dependants, Over-stayers, Diplomats and sundry others. That equals roughly about .6% of the total population of Thailand.

If we use the high side figure of 400,000 foreign "residents" and assume they each were single and were spending the entire 800,000 baht every year that the government seems to think single people need to, that would represent, at most, 2.8% of the Gross Domestic Product for 2012. Tell me again how your 2 Changs a week is all that is keeping the Thai economy floating ?

I would suspect that if you could get economic data regarding just the expats living in Thailand, it would probably mirror the stats in most developed countries. In other words, you would have a small percentage that have a lots of cash (lets call them the "rich"). You would have a larger group that aren't rich, but are comfortable (call them the middle class). Finally, you would have the largest group at the bottom (also known as the poor huddled masses). (In other words, a very large percentage of those 3-400,000 foreigners probably don't have a lot of money.)

Chances are that the "foreign residents" in Thailand are not spending anywhere near an average of 800,000 baht per year per person. I think there are a whole lot of people that are maybe spending a quarter of the that sum (like 15-20,000 a month perhaps).

Think of all those threads over the years, full of stories about people who've overstayed their visas (and have no money, etc, etc). The threads from the people who can't meet the financial requirements for a visa and are trying to find loopholes or scam ways around those requirements. The threads about all the "balloon chasers", foreign beggars, foreign homeless and so on and so on.

Now think about how most of those are just about Euro and English speaking foreigners and imagine how many foreigners from other "demographics" are probably as bad, or even worse.

Long story short - the foreign residents in Thailand are nowhere near the economic force some like to think they are. Thailand makes considerably more money from tourists than (foreign) residents. Even if all 400,000(ish) foreign residents were spending 800,000 baht/year (highly unlikely), tourism revenues are approx 7 1/2 times that amount. In reality, it is probably more in the region of 15-20 times (or more) that amount as again, all those foreign residents are not likely spending anywhere near 800k/year/person.

Finally, there is one matter I'm not sure on, but will try to find out. It seems so many foreigners are being held here against their will that it should be a major international crisis ! How is it possible that Thailand is able to force all these obviously disgruntled foreigners to remain ? On one hand they are seemingly clamping down on foreigners, making it more difficult for them to stay, yet on the other hand the teeming masses of unhappy expats seem unable to leave !

Actually, I think the answer is pretty obvious as I'm sure the few that have actually read this far down are aware. (Really ? You're still reading this ? GET A LIFE !)

(Bah - I now know way more about the Thai economy, Gross Domestic Product and Thai Demographics that I ever expected to. Damn internet. Now I have to try and remember what I've probably forgotten due to learning too much new UFI. Be much easier if I knew where my pants were. Or what pants are. Or where the "white" goes when snow melts. And what is up with the number 42 ? )

Great post and spot on, but don't tell the knockers that.

As to whether Thailand is suitable for you or not depends on your personal circumstances and desires. Some of the pet peeves as well as upsides (in no particular order) of some residents / retirees here:

Downsides

Lazy and corrupt police - a nuisance when you have not done anything wrong but a blessing when caught speeding or breaking other traffic laws.

Can't own land - I'm retired, what the hell do I want to own such an asset for? I would prefer to just rent, whether it be a condo or a house

Double pricing - not an issue for me as I have Thal DL so I pay Thai price

No rights - what rights? As a retiree, who gives a sh*t about rights. Stay under the radar, don't do something that you shouldn't and you should be fine

90 day reporting - I would have thought that it might be good for retired people to get out and about every 90 days or so. After all, you're retired, you have all the time in the world

Lousy food - not to me. Food's not as good as say in Malaysia but I can quite easily live with Thai food. You just need to be adventurous and try other local stuff and restaurants

Respect - treat others with respect and they will reciprocate accordingly. In my apartment, the guards sawasdee me and other residents every time we go in and out. Reception staff are always smiling

Walking ATM - if you're a walking ATM here, you will be a walking ATM anywhere in the world (and it would be a helluva lot more expensive in other Asian countries like Hong Kong and Singapore)

800,000 bht or 65k per month - everyone needs money to survive so what's the big deal?

Not foreigner friendly - (most of) France, especially Paris, parts of Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Russia is less foreigner friendly

Not as cheap as 10 or 20 years ago - but still cheaper than most other countries

Corrupt to the core - so? Does not affect me as a retiree. Bribe money only ever paid to cops but still cheaper than the official fine

Upsides

Cheap booze and girls - who in their right minds will complain about this? If you don't like it, then don't indulge

Cheap massages - where I live in downtown Asoke, foot massage for 100b per hours, oil massage for 250b per hour, extras for 500 up. Not even in Malaysia is it this cheap

7-11 - every 50-100 metres, extremely convenient. No where else in the world (not even Hkg) can compare with this convenienceSubservient wives / gf - if I told my ex English wife to get me a beer, she would just say get it yourself

There are of course better places to live but in terms of value for money, I still think that Thailand comes up top - for now.

I agree,

Being a old bloke I think Thailand would be a dud place to retire if you had a Farang wife the same age as yourself, I think anywhere would be dud to retire if I had a Farang wife the same age as me, and I don't think that is just me.

Would all the knockers tell me a better country than Thailand to retire for old blokes, because that is what most retirees in Thailand are, that is cheaper, more friendly, better weather, a better country for ugly old blokes like me to get very accommodating beautiful young women, a country with more easy and cheaper immigration rules for retirement, cheaper accommodation, and for the blokes that drink alcohol that is more easy to get and cheaper to buy and you can drink it anywhere, even on the days you are not allowed to.

A country that is better that Thailand with all the above not just one or two things, I would really like to know because I can not find one, if there is one I going there.

Wow! One of those 'quality expats' they're always banging on about

Just a little about me, don't drink Alcohol or Smoke, don't go to bars, very happily married to a very beautiful 51 year old hard working Thai lady for 4 years, live a very quite life, my wife and I keep to ourselves, play a little golf and travel a bit around Thailand, The facts are that most retirees are men and are in Thailand because it is cheap and the ladies are easy to be with even if they are old and ugly like me the men I mean, and most like to drink and go to bars, I may not be perfect like you. I just get very pissed off about all negative things on TV about Thailand written by people that are here for the ladies and the cheap living and easy way of life.