glomp

Never got sick from the street food. The buffet where you cook stuff at your table gets me every time.

Nasty 10bath market food where the "meat" was boiled crushed bones never got to me. Tasty too.

Yeah my pet rant is people not pissing their money away. From talking to other people travelling to Thailand the thoughts go, open a bar to open a hotel and then to open a farm because that is "real work".

I guess my "dark soul" saved me from opening the bar in pattaya , the cafe in bangkok, the hotel complex in samui or the farm in issan.

Boy is my face red.

Edit: I know you all had it tough. You used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. You had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when you got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

You have seen it all, we know.

IA belive me I think what you and jim are doing is way cool. You are obviously people who aren't scared of hard work and have the required spirit to make it work. Not all people have this and still, unless you know you can hack it I would take a breather before sinking the money in to it.

Having the money is not even 50% of the required input. I could carry coal on my back for sustenance but this is not the same "hard work" you are talking about now is it. When I come home from moving A to B I don't have to care. When you come home you have A to Z to think about. It's like those threads about economic assistance to the thai relatives, unless they have the backbone and initiative to run a business that money will just turn to nothing.

Of course you work hard on your farm, if you didn't it wouldn't have been farming?

Edit: I feel I am repeating myself in a lot of threads and we all are, but what can we do. Even if we made stickies people will still rehash the same threads.

No matter what the internet tough guys say about how they would kill the guy with the power of their mind and kung <deleted> , your friend did the smart move.

People who doesn't know that the thai is a crazy person might see it as a crazy farang assaulting a thai. think about that.

Even if the elusive "western magic management" farms got setup and you got on with starting to regain your investment in a few years the mechanised agriculture corps will get in to thailand hardcore. if they arent't already.

that 200 rai economy of scale head start will be turned in to nothing.

Well Glomp,

I am definitely no magician and all my years of management dont amount to much more than the ability to plan things out as best I can. I often wonder what the hell I was thinking when I started all this, why get involved at all? One thing I do know, and agree with FEF completely on, if you are prepared to put in the hard yards day after day, you have an advantage over the normal easy going Thai subsistence farmer. Those helping will work at your pace and things get done not just talked about.

The mechanisation issue is a no brainer, it's simple progress from draught animals to rice tractors to GPS guided John Deeres. No different here or anywhere else and in the context of this thread scale is a must if you want to compete and produce incomes in the millions.

But IMHO that isnt what most of us are involved in. I personally am at a very small scale and have no ambitions towards getting much bigger, just better. The "full rice bowl is enough" attitude of rural Thais satisfies me these days, a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt from Big C to work in and a few beers at the end of the day are my needs. I find plenty of challenges in daily life to give me the mental stimulation to keep going.

Am I dreaming? Am I kidding myself? Can I make it work or will it all end up being yet another well intentioned folly for the locals to scoff at? Perhaps, but it will not be for the lack of trying. Like many others I spent a long time planning and started this knowing that it was a race to get things done before that corner was reached when the money runs out. That corner is approaching, fast. I freely admit the thought scares me but it wont stop me. For me, its about living where and how I choose, doing what I want and not just what I need to do.

So I suppose its a matter of knowing what you want and making it happen. Not just sitting around then asking, "What Happened?" For those with sufficient resources to absorb all the pitfalls Thailand poses all I can say is lucky you. For the battlers like me, good luck to you. To everyone, as we say in Australia, "Have a go you mug!"

Isaan Aussie

If you need to get 3-4 million baths each year you have invested a fair chunk of change and are not easily mobile. If monsanto starts controlling who can sell rice/veggies/fruit in quantities over the local consumption you will have problems if you are not in the old boys network.

There are market forces all over the world working to corner the food markets, in Iraq and Afghanistan american companies are killing of local farming. In the west there is work on making growing your own food illegal with "quality laws" implemented in small increments.

Farmers in this forum complain about low returns, to get 3mill you would have to produce something incredibly high yield to limit the input capital to something manageable. If it's a 3-4% return we are looking at it would make much more sense to put the capital in the bank and buy a small farm for the farming lifestyle and do it for some extra beer money.

But each to his own. I'm just asking people to realize they are putting their nest eggs in to the good will of their wives and the local government. They can tell you to bugger of and you will have to sell your organs for food.

Edit: IA we are talking about different issues a bit, you are talking about the quality of life style farm. The op and me are talking about starting a large farming corp from the start. This will probably not be taking it easy in your golden years. Not owning your land and living like a second class citizen would give me an ulcer.

unless you are the trusting kind, make sure the deceased didn't have village death insurance before you agree to pay for the funeral....

there is no clear cut sum, if you pay to much it will be spent on gambling with the travelling cardgame scam gangs?

tell her worse lies and maintain the MAD balance.

of course your "mutually assured destruction" is nothing against the truly corrupted mind that can not lose face at any cost.......

talk to a <deleted> lawyer dude

Even if the elusive "western magic management" farms got setup and you got on with starting to regain your investment in a few years the mechanised agriculture corps will get in to thailand hardcore. if they arent't already.

that 200 rai economy of scale head start will be turned in to nothing.

I doubt any "hi-so" tourists left because of the tuk tuk drivers and police, they woild never travel with tuk tuk and their fixer guides would never allow them to be caught by the bib.

the scams though, even rich idiots fall for them.

sell the debt he has to you.....

Depending on if you have a good credit card i would just use the ATMs. Check with your bank on foreign withdrawal fees.

Cash changing is robbery

I'm curious, what are the rules about ultralights and personal aircraft in Thailand?

HA, i would like to see stickman commenting on these exciting stories that doesn't include renting ladies or ladies defrauding their farang.

Three days hotel wifi cost more than a simcard with 30 days prepaid last time i was around.

the speed for wifi was worse than the mobile network too.

Desktops are dirt cheap and somewhat servicable. if a netbook dies its dead.

In the sticks internet usually comes from 2G EDGE. slow and high latency.

And some dudes just like to sit around drinking beer. If it takes a "yes dear" to make them go away why not just do it

But it looks like they are pussywipped then, not out doing all the other things married real men does that doesnt require permission. What is that? hookers and blow?

Im sure the random dudes throwing him up on the back of the "ambulance" pickup fixateded his neck ok. If the pickup has that carrying a lady paint on and some red and blue stickers it's an ambulance right?

the ex even got to the poster above me, he deleted his post. better run to laos.

This is stuff you don't think about while enjoying a nice isan meal on the floor.

The thais come in from all over and just sit down. Some frown at the farang that DARES to eat with his hands the same way they do.

I try to wash my hands before but as they never see this i guess they imagine i juggle my own turds or something before eating.

Looks like i have been told stories too

It might have been a misunderstanding the income from renting vs growing rice though.

It kind of makes sense, pay 500 for the land and grow 5000 bath worth of rice.

How much could you leverage that 500k by instead renting the tractor work?

Having that tractor collecting rust will be expensive unless you have a lot of land. Tractors with drivers seems to be renting cheapish?

Edit: do some searching in the forum. there are threads here and in other forums where owning tractors are discussed. it's hard to make ends meet even with an iron horse sometimes it seems.

Offer him half, hold out the cash to him and say "we pay half and you never bother us again".

Seeing the cash up for grabs might just make him forget the other half as he might just be fishing anyway.

You should have made up the payment plan together with the police. so that they get their cut in each payment.