GinBoy2

The weird part of my 'adventure' was that my wife never wanted us to move to Thailand. We met when we were working at the same company in Singapore and I thought, against my wifes better judgement retirement in Thailand would be a good thing. I remember a few months before we moved from Singapore she said "you'll be bored of this within 10 years". She got it wrong by 11 months The kicker for us was when our son, who was born in Singapore, moved with us to Thailand and then went to college in the US told us he was never going back to Thailand. That was the final nail in the coffin. Momma Bear was gonna follow whatever and I at that point was all in

Unhappiness can be like a slow developing cancer, it creeps up on you. I'll use my own case as an example. I was very happy in Thailand for years, but as boredom set in, I began to find mundane things irritating me. At the end of my full time life in Thailand I was just sorta angry about stuff. It was a few months after we moved back to the US my wife said aut of the blue, "you just seem more content now" And the truth was that I was. I hadn't realized when I was in Thailand how wound up I had become by the end, which I guess translates into unhappiness. We go back to Thailand now to our house on vacation (upended by covid right now) and feel the calmness I felt at the start of my Thai adventure

Happy/Unhappy is very subjective. It can range from totally the bought in to the abject misery of the 'burnt by a woman' brigade. In response to one of the posts, I'm not sure I buy in to the theory that those that break all ties with home are the happiest. Anecdotally I've found those most unhappy are those that did go 'all in' are by far the most unhappy when things go south. A lot of us do just tire of the place, and many like me find boredom sets in. That in itself can be a slippery slope, where the more bored you get, stuff just starts to irritate you. But I always knew I had an out, since I always kept a place back home as the ultimate bolt hole. Of course the saddest of the sad are those who do regret it, but have burnt all their bridges and get into the 'stuck' category. They go into this weird uber phase of 'I couldn't be happier' mode, I guess trying to justify to themselves why they are in Thailand! Of course the flip side to this are that many do seem deliriously happy which is great. I'm somewhere in the middle. I was was bored stupid and don't regret moving home, but with the upside that now when we go back to our house in Thailand on vacation (upended of course by covidright now) I love all the stuff I loved about Thailand 10-15 years ago

Impossible to say. Against popular wisdom many people actually stay on good terms with their ex. Both me and my wife are on good terms with our ex's, maybe because of kids, but hardly a week goes by that we don't talk. Neither of us feel threatened by the fact that we both have good or best friends who we happened to have been married to previously. Several years ago I co-signed a car loan for my ex, just because my credit rating was a helluva lot better than hers. I never blinked an eye. But my situation may be totally different to the OP and his wife. It's complicated world

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Well don't worry about inbound customs to your home country, they unlike their Thai compariots tend to be honest, and if you state they are used personal property you'll be fine. You only state the weight of the outbound stuff. The issue you usually come up with is linear dimensions rather than weight for postal shipments. I forget now what the maximum package size you can send through ThaiPost, so check that out. But assuming you're not shipping something like hockey sticks you'll be able to get everything into multiple boxes, and once again forget any issue of Thai style import taxes on the other end you'll be fine. The other option is container shipment. The usual minimum they do is 4 cubic meters, which is a lot. But again I'm don't know what the linear size of the stuff you are trying to ship. So it's another option to think about. The minimum container thing is what we did when we relocated our main home back to the US and it was flawless. ....and not an import tax in sight lol

My wife had double Pfizer shots (we're in the US) and still caught covid pneumonia. She was pretty rough for a few days. But as the Doc said, "you're vaccinated so you just have to tough it out like a bad case of real flu and you'll be fine". He was right, but pretty sure after seeing how sick she was, straight up covid without being vaccinated is an express train to a ventilator!

I don't want to derail this thread. But I'm a bit of an American Anglofile, I love your country. Yes the weather really sucks big time, but the countryside and the culture is great. Granted a little crowded and super expensive, but I still love it. You can blame the BBC World Service for a teenage hispanic nerd holed up in his bedroom in the California Central Valley listening on shortwave! As I recall it was the booming 6175kHz every night

Well if I hadn't already returned to the US., and I'm Hispanic so language is a biggie; Mexico Columbia Argentina I could get a mexican passport tomorrow if I wanted so I suppose that would be the easiest, and No not all of Mexico is a gang infested Hell Hole. My family is originally from Guadalajara and if my wife could speak Spanish I'd live there in a heartbeat

Well Trump or no Trump, I've long since given up trying to understand the criteria to get a wife/girlfriend/boyfriend or whatever a tourist visa for the US. It always seems so arbitrary. Some folks with what seem rather 'thin' requirements sail though, yet others what you would think have a rock solid application get denied. My wife as a case in point back in 2010. Professional woman, good job, money in bank, letter from employer granting vacation. Yep, denied. All we wanted was a two week vacation to visit my daughter who had just had a baby. Eight years later applied for an immigrant visa, nothing had changed and it sailed through! So roll the dice and keep your fingers crossed

Well the vast majority come from the North and NE, and they simply go home and hang out on the family farm. Rural Thai families are pretty multi generational homes with the younger ones coming and going dependant on work. So the work dries up in the bar in Pattaya or whatever they go home and do some day labor in the rice or sugar farm. Thats pretty much how it works

Well TG has form here. Even in the best of times they could never offload surplus aircraft since they always overpriced them in the resale market. So here we are with the market overflowing with surplus widebodies (remember TG is a 100% widebody fleet) and not a doubt in my mind pie in the sky aspirations about what these aircraft are worth in today's market. Expect to see them all rotting away with the A340-500's for the next decade

I just re-read this, and it seems they aren't legally married. In this case a K1 is the quickest, or go to the Amphur get married and do CR-1. You are picking your poison here. Do you want your lady to be an immigrant faster? If that's the case suck it up and do the CR-1 and get legally married If you just want her in the US as fast as possible do the K-1 then deal with all the BS, marriage <deleted> after the fact. Just don't let her enter as a tourist then try to fix it. That will get you in a whole world of immigration hurt

Changing status while in the US on a tourist visa is dodgy and will be problematic since it'll be seen as trying to bypass normal immigrant visa application. You do not want to engage in immigration court proceedings! If the OP is legally married in Thailand >2 years an IR-1 is the way to go

Well that's the problem, nobody knows the real number, and it would indeed be a brave journalist who tried to uncover the real number. Express train to re-education camp! Even in normal times they report something like 1% unemployment, which doesn't take a rocket scientist to know is laughable. Take a look in any village in Isaan and I'd wager 30% are unemployed, or underemployed at best. So here we are and probably the majority of the fallout from this worked in the gray sector, never on the books. So how you count those hundreds of thousands I just don't know

Well that's the problem. So much of Thailand's economy is is the grey sector, trying to figure out the true employment devastation is hard to fathom. For every airline counter agent that has lost their job, there is probably 200 massage/bargirl/food stall worker that is currently back up north on the farm

And then there is the slight problem of actually getting into Thailand. I work for an airline (Delta) and they don't run like buses, you can't throw in an extra flight like you would a bus. Equipment and crews are planned 12-16 weeks in advance based on projected loads. So look at flight schedules and that's basically the total capacity until the end of the year, which might be the most realistic maximum number of incoming tourists. Damn that seems so simple to figure out! Unless of course we're banking on the overland Chinese market, who are banned from travel until the end of 2022, the Indians, or the overland trekkers from Europe, and the swimmers from the Americas!

That was one of the best posts of the year, certainly made me laugh. But on the serious side, yeah those places may be the stereotypical podunk back of beyond, but if push comes to shove, you can live there at low cost, if that's the answer to the OP 'can you afford to repatriate'

So before anyone blasts me as some Thai hater. I love the country for all it's absurdities, corruption et al. But we haven't been back in 2 years because of covid, and my Thai wife, who never wanted us to move from Singapore to Thailand in the first place is becoming less and less interested in our original plan of snowbirding to our Thai house. So I'm left contemplating what do we do? We have a great house there, but what's the point of hanging on to an asset which lets face it, is worth a fraction of the cost it took to build it, ot just cut and run, hotels are cheap when we do finally go back for a vacation

Hmm, that's really good question and I did, as I'm sure you did, a google search and nothing on the Government told you anything. This might be one to fund the google voice account and call the 'help' line

With the amount of stuff you describe you are between a rock and a hard place. Thats way too little for any shipping company, usually they sell space on half a container minimum. So then you are back to the usual suspects, split it down and sent it by mail, Fedex, DHL etc

Well I agree with @VocalNealtake it out for a ride, get some dirt on the wheels. Don't ship it in the original box, go but a bike case. Then 'if' you got stopped you'd be on slightly firmer grounds arguing that it wasn't new. Also, since I work for an airline, the bike case is a helluva lot better protection for that pricy bike than having it chucked about by the rampers in a cardboard box

Can't think of any other reason to get an ITIN other than for 1040 filing Many of us have or do do it. Saved a bunch on my taxes having the married allowance before we moved to the US and my wife got an SSN

Not quite sure I understand your point. Immigrants, and my wife is one in the US enjoy all the benefits of a citizen pretty much, up to the point that they can't vote. A 'long stay tourist' in Thailand on a yearly extension of a non immigrant visa has exactly the same rights, as well a tourist which is basically nothing. I'm unclear who you were directing the 'superiority' comment too. Farangs in Thailand or the Thais themselves?

Well we've been around and around on this one, how old is this thread again??? The only bulletproof way to maintain a US number and importantly to receive text messages from financial institutions is to get the cheapest US carrier plan that supports WiFi calling, with a phone that also supports it. They are all getting really savvy about detecting VPN server farms and the rest, so the VOIP solution if they do work, it's only a matter of time until they catch up and block them