Pattaya: Busy first day back in the bars - but owner sees only 50/50 future

[robblok]

1 hour ago, Woolsgibb60 said:

So u think u be a millionaire keep dreaming all farang come to thailand think they open a business and become millionaires if your earnings surper money u get there soon but dont hold your breath 

I think you should read better, business is already doing well for years. No need to hold my breath. It took a few years to build and I need to work hard but I make more money as back home. 

 

I don't need to be a millionaire, just to make enough money to live comfortably and retire. Its well on plan. 

 

Seems to be a lot of disbelief that people can make money in Thailand. Not everyone who works here or has a business here fails. 

[VBF]

7 hours ago, Monomial said:

 

I also arrived at the age of 29 and built a successful life here in Thailand. Right up until 3 months ago when with 1 political weapon of mass destruction called lockdown the Thai government wiped out my job, turned off the international mail thus killing my wife's business, and left us essentially destitute with nothing but a huge mortgage to pay and no income.

 

Savings are almost gone and no hope at the moment for survival. I don't see freeflow at the borders returning any time in the next 18 months (needed for both my job and for the return of international mail). Now I am unsure how I am even going to stay in country, being unable to meet the 400k bank deposit requirement, and I have absolutely no connections back home given that I have been in Thailand for the past 2 decades...a country I am no longer going to be allowed to live in.

 

So it's all great as an expat right up until the date that it isn't. A year ago I would have agreed with Rob. Today, I have to say that everyone needs to take a hard look at what would happen if their business and their money are wiped out overnight with no warning. It's tough to be forcibly returned to the West after making the best years of your life in Thailand.

 

Excellent post - best one on the thread, amongst all the sniping and bitching!

I really feel for you @Monomial and do hope you and the missus can sort things out - hopefully if you do go back to the West, she'll be able to accompany you.

Good Luck!

 

[Ron jeremy]

7 hours ago, robblok said:

It was not a smart ass remark. just shows the current demographic in those bars. Anyone thinking that a few pensioners are enough to keep bars afloat is crazy. They need tourist they will spend more then those retirees nursing their beers.

 

 

 

No one knows if they are happy to be there, did you ask them, perhaps sold up back home and are existing like so many there, who knows.

fact is, in a few more years , their day will come and unless a new group of retires come, there will be fewer. 

[robblok]

7 hours ago, Monomial said:

 

I also arrived at the age of 29 and built a successful life here in Thailand. Right up until 3 months ago when with 1 political weapon of mass destruction called lockdown the Thai government wiped out my job, turned off the international mail thus killing my wife's business, and left us essentially destitute with nothing but a huge mortgage to pay and no income.

 

Savings are almost gone and no hope at the moment for survival. I don't see freeflow at the borders returning any time in the next 18 months (needed for both my job and for the return of international mail). Now I am unsure how I am even going to stay in country, being unable to meet the 400k bank deposit requirement, and I have absolutely no connections back home given that I have been in Thailand for the past 2 decades...a country I am no longer going to be allowed to live in.

 

So it's all great as an expat right up until the date that it isn't. A year ago I would have agreed with Rob. Today, I have to say that everyone needs to take a hard look at what would happen if their business and their money are wiped out overnight with no warning. It's tough to be forcibly returned to the West after making the best years of your life in Thailand.

 

That is life, sometimes it sucks. I feel for you and that is how business go at times. I have seen it happen before. Same goes for jobs nothing is ever sure. But the same goes for back in my home country some of my clients are hit by the virus others have not.

 

Luckily my business is a bit more flexible, but even that is not sure. Nothing ever is. That is the risk you take. But same could be said for back home. 

 

I don't think this is an exclusive Thai thing, if you look how some people are hit because of covid and others have not its a bit of luck too that you need in life.

 

I hope you get your business back. I thought that the mail was open again. I get my parcels again and i can also mail to the outside country. 

[tribalfusion001]

They are the type of bars I avoid in Thailand, same as the UK, full of white blokes with beer bellies. Much better in a local Thai bar imho. Although I am partial to a nice go go bar or a sleazy one sometimes lol.

[Mac98]

8 hours ago, Meat Pie 47 said:

I can't see any masks

You don't have to wear a mask when eating your words.

[Monomial]

1 hour ago, robblok said:

I thought that the mail was open again. I get my parcels again and i can also mail to the outside country. 

 

Only to Europe. Most of the world, including the Americas, Australia and New Zealand are still shut down. Australia and New Zealand might return soon. The biggest market is the USA though, and there is no hope for mail to return there anytime soon...

 

 

[Woolsgibb60]

4 hours ago, robblok said:

I think you should read better, business is already doing well for years. No need to hold my breath. It took a few years to build and I need to work hard but I make more money as back home. 

 

I don't need to be a millionaire, just to make enough money to live comfortably and retire. Its well on plan. 

 

Seems to be a lot of disbelief that people can make money in Thailand. Not everyone who works here or has a business here fails. 

This the business in your name no maybe 49% 

[jacko45k]

20 hours ago, robblok said:

Wow it almost looks like a retirement home in that bar ????

You  need to go visit a retirement home in perhaps the UK and get a reality check. It is avoiding them that makes Expats retire here. If you are commenting more on the age of the patrons  you have to recall most expats are retired people, and older. If there are young foreigners here, one has to wonder what they are doing here, trapped tourists who did not get out, English language teachers with nothing else to do, bar managers with no bar to manage.

[robblok]

5 hours ago, Woolsgibb60 said:

This the business in your name no maybe 49% 

Again wrong its becomes a bit boring. Yes in my name. If your business allows it you can take precautions. I think your you too much thinking of traditional brick and mortar stuff

 

Im not going to bore you with details as you seem to be convinced to be negative.

 

Also this only works if its not a traditional business like a shop or a hotel ect.

[robblok]

24 minutes ago, jacko45k said:

You  need to go visit a retirement home in perhaps the UK and get a reality check. It is avoiding them that makes Expats retire here. If you are commenting more on the age of the patrons  you have to recall most expats are retired people, and older. If there are young foreigners here, one has to wonder what they are doing here, trapped tourists who did not get out, English language teachers with nothing else to do, bar managers with no bar to manage.

i was joking about the age. Actually i know of quote a few young expats in Pattaya who are not expats. Mainly in IT services. But yea you wont find those during the day in a bar.

[Redvic]

22 hours ago, mikebell said:

The Corner bar was shut down five years ago & demolished.  No wonder she's got no customers.

Strange i was drinking there december 2019/jan 2020 good bar to meet up with friends

[mstevens]

19 hours ago, Keyser Soze666 said:

Mmmm, but is it really more fun?  Look, I also came here around the same age as yourself and am still here 20 years later. Not saying I agree with the original comment but I can see his point. Successful or not you have spent your peak years as a bloke (as I have) in South East Asia instead of achieving things in the much more civilised west, living among real friends and family. a proper climate, proper food, pubs, proper transport, infrastructure and sport etc and a LOT less hassle. I don't have any real regrets but do sometimes wonder should I have left all this to later in life. Maybe you have these thoughts too but can't bring yourself to admit it?

 

I had these same thoughts. Went to Thailand in late '20s, left in mid '40s....and had a few similar thoughts you what you raise. One shouldn't fall in to the trap of conforming with the common expectations in the West. Pursue your own life the way you want to live it, while always being responsible for yourself and true to yourself. Do that and odds are if you find a place you like you'll be happy there. Some prefer Thailand. Some prefer US / UK / Australia etc. There is no right answer.

[mikebell]

1 hour ago, Redvic said:

Strange i was drinking there december 2019/jan 2020 good bar to meet up with friends

Apologies.  It moved across the road from the original site to another bar & re-named itself.

[mikebell]

12 hours ago, billybog said:

I was thinking the exact same thing....only a concrete slab and rubble there.

They've moved across the soi to another bar & re-named it.

[mikebell]

14 hours ago, Deli said:

No, you must be mistaken. Was there last summer and will be there in 2 weeks again.

Blimey - this is the 3rd time I've had to correct myself: the ORIGINAL Corner bar suffered the fate I described.  The new one is sited directly opposite the derelict site.

[mstevens]

19 hours ago, Monomial said:

I also arrived at the age of 29 and built a successful life here in Thailand. Right up until 3 months ago when with 1 political weapon of mass destruction called lockdown the Thai government wiped out my job, turned off the international mail thus killing my wife's business, and left us essentially destitute with nothing but a huge mortgage to pay and no income.

 

Savings are almost gone and no hope at the moment for survival.

 

Certainly not criticising you when I say this but from the way you described things it doesn't sound like you built a successful life here. Rather you were - like so many people - dependent on a regular income and had little saved for a rainy day. For sure, what has happened has torpedoed many. A successful life is being secure no matter what happens around us....and in much of the West, you have a backstop if things do go bad. As a farang in Thailand, you don't have that backstop.

[Kerryd]

1 hour ago, mikebell said:

Blimey - this is the 3rd time I've had to correct myself: the ORIGINAL Corner bar suffered the fate I described.  The new one is sited directly opposite the derelict site.

Lol - I noticed that as well. Everyone read your post, and then skipped the one I made directly after it so they could jump in and correct you.

Happens a lot in this forum. I always use the "multi-quote" if I read a post in the middle of a thread, then go through the rest of the posts to see if something has been answered/clarified, then reply to the post (if need be).

Quite often the answer/clarification is just a post or two down, and sometimes you find 2 or 3 other posts you want to respond to by the time you get to the end of the thread.

But at least you now know that the Corner Bar apparently has a lot of fans ! (Personally I've never visited Soi 6. Heard there was a "public library" there once - never got around to checking it out though.)

[Andy from Kent]

20 hours ago, Monomial said:

 

I also arrived at the age of 29 and built a successful life here in Thailand. Right up until 3 months ago when with 1 political weapon of mass destruction called lockdown the Thai government wiped out my job, turned off the international mail thus killing my wife's business, and left us essentially destitute with nothing but a huge mortgage to pay and no income.

 

Savings are almost gone and no hope at the moment for survival. I don't see freeflow at the borders returning any time in the next 18 months (needed for both my job and for the return of international mail). Now I am unsure how I am even going to stay in country, being unable to meet the 400k bank deposit requirement, and I have absolutely no connections back home given that I have been in Thailand for the past 2 decades...a country I am no longer going to be allowed to live in.

 

So it's all great as an expat right up until the date that it isn't. A year ago I would have agreed with Rob. Today, I have to say that everyone needs to take a hard look at what would happen if their business and their money are wiped out overnight with no warning. It's tough to be forcibly returned to the West after making the best years of your life in Thailand.

 

Sorry to hear about your plight, Mate.     It sounds like you were living very close to the  edge most of that time and  a  bump in the road knocked you  completely over.

From your tale, hopefully others will learn well the lesson of having a sufficient emergency back up fund and plan.    6 months emergency fund is probably no longer enough.

[steven100]

On 7/2/2020 at 8:03 AM, webfact said:

They were all regular customers before the pandemic struck.

what she really meant was  ' they were all regular p_issheads before the pandemic struck '

[Skallywag]

On 7/2/2020 at 8:03 AM, webfact said:

She said that the foreigners in her bar were expats who lived in Pattaya. They were all regular customers before the pandemic struck.

What a profound statement.  Glad she got that figured out ????✌️  Corner Bar always seemed to have "regulars" who were local.

[kinyara]

6 hours ago, Kerryd said:

Lol - I noticed that as well. Everyone read your post, and then skipped the one I made directly after it so they could jump in and correct you.

Happens a lot in this forum. I always use the "multi-quote" if I read a post in the middle of a thread, then go through the rest of the posts to see if something has been answered/clarified, then reply to the post (if need be).

Quite often the answer/clarification is just a post or two down, and sometimes you find 2 or 3 other posts you want to respond to by the time you get to the end of the thread.

But at least you now know that the Corner Bar apparently has a lot of fans ! (Personally I've never visited Soi 6. Heard there was a "public library" there once - never got around to checking it out though.)

That's the trouble when every post you make would give War and Peace a run for its money.  You have the issue of numerous other posts being made while you type your epics or people just can't be bothered reading them because they are so long winded. 

[Kerryd]

I was planning on writing about how, once again, it has started pouring rain just before the bars are allowed to open, on the last night they can be open before the weekend.

But what fun would there be in that simple, single sentence, as elegant as it may be ? 

Yeah, I never was a fan of making one or two word responses to a post just to up my post count.

If I'm going to put the effort into responding to a post, then I might as well make it worth reading. I've also found, so often, that someone will post about something, whether if be a question or a news story or some event and never get an answer or meaningful response.

Others will reply with one or two word responses that do nothing to further the conversation or answer the question. Yet more will often reply to those posts by, literally, adding their 2 cents worth and so on and so on.
Eventually you end up with 6 pages of dross that would barely fill a single, well worded post and the original question (or whatever the thread was about) is still waiting to be resolved.
And you scroll, and scroll, and scroll and 6 pages later you're still scrolling having seen 100+ meaningless posts.

Then you see one that breaks the mould ! Verbose ! Insightful ! Often with links and photos and detailed text. Sometimes even containing information of use to not just the OP, but other members of the forum too !

And you hasten to hit the reply button so you can write 2 or 3 words denouncing the post. 

Because you could have scrolled another 40+ posts with one or 2 words in it in the time it took to read that one large one.

(Yes, I am deliberately dragging this one for the sheer joy of it, knowing that somewhere out there, someone is holding a gun to the heads of every TV member and forcing them to read every word of this post, knowing they will die if they they just scroll past it. Knowing they can't hover over the poster's name and click "ignore user". Knowing that there are probably 2 or 3 more lengthy posts being posts being written in the time you've spent reading this one. Posts that you will also have to ready, word for word, least it turns out that there really is someone behind you with a gun, forcing it upon you.)

(Da*n - I do have too much time on my hands it seems !)

However, in order to keep the peace (and pieces) in place, I shall end this diatribe shortly. Not so much because I couldn't care less if it is unappreciated, but more because I am hungry and have a couple of nice, juicy Australian beef burger patties sitting on the counter that I'd like to turn into hamburgers loaded with mustard, relish, ketchup, onions and mushrooms. 
I am lacking in proper buns though. I shall have to make do with lightly toasted whole grain bread slices. I suppose I could type a few more paragraphs whilst I ponder the correctness of using sliced bread in place of the proper buns, but as I shan't be sharing the meal with anyone that would care it would be moot to spend excess time pontificating such trivialities.

And it appears the rain has stopped, for the moment at least, so perhaps a "Friday Night" may still be an option for many. (That is, if they have time after being forced to read through this entire post of course !)

To the kitchen lads ! There's meat to be cooked and onions to slice !
There's mush<You've exceeded your word count for this lifetime. All future communication must be done in sign language or Braille text. Good luck with that. The Management>
 

[Catkiwi]

On 7/2/2020 at 9:43 AM, Kerryd said:

Takes a while to realize that the pic was taken outside the bar and reflections from the window and "covid screens" are messing up the image.

What I thought was funny was how many foreigners (12) were in that place and it looks like the only woman there is the bartender (left side in the back).

very observant but the girls are all under the tables ????

[Monomial]

7 hours ago, Andy from Kent said:

Sorry to hear about your plight, Mate.     It sounds like you were living very close to the  edge most of that time and  a  bump in the road knocked you  completely over.

From your tale, hopefully others will learn well the lesson of having a sufficient emergency back up fund and plan.    6 months emergency fund is probably no longer enough.

 

We are all entitled to our own opinions of course, but I don't consider what the government just did to be a "bump".

 

It was a political and economic weapon of mass destruction that eviscerated the lives of millions. Going from 150K+ with resiliency between 2 income providers to zero overnight is not a "bump". It was a chasm that no normal person would ever have anticipated. It is entirely equivalent to someone sitting on a million USD and finding that overnight the USD collapsed and became worthless.  Sure, you thought you were secure, but suddenly you find every basic assumption you ever had was rendered irrelevant in the span of a few hours through an unthinkable action by the government.

 

It is always easy to blame the victim when you aren't the victim.

[Leaver]

On 7/2/2020 at 1:57 PM, Monomial said:

 

I also arrived at the age of 29 and built a successful life here in Thailand. Right up until 3 months ago when with 1 political weapon of mass destruction called lockdown the Thai government wiped out my job, turned off the international mail thus killing my wife's business, and left us essentially destitute with nothing but a huge mortgage to pay and no income.

 

Savings are almost gone and no hope at the moment for survival. I don't see freeflow at the borders returning any time in the next 18 months (needed for both my job and for the return of international mail). Now I am unsure how I am even going to stay in country, being unable to meet the 400k bank deposit requirement, and I have absolutely no connections back home given that I have been in Thailand for the past 2 decades...a country I am no longer going to be allowed to live in.

 

So it's all great as an expat right up until the date that it isn't. A year ago I would have agreed with Rob. Today, I have to say that everyone needs to take a hard look at what would happen if their business and their money are wiped out overnight with no warning. It's tough to be forcibly returned to the West after making the best years of your life in Thailand.

 

Sorry to hear of your situation, but readers can learn from your post.

 

I have ALWAYS said, every foreigner needs a Plan B or an exit strategy for Thailand.  You may never need it, or you could need it next week.  You just never know here.  

 

What you have today, may be taken away tomorrow.  What is legal today, may be illegal tomorrow.  The visa you have this year, may not be possible to get next year.  The list is endless when you have no rights here. You don't need to be in business for these things to change.  You could simply be a retiree and be effected by changes here.  

 

The mail is running.  Can you survive on your wife's business until things get back to normal?

[Grumpy one]

On 7/2/2020 at 12:56 PM, robblok said:

I am in Thailand now.. been in Thailand since I was 30 and no I dont look like these guys. I am 46. 

Give it a couple more years 

[3NUMBAS]

more like 10/90