How Many Expats Living In Thailand At The Moment?

[kangalue]

Anyone have an idea, how many expats' living in Thailand at the moment and what nationality are they? Where can I find this kind of information?

need you help mate..

Kangalue

[Sick Boy]

Sorry, couldn't resist it.

[Axel]

Sorry, couldn't resist it.

I loved it

On a more serious way, no way to count.

a) Most of the embassies, I know, do not require their nationals to register with them, so the embassies would not have actual figures on hand.

Immigration has only figures from people holding proper visas,

(doubt such figures are publicly available). If you arrive as a tourist under whatever visa (or no visa) the government will count the tourist arrivals but hardly can trace, if they live here.

c) TAT does publish tourist-arrivals sorted by nationalities. Published someimes in the local newspapers.

[Sick Boy]

I suspect Axel is right. I doubt if there exists a database of all expats living here.

The various chambers of commerce will give you an idea of some of the business being conducted but apart from that I can't see how one could accurately know the true figure.

[bangkok-bob]

I'd say there are at least 15, possibly even 20 people.

[sam77]

The best way to get more accurate head count is go to every borders around the country and get the records of whos' out and back again in a hurry

[the gentleman]

33,000 in Phuket, so says my "mate" at immigration, so halve it or double it and then times it by 50 and you should get the result your looking for.

[Dr Hiram P. Klonky]

When you live "in the upcountry" as I, for one, do then one cannot help but remark when encountering these farang how enormous they are! Seeing graceful and compact Thai people all the time preludes a shock upon meeting these gigantic expats - one forgets that one too may be a tad on the large size. So it can't be too hard to count 'em. Just a thought!

[Gfunk]

IMHO, To many

[frenchFARANGbkk]

Anyone have an idea, how many expats' living in Thailand at the moment and what nationality are they? Where can I find this kind of information?

need you help mate..

Kangalue

Stickman is asking himself the same question lately.

[george]

Anyone have an idea, how many expats' living in Thailand at the moment and what nationality are they? Where can I find this kind of information?

need you help mate..

Kangalue

Stickman is asking himself the same question lately.

From Stickman's weekly last week:

How Many Of Us Are There?

I have often wondered just what the farang population of Thailand is, that is the population of Westerners who live and work here, on a permanent or at least semi-permanent basis.

I was having a conversation with an Indian friend recently, a fellow who has been in Thailand for around 15 years and he said to me that the Indian population of Thailand is around 200,000 and he expected that the total farang population would be about double that. 400,000 people? Really? Is that possible? My first thoughts were that I wouldn't believe that for a moment, but then I started to think about it and maybe he is right...

Word out of the US embassy is that they believe there are around 35,000 US passport holders resident in Thailand. The German embassy believes around 15,000 people. This is NOT the number of people registered, but their best guess of numbers here. Given that there seem to be at least two Brits for every American here, we might guess that there are around 70,000 Brits here. So, from just three farang countries alone, we already have a possible 120,000 farangs resident in Thailand! We would then need to add in the likes of New Zealand and Australia, Canada and the rest of Europe as well as farangs fro month countries such as South Africa. I imagine that many of the South American residents here would be considered farangs too.

Or, if we look at it another way and guestimate that there are say, 100,000 farangs in Bangkok and a significant number outside of Bangkok. The exact population of Bangkok isn't known but 10,000,000 would probably be a fair guess. 100,000 farangs would mean we make up around 1% of the big smoke’s population. If I think of any apartment building, housing area or residential area in Bangkok, the farang population would be well in excess of 1%. And no, this is not skewed by simply considering the buildings and areas where my farang friends live. Apart from the slum areas and the really low-income housing areas, you seem to find farangs everywhere. Talking to Thai people at work, some of whom live in modest apartment buildings, all state that farangs are resident in the building where they live. In the building where I live, and the buildings where most of my friends live, I would guestimate that around 25% of the residents would be farang. In even some of the poorest areas, the very cheapest buildings, you still, inevitably, find farangs. We are everywhere! So, based on this logic, which admittedly is horribly simplistic, the population of Bangkok may be a lot more than 1% farang, say 1.5%? And 1.5% immediately amounts to 150,000 farang residents in Bangkok alone.

What about outside of Bangkok? Well, half of the UK lives in Pattaya along with good chunks of Germany... Amazing there aren’t a few more fireworks down there considering... I've no idea, but I bet the permanent farang population of Pattaya is significant. Is 10,000 possible - or is that number perhaps even on the light side? On Phuket there must be a similar number. I still haven't made it to Chiang Mai but they tell me it is scrawling with farangs so I’ll have a stab and say that there are another 10,000 up there. 150,000 odd farangs in Bangkok and with Phuket, Pattaya and Chiang Mai added in, we could be up to 180,000 already... It was once said to me that the New Zealand embassy, which estimates less than 2,000 of its citizens resident in Thailand, has a citizen in every province, which would indicate that it is not just the major centres that have serious numbers of Westerners. I even heard, rightly or wrongly that Udon Thani, the city and surrounding area, has 2,000 resident farangs. True or not, I have no idea.

In the one major city other than Bangkok where I do spend a lot of time, and I do have a few clues about, Korat, there doesn’t seem to be a huge farang population, at least not in the main city area. I wouldn't like to guess the farang population at all, but it doesn’t seem that significant, less than 1,000 at a guess. But then Korat is, outside of Bangkok, the most populous province in Thailand, and I bet the farang population in the rural areas is not small at all, probably several hundred at least, though quite possibly a lot more.

My guess is that the 400,000 number mooted earlier is probably a little bit higher than the actual number, which I would guestimate at closer to 250,000. This is not a number to be sneezed at and despite all of the measures taken by the Thai government to make it more difficult for foreigners to stay here, the number of Westerners in Thailand is, I believe, increasing all the time.

Whatever the total number of farangs living and working in Thailand is, it is very significant. Our contributions to Thailand are great, and we are responsible for a huge amount of consumer spending and investment in the country. While we may well be less than one half of one percent of all living here, I would guess that our contributions as an homogenous group are perhaps higher than any other.

If my mooted figure of 250,000 people is right, just how much money do we spend - a good chunk of which is brought in from abroad. My guess, and again, this is just a guess, is that the average farang spends around 60,000 - 65,000 baht a month in Thailand. Yes, these figures were not arrived at through any complicated scientific method, but again, a rough sample from my friends, some of whom told me how much they spend, and others whose spending I guessed. Being conservative, let's say the average is 60K baht a month, which would make 720,000 baht per year. 720,000 baht multiplied by 250,000 equals a number with quite frankly, a shitload of zeroes and a number that would get hit the orgasm button for a mathematician! Dividing it by 40 we get the figure in US dollars, 4,500,000,000. Four and a half BILLION US dollars a year. Whether this figure is right, wrong or a million miles from the truth, I don't know. But one thing is certain, even apart from the huge amount of money us farang residents spend, we make a huge contribution to Thailand.

[george]

Please keep the topic "How many farangs living in Thailand" in this thread.

Posts re Makro and BigC was moved here:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4582

[Pink Mist]

so easy to get off topic isnt it?

[bangna bound]

Stickman's calculations on the number of farangs living in Thailand - like most other things he writes in his column - are ill-considered, badly researched, over-explained, and most times wrong.

Take his recent who-ha over bars in soi cowboys facing closure. First we are told that a lot of bars are definitley facing closure by the cops after a big raid. Next week we tells us that maybe some bars and facing closure, but it is not quite as serious as he first repoted, then in his latest offering yesterday he "confirms" to us that absolutely no bars are facing closure.

So he conjures up a story out of nothing, updates it the next week, then confirms it the following week, even though it never existed in the first place.

The fact is the raid he was referring to was the usual pre-warned orchestrated affair that Soi Cowboy experiences every no and again.

[dr_Pat_Pong]

The walkers...aka... official non-resident tourists, would distort the figures dramatically.

[gangstar]

You and your walkers DR. get over it, for gods sake, what happand did a walker nick your girl? or beat you up? or what? man let it go and get on with ya life

Edited December 22, 2003 by dr_Pat_Pong

[dr_Pat_Pong]

Your name is so apt. The point I made is valid. Walker's wouldn't have brass sufficient to buy a chick a bowl of noodles. No worries about them winning away one's girl.