Have you ever had 'Hard Times' in Thailand?

[WineOh]

3 minutes ago, madmen said:

Not quite getting it are you 

I've got plenty mate..

Cash that is ???? 

[CrunchWrapSupreme]

My first teaching jobs paid under 30k. I was scraping. I had to pay kickbacks to officials. I got cheated out of some final months of salary, by agencies who look down on you like dogs. No, they actually treat their dogs better. Don't get jobs through agencies. I went through a lot of savings which is now nearly gone. I managed to find some good colleagues and have a bit of fun, while others were complete psychos, making it clear as to why they had escaped their countries.

 

I had some nights where the Man Upstairs was certainly looking after me. I once woke up in a daze, walking down a road as the sun was coming up. Big trucks were rolling past. I was out in some industrial area near factories. Apparently I'd taken a taxi after a night out, it had dropped me off somewhere, and I just kept walking and walking in search of my condo. Phone was dead and I had to walk kilos back to civilization. Man. Not to mention all the crazy chicks. But I somehow managed to find a good one, and we've since been happily married.

[madmen]

It's heartwarming to read everybody is now successful and loaded even though it's statisticaly impossible ????

[Pilotman]

No I haven't. I have never worked in Thailand and I never would have done.  Lessons here seem to be: never work here, unless its on an expat package with a western company,  never invest here to any degree,  house, car etc okay.  This may be a controversial statement, but in my view, you just can't build a worthwhile lifetime working career here as a farang. You may do 'okay', but that's it.  Just  holiday and retire here and have sufficient funds to do so comfortably. 

Edited January 27, 2021 by Pilotman

[transam]

30 minutes ago, WineOh said:

by people purposefully de-railing it.

The intent of this topic was genuine, I am interested to see what people have been through and having come out the other side, where they are now..

My past history is exactly that, past, and I am now reading TVF, until the possible next downhill episode, of which none of us may know about yet, including the OP........

[Phuketshrew]

1 hour ago, NCC1701A said:

i am down to one girlfriend instead of the usual three.

 

its a big adjustment for me. 

So you could say that times are not as hard as they used to be ...

[OneMoreFarang]

39 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

There are few things as liberating in life as paying cash for a vehicle

Is that still possible?

I guess probably yes in Thailand, not so sure in other countries.

I like cash but it seems for higher amounts people get suspicious when they see cash and/or it might even become an issue with suspected money laundering. 

[CharlieH]

Various trolling off topic and derailing comments and responses removed.

[scoupeo]

yes so hard, everyday...

 

 

[FritsSikkink]

1 hour ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Credit cards are useful for online shopping.

Can do that with a debit card too.

[NanLaew]

1 hour ago, WineOh said:

I'd like to start this thread by saying that right now, for me, life is easy.

I have enough money in my pockets, I have food on the table, ale in the fridge and a roof over my head.

I can easily afford 4/5 domestic or international holidays a year and plan to start traveling again once the world has opened up.

 

But it wasn't always this way.

 

When I first decided to live in Bangkok some years ago and was searching for work, I could barely afford my 3,500 baht per month apartment.

It was a small studio apartment in the more run down side of town.

It was difficult to make ends meet back then, but eventually I found work and began to get myself back on my feet..

 

Without a doubt the hardest times I have ever had here was when I first moved to Phuket, without a Job or place to stay.

Eventually I found a room, but that in itself was a mammoth task considering how much money I had in my pocket.

I remember being down to my last 10 baht, with which I purchased a can of coke from the local 7/11.

I made that can of coke last me for 3 days until finally I got the call from the job I had applied.

Thankfully, the company let me take out an immediate advance on my salary which helped me through the next month.

I also had a bad motorbike accident around this time in which I dislocated my elbow and broke it in two places, which meant I couldn't start my new job until 2 months after the proposed start date.

 

The rest is history, now I do my own thing in my own time and I have nobody to answer too.

Life is a lot easier than it used to be, but it sure wasn't always that way.

 

Have any of you lot fell on Hard Times in Thailand?

If so, what was the worst for you? 

 

How's your insurance?

[NanLaew]

1 hour ago, WineOh said:

I get your point.

But as this is an anonymous forum I figured this shouldn't be too much of an issue. 

 

But some people dislike Leonardo DiCaprio with a passion.

[ivor bigun]

On a serious note ,a very long time ago ,i had a business in BKK ,i ran the British end and came here all the time ,i met the wife through business, before we married we lived in the UK and our son went to school there ,eventually about 15 years ago we came back to live here and i sold my half of the business, we are comfortable ,always have been ,our son now runs a company and earns very good money ,my wife and he own our house ,as i posted in another thread once i own very little , 

we even have joint bank accounts in the UK , here i have a couple of accounts ,and we live quite well ,only once have i nearly been broke ,when i got ripped off ,but an ex helped me out and i got back on my feet quickly ,life has been good ,i have been ill and recovered ,so so far so good , lets hope my luck holds out,

 

[AlfHuy]

1 hour ago, DaLa said:

When I first ended up here through turmoil in my life back in the UK things were tough. I started a business with my Thai wife and had given up a well paid job back home and a riverside detached house in glorious settings to sleep on a concrete floor with no windows and no A/C for a few years.

 

The lack of friends, boredom and problems with the business and immigration rules here gave me plenty of headaches and sometimes regrets that I had committed to this new life.

 

I’ve adjusted, accepted Thailands misgivings and also once I reached UK retirement age became self sufficient. All I have to do is wake up in a morning. I have found meaningful ways of spending my days by alternating between watching pretty women on-line, watching pretty women whilst shopping in Central stores and having a drink or 3.

 

I’d say life's ok…..just waiting anxiously for that day when I wake up with a health issue.

Or waking up to see that you are already gone. Looking down on planet earth, zooming in on BKK streets to see the "hotties" walking around.

[AlfHuy]

1 hour ago, WineOh said:

I have 5 houses, 2 cars & 2 bikes since you are asking.

And still no credit card in my wallet !

I have 7 and just remortgaging to purchase another 3.

[AlfHuy]

1 hour ago, ivor bigun said:

When i first came here i used to have it hard two or three times a day ,after being married for 22 years and getting older i find its hard a lot less these days,  

same same but different.

 

[WineOh]

22 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

 

How's your insurance?

Top notch mate.

How is yours? 

[simon43]

My own hard times tale fills several pages!  I'll retell it here, but ignore my post if you don't have time to read it, or if you don't believe me.  Everything here is true, (facts can be verified from press reports etc on Google).

 

I worked for many years in the UK and mainland Europe as a space/satellite designer, building satellite payloads for the likes of the European Space Agency.  Life was very good, with cars and houses in the UK, Belgium and France.  I started my own one-man band SMS (text messaging) business, including a satellite TV station, and sold out around the year 2000 for $2 million.  I built a beautiful, $1 million pound house in 5 acres of rolling Chiltern Hills countryside.

 

Then slowly, slowly, things started to go downhill.  My lungs became infected with mold spores (Aspergillosis) from the damp, unheated basement office where I worked in London. (They belonged to the company that bought my business and appointed me as CTO of their new mobile comms division).

 

My health was deteriorating rapidly with this chronic disease  My doctor said that I would probably only recover if I lived in a hot and humid climate, which would help to reduce the fungal spores in my lungs.  I opted to move to Thailand, but my English wife and 3 kids refused to come with me, and I had to leave them in the UK.

 

In Thailand, my health rapidly improved.  I married a Thai lady and spent the remainder of my funds on building a hotel at Phuket Airport.  That was a good business!  But then the mental health of my wife started to deteriorate.  She made crazy financial decisions, giving away the hotel profits, as well as absurd actions (stealing and crashing cars, running away, throwing knives etc).  That sorry time in my life was documented many years ago on Thaivisa.

 

I was trying to hold the hotel business together, whilst also paying out for mental health treatment.  Soon the funds were exhausted and I was stuck with this totally mad woman! ????  

 

At times like that, you find your true friends.  Some people helped me out by buying me food to eat.  Others lent me the keys to their small holiday home on a remote beach in Khao Lak.  When everything got too much for me, I would retreat to that little house and spend the time walking up and down the deserted beach, which was covered in millions of beautifulsea-shell fragments.  I wondered why my life had turned so bad ???? 

 

Sadly, all the friends who helped me through these hard times have now died, from illness and suicide.....

 

One day, out of the blue, I was offered a teaching job in Yangon, Myanmar, which was still under sanctions.  It was very difficult for schools to find foreign teachers, because no-one wanted to go there!  But the job offer of $2,000 each month was $2,000 more than I was getting with my mad ex (ex, because she got pregnant by another Thai man and left me as night-time baby-sitter, whilst she went out and partied).

 

I wasn't a teacher, but I was educated and spoke English with a very clear accent.  I took the job!

 

On my first day at school, I assumed that I'd be teaching teenage Burmese students.  I entered the classroom to be greeted by 20 five-year old kids sitting on the floor ????

 

It was all or nothing, and I chose 'all'.  I sat on the floor and sang English nursery rhymes with the kids.

 

A word to non-teachers.  Teaching young kids is hard work.  But by the end of the week, I was enjoying myself and getting paid a comparatively decent salary.

 

My accommodation was a very basic old apartment in the Yangon slums, with loads of green mold on the walls and a pipe that ran brown cold water for the shower.  (I found out later that this water was pumped from the nearby dirty river, where my toilet pipe also emptied into...) At night, the electricity was switched over to power the tourist hotels, and I got used to sleeping in sweltering heat with no fan.

 

One Saturday, I took the ferry across the river to Dala Township.  Burmese friends warned me not to go, saying that it was a dangerous place.  A young boy with a pedalo offered to show me around.  He took me to a monastery where about 100 kids were sitting on the floor in an empty room.  A Burmese teacher was teaching them to read/write Burmese language.  The parents of these kids were so poor that they couldn't even send their kids to the government school, because they had no money to buy school uniform or textbooks.  This moment was a life-changing event!

 

I promised myself there and then that I would never again feel sorry for myself, because I at least had a reasonable chance to get out of my problems, whereas these kids had next to zero chance.  I offered to teach them English every weekend, because a knowledge of English could help them to get jobs in hotels, restaurants when they were older.

 

Each weekend, I went over to Dala and taught 100 kids English.  There was no electricity, so I taught using my laptop and loudspeakers until the batteries died.  I learnt some basic written and spoken Myanmar language, to help in my lessons.

 

As my own financial position slowly improved from 'terrible' to 'modest', I decided to use whatever excess funds that I earned to help others with their education, rather than 'waste' it on greedy, selfish partners.  Over the next few years, I supported more than 3,000 Burmese students and orphans with the purchase of their schoolbooks, as well as financing computer work-stations for use by the kids.

 

The years have rolled by, and I now live modestly and alone in a quaint old house by the Rover Mekong in Luang Prabang in Laos. I teach science 'online' to many students all over the world, and am usually fully booked for 2 months ahead!  So I must be doing something right!

 

Some might think of me as an antisocial loner or recluse, being that I have zero interest in sharing my life with a partner.  On the contrary, I value every single day that I'm alive.  In about 4 years when (if), I won't need to teach for income anymore, and can dedicate more time again to help students in Laos and Myanmar with their education.

 

So..... from riches to rags to.. er ... modest and happy lifestyle ????

[Swimfan]

2 hours ago, KannikaP said:

So you want/need to book a flight urgently back to wherever you come from. How?

Ever heard of a Visa debit card ? Just like a CC just uses you own funds.

[NanLaew]

44 minutes ago, WineOh said:

1 hour ago, NanLaew said:

 

How's your insurance?

Top notch mate.

How is yours? 

 

Any discounts for paying in cash?

[WineOh]

6 minutes ago, simon43 said:

My own hard times tale fills several pages!  I'll retell it here, but ignore my post if you don't have time to read it, or if you don't believe me.  Everything here is true, (facts can be verified from press reports etc on Google).

 

I worked for many years in the UK and mainland Europe as a space/satellite designer, building satellite payloads for the likes of the European Space Agency.  Life was very good, with cars and houses in the UK, Belgium and France.  I started my own one-man band SMS (text messaging) business, including a satellite TV station, and sold out around the year 2000 for $2 million.  I built a beautiful, $1 million pound house in 5 acres of rolling Chiltern Hills countryside.

 

Then slowly, slowly, things started to go downhill.  My lungs became infected with mold spores (Aspergillosis) from the damp, unheated basement office where I worked in London. (They belonged to the company that bought my business and appointed me as CTO of their new mobile comms division).

 

My health was deteriorating rapidly with this chronic disease  My doctor said that I would probably only recover if I lived in a hot and humid climate, which would help to reduce the fungal spores in my lungs.  I opted to move to Thailand, but my English wife and 3 kids refused to come with me, and I had to leave them in the UK.

 

In Thailand, my health rapidly improved.  I married a Thai lady and spent the remainder of my funds on building a hotel at Phuket Airport.  That was a good business!  But then the mental health of my wife started to deteriorate.  She made crazy financial decisions, giving away the hotel profits, as well as absurd actions (stealing and crashing cars, running away, throwing knives etc).  That sorry time in my life was documented many years ago on Thaivisa.

 

I was trying to hold the hotel business together, whilst also paying out for mental health treatment.  Soon the funds were exhausted and I was stuck with this totally mad woman! ????  

 

At times like that, you find your true friends.  Some people helped me out by buying me food to eat.  Others lent me the keys to their small holiday home on a remote beach in Khao Lak.  When everything got too much for me, I would retreat to that little house and spend the time walking up and down the deserted beach, which was covered in millions of beautifulsea-shell fragments.  I wondered why my life had turned so bad ???? 

 

Sadly, all the friends who helped me through these hard times have now died, from illness and suicide.....

 

One day, out of the blue, I was offered a teaching job in Yangon, Myanmar, which was still under sanctions.  It was very difficult for schools to find foreign teachers, because no-one wanted to go there!  But the job offer of $2,000 each month was $2,000 more than I was getting with my mad ex (ex, because she got pregnant by another Thai man and left me as night-time baby-sitter, whilst she went out and partied).

 

I wasn't a teacher, but I was educated and spoke English with a very clear accent.  I took the job!

 

On my first day at school, I assumed that I'd be teaching teenage Burmese students.  I entered the classroom to be greeted by 20 five-year old kids sitting on the floor ????

 

It was all or nothing, and I chose 'all'.  I sat on the floor and sang English nursery rhymes with the kids.

 

A word to non-teachers.  Teaching young kids is hard work.  But by the end of the week, I was enjoying myself and getting paid a comparatively decent salary.

 

My accommodation was a very basic old apartment in the Yangon slums, with loads of green mold on the walls and a pipe that ran brown cold water for the shower.  (I found out later that this water was pumped from the nearby dirty river, where my toilet pipe also emptied into...) At night, the electricity was switched over to power the tourist hotels, and I got used to sleeping in sweltering heat with no fan.

 

One Saturday, I took the ferry across the river to Dala Township.  Burmese friends warned me not to go, saying that it was a dangerous place.  A young boy with a pedalo offered to show me around.  He took me to a monastery where about 100 kids were sitting on the floor in an empty room.  A Burmese teacher was teaching them to read/write Burmese language.  The parents of these kids were so poor that they couldn't even send their kids to the government school, because they had no money to buy school uniform or textbooks.  This moment was a life-changing event!

 

I promised myself there and then that I would never again feel sorry for myself, because I at least had a reasonable chance to get out of my problems, whereas these kids had next to zero chance.  I offered to teach them English every weekend, because a knowledge of English could help them to get jobs in hotels, restaurants when they were older.

 

Each weekend, I went over to Dala and taught 100 kids English.  There was no electricity, so I taught using my laptop and loudspeakers until the batteries died.  I learnt some basic written and spoken Myanmar language, to help in my lessons.

 

As my own financial position slowly improved from 'terrible' to 'modest', I decided to use whatever excess funds that I earned to help others with their education, rather than 'waste' it on greedy, selfish partners.  Over the next few years, I supported more than 3,000 Burmese students and orphans with the purchase of their schoolbooks, as well as financing computer work-stations for use by the kids.

 

The years have rolled by, and I now live modestly and alone in a quaint old house by the Rover Mekong in Luang Prabang in Laos. I teach science 'online' to many students all over the world, and am usually fully booked for 2 months ahead!  So I must be doing something right!

 

Some might think of me as an antisocial loner or recluse, being that I have zero interest in sharing my life with a partner.  On the contrary, I value every single day that I'm alive.  In about 4 years when (if), I won't need to teach for income anymore, and can dedicate more time again to help students in Laos and Myanmar with their education.

 

So..... from riches to rags to.. er ... modest and happy lifestyle ????

Nice one mate!

This is exactly what I was looking for.

 

Great post by (what seems to be) a good guy! ???? 

[phutoie2]

2 hours ago, KannikaP said:

So you want/need to book a flight urgently back to wherever you come from. How?

For years I used a travel agent in Soi4 Nana. She did all the donkey work and I just handed the cash over. 

For urgently, Bangkok Bank have given me a Mastercard now. 

[WineOh]

3 minutes ago, KannikaP said:

But some businesses will only take Credit Card as opposed to a Debit Card, especially car hire.

I have my own cars, which I bought with cash of course.

 

Why don't you give it a whirl sometime? Then you wont have to keep hiring on credit ???? 

Edited January 27, 2021 by WineOh

[KannikaP]

1 minute ago, WineOh said:

I have my own cars, which I bought with cash of course.

 

Why don't you give it a whirl sometime? Then you wont have to keep hiring on credit ???? 

Wherever did I say that I personally hire cars. I, like you, have my own house and car paid for with my own money.

[Sujo]

2 hours ago, Ron jeremy said:

A cc builds a credit rating 

it is also very important for traveling, booking hotel rooms etc etc etc

so you carry a pack of cash when travelling?

how do u book a hotel or plane tickets?

????????????????????‍♂️????????‍♂️????

Debit card does that. I also have never had a cc.

[WineOh]

I live by the motto : 'Don't have don't get. Have, get whatever you want." ???? 

[Sujo]

2 hours ago, KannikaP said:

So you want/need to book a flight urgently back to wherever you come from. How?

Debit card is used online.

[CharlieH]

More off topic/responses removed.

 

THIS TOPIC IS NOT ABOUT CREDIT/DEBIT CARDS.

[spidermike007]

2 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Is that still possible?

I guess probably yes in Thailand, not so sure in other countries.

I like cash but it seems for higher amounts people get suspicious when they see cash and/or it might even become an issue with suspected money laundering. 

 

I have been in a Toyota dealership here, where a couple had a paper bag with 1.1 million baht in it, that they used to buy a new truck. Never seen anything quite like that before. All I can say, is I hope the cash economy lasts forever!

 

 

[arick]

I was hard all the time since I arrived in 2013 last year got the penialpause.. Still. Plenty of opurtunities..