Bruce Mangosteen

I just prefer this format for this question. Qualified expats, no douchebags, no shills. As you know, l do almost nothing with FB except post pics of my wife and me drinking beer and relaxing.

OK, I kinda don't want this to become a visa thread, so could we please get back to what you're spending on stuff? Thanks.

Except as a vendor it's their job to get the highest price possible what they're selling, and as a consumer it's my job to get the lowest price possible for the value I need or want in a product. So, while advertising has its purpose, especially documenting what's available in the market I will be working in (as you suggest), I prefer to hear from fellow consumers about the price and value they're getting for the products they're buying. There is certainly more than one way to get the data I'm looking for, this is simply how I see things. Yeah, I've heard these stories too. Clearly too many scam marriages in the past have poisoned the well. I've asked my wife to do some digging into how much help her family and other contacts would be in this effort. For example, she has one cousin who is a military officer in the southern border area; we've met and are on very friendly terms. He might possibly be able to pull a string for us. Also, we've been together for coming on 17 years, and we have no shortage of Thai friends and neighbors who will vouch for us. At the end of the day I'm not married to the idea of the marriage visa, so to speak, but I think it would be preferable to the non-O/retirement if I could pull it off without undue difficulty. Yeah, that's another problem with the marriage visa. I'd probably just switch back to a retirement visa in that case. It's hard to plan for future events regarding visas because the Thais are constantly chopping and changing them, and that shows no sign of letting up. I told this story elsewhere on this board, but in my case the immigration officer simply told me to go see a lady at the bank with an envelope full of money, then bring the envelope to him afterward. I did the retirement visa without the agent and without the cash in the bank for years; only later when they cracked down did I have to use an agent. I have food friends who have been using an agent for donkey's years so I won't have to do much searching.

Took a quick look, but at work now so will dig in later. Thanks.

We'll probably rent a condo because I can't be bothered with yard work, and hiring people would drive up the monthly cost. Probably in Jomthien, with View Talay I being high on the list of possibilities. We lived there last time and loved the lifestyle; and we don't particularly care if the property is new as long as it's secure and well cared-for, both of which VT1 was last time. I reckon we'll try word of mouth in VT1 given that we still have friends there.

I usually only shave 2-3x/week, so everything lasts forever with me!

Ditto that. For me it was so long ago I can't seem to remember how I did it, if I did it at all. I certainly didn't have 800K I could afford to to let sit in any bank account. Thanks. I'm actually quite surprised at the inexpensive rents being mentioned on here. I suppose part of it is if guys have been in their digs for a while the rent might have risen more slowly than unoccupied units would. I'm planning to rent in Pattaya, and up until now my assumed rent budget is 20K/month. I certainly wouldn't mind being off by 20% high though!

The visa situation has been fairly chaotic in Thailand since I've been going there and I expect no change any time soon. I'm figuring that my long-term relationship and USA-documented marriage will help me through a lot of the issues, but who knows? The visa issue is one thing I reckon I won't be able to plan out in advance.

Huh. OK, thanks for that. I don't mind doing the agent 800K thing, done it many times. Yep, my friend google confirms. Apparently it can be done online now.

I'd also be able to show that, just my Social will be more than that, and they will give a letter of proof of benefit. For the proof of accommodation my wife's name is on her daughter's tabien baan so I should be OK there. Not sure how much of this the agent will still require though.

No worries. At the moment I'm in pretty good health, and in the 6 years I've been at this job I've used the doctor about 4 times to have him write me prescriptions for gout medication (Allopurinol) and an NSAID for the occasional breakthrough attack. These are both available OTC there. That will inevitably change though. My missus is flipping and flopping on whether she wants us to have a car. I flat don't think we need one living in Pattaya, and her daughter drives us around in Ayutthaya. Ditto for other family we've visited. For visa I'm probably going to use the same agent my buddies have been using for eons. Marriage or O with retirement extension remains to be decided at the moment.

Hey that's great stuff, thanks! I'll look at both those options. What appx. location? Won't they still accept the proof of income?

Bill, thanks for all the detail! I think I'll start with a non-O/retirement extension then switch to a marriage visa. I've heard the horror stories but we have all the documentation including an American marriage certificate and she has cops and military in her family so we have those references too. A lot of the housing expense is to do with building and owning a detached house, neither of which I presently plan on doing. The 15k condo rent price point is very helpful, that's what we plan on initially. This is news to me, American insurance cover that you can use internationally! Can you fill in some details about the company and policy? I have a girl in stock and have not had any "strange" since 2008 when we got together. I did find your price points interesting after reading an article in the Pattaya Mail that indicated prices 2x yours and more. I'll have a better idea after this thread runs for a while longer and I've set up my and fine-tuned my monthly expense spreadsheet. However, I reckon I'm in pretty good shape based on my past experience there, as well as the fact that I can deal with the climate and food there. My partnership with my missus is a well-oiled machine at this point and worked well in Thailand before we came here, so I expect few functional hiccups getting set up there. That's a huge leg up on the process I realize. Thanks again, and please continue to report in!

Thanks guys, great stuff. Actually I hate AC and can live without it. It's my wife who drives the AC usage in the US believe it or not, for me it was set at 80F/25C and mostly intended to keep the green mold off the sofa. I agree that the farang affectations like shaving gel are expensive. My beard isn't tough and I can get by shaving with bar soap and even without anything as long as I shave right after I get out of the shower. Please continue to update with what you're spending on stuff as you think of it.

Well, I was kinda hoping people would post what they're PAYIN' for stuff, rather than what they're CHARGIN' for stuff...

I'm planning to retire next year, and, after a summer visiting family and friends in the US, we will be moving back to Thailand around this time next year. Not having lived there for roughly 10 years, I'm interested in getting a bead on what my expenses will look like. That's where you come in. Tell me what you're paying for stuff. Anything, from your living quarters or hotel to food and drink to toothpaste to a screwdriver to a dental cleaning, to electricity. Obviously, I don't expect you to violate your personal privacy, so I'll do my own research for things like jock itch cream. Could be a single purchase e.g. "Today I bought a pack of salami from Friendship", or you could give me a list of things you normally buy, or even a rundown of your monthly budget. Anything that would help me, other folks who are considering this move, and your fellow expats. Interested in prices from anywhere in Thailand. We'll probably be based in Pattaya and Ayutthaya mostly, but my wife has family around Thailand, and we have friends around the country as well, and we love to travel. Please post as much data about the purchase as you have patience for, e.g. what it is, the town where you bought it, if it was bought in a large or chain store e.g. Makro, the amount of product and price, any special or discount that applied, whether it's a regular purchase or a splurge, and anything else that will help give me (and other readers) an idea of how that purchase would apply to someone's monthly expenses. Thanks in advance for your help. Ready, GO!

Beautiful ride. I hope he's pampering it and kissing it good night every night! 😃

Pics or it didn't happen!

HBD mate, we're there in spirit.

Somebody's account has been hacked... Edited to add: To whomever reacted with the googly-eyed confused emoticon, the post I was referring to has been removed.

Agree, and "thip" is usually pronounced more like "teep" than "tip", at least if I know which word is being transliterated. However, if you transliterate that as "bunteep" nobody will know what you're referring to. Including Thai taxi drivers.

True, but the intent of the transliteration is not to teach the entire world how to correctly pronounce the words. If it was, then we'd also have to add symbols for the tones, as well as for the lengths of vowels (เกาะ, เกา, แก้ว). And, people would still pronounce them in ways that are unintelligible to a Thai taxi driver, unless they had also been taught to speak the language properly. I note that you nearly always know from the transliterations in the post which Thai words are being rendered, and I'm guessing that in this case you didn't inspect the photos to figure out what was being referred to. That's because the transliterations are usually spelled the same way, regardless of how the actual Thai words are pronounced. ghoti = fish (the "gh" from "rough", the "o" from "women", and the "ti" from "motion"). Spelling makes things legible, even when the sound of multiple different spellings can sound correct when pronounced. Or incorrect.

With all due respect, and we've had this conversation before: Have you considered that these two vowels sound completely different to you, whereas to nearly everybody else, including the source you linked, the shorter vowel sounds more similar to "a" than to "u"? This is the same vowel used to spell "love", รัก. Very few people spell that transliteration so it sounds like a backpack, "chun ruck tur". That word doesn't sound like "ruck" to me when spoken either. Maybe my ears are full of "mack", don't know. If I recall our previous conversation correctly, the explanation given by the author of "Thai For Beginners" is that the vowel sound is similar to an "a" sound in an unaccented syllable in English, e.g. the "a" in "accost". That sound is usually represented phonetically with a character that looks like an upside-down "e", but few of us would recognize that word if spelled "əˈkäst". Muddling along spelling it "accost" seems the better bet. Seems to me that if the purpose of writing is to communicate, spelling things the same way as the majority of people spell them makes communication easier, especially in the case of Thai where we're using a different alphabet to approximate the sounds. Just sayin' like.

The website I saw definitely looked open, but that's part of the magic of the internet. https://www.tawandang.com/

They probably have menus in English at the location. If not and you have any sort of reasonable smartphone, Google Translate is your friend.