Rutiger wrote:So if you are just over age 50 and don't have 65k Thai Baht per month verifiable income, but you want a retirement visa, you need one million Baht deposited in a Thai bank the entire time? I assume that money does not receive bank interest either?

My income stream then would be exclusively from stock dividends that get paid every 3 months (different payout dates for each company you hold stock in). Not sure how I would explain/prove that to a Thai immigration official, so I'd most likely have to do the full bank deposit.

I agree with everyone who says Cambodia's visa situation will match Thailand's recent style of enforcement in the not too distant future. The era of easy visas and foreigners living rough and on-the-dirt-cheap in SE Asia is soon to be a memory.

bkktrapper wrote:

CowshedCowboyRedux wrote:I've just converted my tourist visa to a Non O visa for retirement, the process couldn't have been simpler. A five minute walk from my condo to immigration in Jomtien, hand in the forms with a few photocopies and then walk across the road to the Rompho market for a couple of relaxing cold beers. 1,900 baht a year. The general consensus amongst my friends is the service at immigration is improving and they are making it easier not harder if you meet the requirements, which are not onerous from a retirement perspective.

I hear a lot of guys from different countries complaining about excessive immigration in their own countries yet think Thailand should operate an open door policy to suit them. I think they have the balance right and the new rules on overstay is another step in the right direction.

As far as comments about increasing xenophobia or anti foreigner, I honestly don't get that feeling going about my day to day life. I'm going to be travelling around the country now the football season has started so I expect I'll get a broader perspective than just living in a tourist town.

Regarding the OP, I've very rarely seen anyone obviously living rough in my years in Pattaya, isolated cases really. They tend to stick out and come to the attention of the authorities pretty quickly. Chances are they are on overstay and get picked up because of that.

The bums around pattya started moving out around early 2014.
The work visa is a massive hassle and the fact is Thais are xenophobic of foreigners and won't the money for them selfs hence its near impossible to work there doing anything but teaching or some niche job unlike Cambodia where I have met barang carpenters , cleaners , dishwashers ,barmen, cooks , NGO workers , tuktuks, there's even a barang from Australia selling roti from a home made cart in kampot.
Never in Thailand would they let this happen .

There is thousands of hospitality workers from all over the world in the kingdom working for Khmer wages or even free beer to nearly 25 USD a day.

Rutiger wrote:

phuketrichard wrote:in fact you can set up your own company via a lawyer for under $2,000 which will get you a wp.

Used to be quite common, but I've been told that now the paperwork required for the company and work permit combo are extremely burdensome. Plus you need the lawyer to set up like a 10 member Thai citizen fake board of company directors or whatever to sign off as part of the company. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. That kind of setup requires at least yearly payments (probably increasing payments at his whim) to the lawyer to keep it all going. It's not like it is a one time $2k payment and then you're all set.