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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "why don't Thais need a pile of documents?" The reason I am making this video, it is kind of an anecdotal piece here. Living in Thailand is kind of an interesting experience. It has definitely been an interesting one for me where I started out as really kind of a shoe string Foreigner only to overtime kind of buildup and become more permanently based here and then eventually I became a citizen where now I am just here. It's my home. 

There are things that I take for granted now that I didn't when I look back in retrospect and something just kind of tickled me the other day. We were assisting a client with banking. It was a corporate matter; we were setting up a company for the company and I just happened to be going to the bank at the same time so my staff was assisting this person in getting all their documentation in order with respect to getting a bank account open; things like corporate bank account, corporate checking accounts, things like this. I was dealing with some corporate stuff too. It happened to be at the same bank and I was talking to the client and they only asked me for my Thai ID card. They took my Thai ID card and what they needed to do with it and we were pretty well done. The client, now obviously the client was opening an account and dealing with some things associated with all of that so there is obviously going to be more documentation but the difference was plain. He turned to me and said, "Why don't you need a pile of documents, why don't Thais need a pile of documents?" I answered, I said "I am Thai" and he said "why don't Thais need a pile of documents?" Well one of the big reasons for this is Thais’ pile of documents really kind of are embedded in the Thai ID card. There is a whole slew of documentation associated with being a Thai. Don't ever have the misconception that only foreigners are dealing with a bunch of paperwork in Thailand. Thais do too, it is just different insofar as they don't really have to carry it all around with them when they are dealing with banking or the Government because it is all in their card primarily. There are exceptions to this. If you are dealing for example if you are moving House books, yeah you have got to deal with a bunch of paperwork to do that. Sometimes when you are getting a passport they may want to see some extra documentation on top of a Thai ID Card although frankly it hasn't proven to be an issue since the first passport I got where they wanted to see my nationality certificate and some other things. Then after that, it really hasn't been a problem. 

Yeah it is it is kind of interesting. Foreigners probably look at Thais and think "oh you don't have to do any of this", but in point of fact they actually do have to jump through most of the same hoops, it is just all those hoops are embedded in this card and they just sort of deal with it all in one swipe basically.