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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawVisa NewsA Perennial Cycle for Retirees in Thailand?

A Perennial Cycle for Retirees in Thailand?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing retirees in Thailand. I was recently reading a book and I would suggest folks who have never heard of it might want to check it out. It is by Steve Van Beek. The book is titled Bangkok Then and Now. It is really interesting. There are a lot of photos especially in there; a lot of recounts; excerpts from newspapers from different times, like 100 years ago but showing different parts of the city then and now; now, 10 maybe 20 years ago but modern to the turn of the last century, the turn of the 20th century Bangkok. There was excerpt in this book, there was a paragraph that just really hit home to me and I thought it really pertained to the retiree paradox that sometimes happens to retirees here in Bangkok or Thailand specifically. 

Quoting directly from this book, again that Steve Van Beek, Bangkok Then and Now. Quoting: "While few Europeans ever envisioned retiring here, when the time came to go home to live out their final years, many found themselves surprised that their native land seemed as alien as them as Thailand had when they first stepped off the boat. Some retirees packed their possessions, looked around at the comfortable lives they had created for themselves; looked at their friends Thai and foreign and unpacked their bags choosing to remain in the city which had become their home." Yeah we see this a lot. I have noticed this with a number of folks that are on so called "expat packages" especially those that are at the end of their tenure and they think they are going home. A lot of folks, I mean I have had a number of them sit in my office I am not laughing, I am just simply saying it is funny how many people go through this and when I read this excerpt I was just like "oh wow that is a little slice of life. Yeah a number of people oftentimes will think they are heading back and ultimately they decide not to. 

The reason for this video is it is kind of a paradox. I have noticed that with folks especially folks that have a little bit more corporate jobs, often times in academia here they get in a rhythm and they are just working here and living here and one thing I noticed that they don't really do is they never really have that reflection earlier on where they could have put themselves in a better position for retiring in Thailand. For example and I have done a lot of videos on this, if you get about 5 years in to living in Thailand and you say "hey this is a pretty nice thing" depending on your circumstances but if you have a good salary and you are in a stable job, it may be a good idea to look at filing for Permanent Residence in Thailand because once that is approved, if that individual they then leave their job or God forbid they lose their job or they just simply retire, their Residence is secure. They are now resident in Thailand; they don't need to deal with visas if they have Permanent Residence in Thailand and this could be a real benefit. I definitely do see it quite frequently amongst the expats who work here that they always think they are going to go back and then lo and behold, a decade, two decades sometimes three or more have gone by and they just sort of say even though they may still be thinking it up till they are almost about to get on the plane, they oftentimes say "You know what? I am not going" and in my opinion it might be better to think ahead to that moment or the possibility of that moment and get one self legally prepared, especially with in terms of one's lawful status here in Thailand so that one doesn't have that realization and then they are on their back foot for the rest of their time spent being retired here in the Kingdom of Thailand.