Thailand Picks and Chooses

The first time I went to Thailand was for a lad’s holiday a couple of years ago now, just after the end of COVID. And I had one of those epiphany type moments when I was there. I worked really hard in England, and this allowed me to go to Thailand and take a few weeks off with the lads. It was just meant to be a holiday see a different part of the world where we all wanted to go and visit, take in the culture, and build a better perspective on life as a whole.

When we got to Thailand Bangkok, to be specific I felt like there was this invisible rope that had attached itself to me, and the other end firmly attached to the country of Thailand. And the thoughts of going back home pulled on the rope. That’s how I always described it to friends of mine who had not been to Thailand. Thailand grabs hold of you and it doesn’t want to let go.

That lad’s holiday in hindsight was a very bad idea because it made me feel like Thailand was the place I wanted to spend all my time, not just the holiday that I had booked. I was hooked.

Thailand Picks and Chooses

We were only in Thailand for a few weeks hardly long enough to determine that Thailand is now my new favorite place in the world. But I had these feelings on the first day. There was this excitement in the air, this vibrancy that it was very difficult to explain to anybody who’s never been to Thailand before. Bangkok, for example, is such a high paced environment. Everyone seems to be working hard trying to get rich. And when I compared that to back home, the mentality around getting rich there is different.

I loved Bangkok. I loved up north in Chiang Mai. I loved the beaches in Phuket. And wherever we seemed to visit, I could see myself spending time there. My mates who were there with me had a great time as well. But I don’t think Thailand grabbed a hold of them like it did with me. Thailand to them was just another country to visit another country to tick off the list. A great time in Thailand, but not somewhere they could see themselves spending more time.

And I think that’s the best way to describe it. It’s as though Thailand picks and chooses who it’s going to capture, and the people who it does choose to capture have no say whatsoever.

A U Turn in Life

So on that few week holiday, I found myself wanting to make a U turn in my life. I didn’t want to work at the job I was working anymore. I didn’t want to live in the house I was living in anymore. I didn’t even want to be in the same country anymore. I wanted to be in Thailand. And there was no one who could say anything to convince me otherwise.

When we got back to England after the lad’s holiday, I felt like I was a hollow version of myself. I didn’t feel motivated anymore to be where I was or to do the job I was doing.

This is when I started looking at videos about other people who were caught by Thailand and were stuck with the spell. I didn’t realize until I started looking at this just how many people moved to Thailand full time and that it was a thing. I know there was such a thing as an expat, but YouTube really opened my eyes to the possibility of moving to anywhere you wanted to. The world is a lot smaller than it used to be, even 10 years ago.

And this gave me the confidence to think you know maybe Thailand could be somewhere I could go to and I could make a mark on the country.

The Reality Check

At this point, I didn’t know anything about moving to Thailand. I didn’t know about long stay visas if I could even get a visa to stay there. I didn’t know about working in Thailand, finding a job in Thailand, opening a business in Thailand. These were all the things and the options I was thinking about.

I quickly found out that finding a job in Thailand for another company would be very difficult as a foreigner. In my line of work, although it was specialized, I quickly understood that getting a job for a company in Thailand would be a non starter. I looked at the possibility of doing what I did remotely. But unfortunately, I wasn’t in the fortunate position of working in a role that was best suited for remote work.

When I was researching remote work in Thailand, many of the guys were in software development or customer support or another sector such as that. As an engineer, it was very difficult to do that remotely. And although I was paid well at my job in England, I was starting to regret my choices because if I had taken a different path, I could have worked remotely and had an English salary in Thailand. This is the dream of every expat.

My job required me to be on site. So, I knew if I was going to go to Thailand, I would have to find something else to do.

Advice for Young Guys

I did look at remote jobs I would be able to do, but I found the ones I would be able to do were just too menial too basic and mind numbing. I didn’t want to sit at a remote office for 8 hours relentlessly answering calls. That wouldn’t be worth moving to Thailand for, and it was probably one of the only remote jobs I would have been able to do.

That’s when I thought about opening a business and going out on my own. I’d always wanted to open my own business in England, but my job was paying me an amount of money that wasn’t worth turning down. So, I came to the conclusion that if I did want to move to Thailand and make things work, the only way I would be able to stay there is if I opened a business and made money from that.

If there are any people listening to this now who are still yet to choose which career they want to do, and they’re thinking about the possibility of remote work anything to do with coding, software development, app development, things along those lines I would say would be the best thing to get into to be able to work remotely. In today’s world, the possibility of working remotely and from different corners of the world seems to be a lot more important to people than it was even five years ago. So, if you’re still not decided on what you want to do for any of you young guys out there do something that goes hand in hand with remote work. All the better if you can find remote work that you can do in your own time as opposed to during office hours of the country that you do it from. That’s an important point as well.

All I Thought About Was Thailand

I’d been back in England for a couple of months at this point, and all I want to do is be back in Thailand. That’s all I’m thinking about 24 hours of the day. I’m busy at work, come back home in the evenings, and I’d watch videos about Thailand, read forums about Thailand, and just try to understand and learn more about the country without even being there.

One thing that I knew I wasn’t going to do when I went to Thailand that is, if I made it there would be to get in a relationship with a bar girl. I had some fun times in the bars when I was there with the lads. But I suppose that’s what bars are there for to have a good time, but nothing serious.

At the weekends, my mates might ask me if I want to go out for a drink. But when I got back from Thailand, everything seemed so mild in England so tame and boring and dull. I didn’t want anything anymore in England, and I suppose that helped me to save a little bit of extra money.

Time keeps going on, and the thought about what my best option would be is always in my mind.

The Calculated Risk

I could get together about £70,000 which I thought would be enough to open a business and hopefully get a living from that. I wasn’t wanting to go to Thailand to earn a Thai salary. I was wanting to make good money because that’s what my ambition was about. It was about going to Thailand and being a success not to relax and not work. I wanted to be able to work there and hopefully be successful.

I knew there was a risk involved. And after so much thought, I sat down with my boss at work and said what I wanted to do. My boss was a really old school guy, but he had a heart of gold. And he said, “If that’s what you want to do, there will be a job waiting for you if things don’t work out.” I knew he was serious, and I took that as being a sign that he’s telling me to go for it.

I’d only been back in England for a few months at this point, but when my boss said there will be a job waiting for me if things didn’t work out he did mention within the next 2 years so I couldn’t make things go longer than that. But two years to have a go of things if I decided I wanted to do that and move to Thailand I thought that was a reasonable amount of time.

My Mates Weren’t Shocked

When I told my mates I was moving to Thailand, none of them seemed shocked. That’s all I talked about since we got back. And I just couldn’t understand why my mates didn’t want to move to Thailand as well. They hardly ever talked about Thailand since we got back. They had a good time there, but again, it felt like I was somehow connected to Thailand and needed to be there. Otherwise, I didn’t feel right in myself.

I have since spoken to other guys who wanted to move to Thailand and who love Thailand when they went to visit and found any way possible to be able to move there. There really is like an invisible rope that connects some people to Thailand. It’s virtually impossible to snap.

So, I gave up my house I was renting, sold my car, pretty much sold everything I could sell, and I did manage to raise roughly £70,000. This was going to be enough for me to get to Thailand, spend some time trying to find out what I actually wanted to do, open a business, employ some staff, and have a couple of years to try to make things work.

I knew there was a big risk doing this, but it was worth trying. I thought it was a calculated risk that had a huge chance of success. But I did know deep down that things don’t always go according to plan, no matter how hard you try.

Flying into the Unknown

Flying to Thailand with no immediate idea when I was going to return was one of the best feelings I’d ever experienced. Flying into the unknown with endless possibility, endless hopes and dreams of building a life I’d always wanted. I was on track though quite slowly to build that dream life in England. But England all of a sudden wasn’t part of the dream anymore.

Landing in Bangkok, I felt like I was home. I felt more at home after spending three weeks in Thailand than I did spending the rest of my whole life in England. I felt like I belonged there.

A Quick Lesson in Airbnb

I’d booked an Airbnb and got a taxi from the airport, and the place I booked was great. There were signs all over the condo building saying Airbnb was not allowed, but nobody seemed to take any notice of it. And the reason I wanted an Airbnb is because I wanted a condo straight away as opposed to a hotel. But you could immediately feel like you were a bit out of place in that condo, and people were giving you funny looks when you were carrying your suitcases upstairs. So I cancelled the rest of my stay there and ended up going to a hotel after only a day. Only a minor thing, but I wanted to mention that if any of you guys are thinking about using Airbnb in Thailand.

Where to Base Myself?

At this point, I didn’t know where in Thailand I wanted to base myself. I didn’t even know what business I wanted to open yet, but I had given myself two weeks to come to a decision about where in Thailand I actually wanted to be. Bangkok was great. I loved Bangkok. But any business I wanted to do, I wanted one where I could help expats or do something with tourists something along those lines. And I didn’t think Bangkok would be the best place for me at this point.

Two weeks traveling all around Thailand, and I decided I wanted to be based in Phuket. I found Phuket was an amazing place. While it felt more expensive than the rest of Thailand, I felt when it came to opening a business, this would be the best place to do it for me.

I rented a small condo near the Lotus Supermarket, initially on a six month lease, and started to think about the type of business I wanted to open. That was my first error, I think. Because the longer I stayed in Phuket in fact, over the next week I found myself not actually liking it as much as I thought I did. I was looking at it probably from the wrong perspective that of a tourist who liked beaches and beach bars and things like that.

Phuket Wasn’t for Me

But I quickly found that Phuket wasn’t how I actually thought it was. There seemed to be so many people there other expats and tourists but they appeared to be from different countries than I was expecting. I didn’t have any problems with that. But I wanted to target English speaking expats or tourists in whichever business I wanted to do, but most of the people that were there seemed to speak Russian, which I couldn’t speak. So, I felt like a big portion of the market there wouldn’t actually benefit my business.

So, I spent a week in the condo and I sadly lost a deposit on it because I moved out. The more I explored Phuket, the more I started to understand it from a deeper perspective, and I realized it wasn’t for me.

Back to Bangkok

I went back to Bangkok, and as I had already written off Bangkok as a place to do business from, I was thinking about other locations. I didn’t want to be in Pattaya. I think it’s a great party town, but I didn’t want to live in a party town. In my very younger days, I could get very carried away very easily, and I’d worked hard to get out of that spiral. So, I thought that avoiding Pattaya would be in my best interests.

I pulled up a map of Thailand and looked all over where I could actually do anything. But I was really liking being in Bangkok. Bangkok was everything I loved about Thailand. So, I just thought you know what? I’m going to stay in Bangkok. This is where I love. This is where I want to be. So just make it work.

I found another condo and took that on for six months. I wanted to be right in the thick of things. So I rented in Thong Lo. I love that part of Bangkok. It’s so internationalized, and I felt like you were right in the middle of the best part of the best city in the world.

Money Was Going Down Fast

I’m quickly realizing that Thailand can be quite expensive. You don’t really know what to say when you’re on a holiday, but when you’re living there, it can be expensive for certain things. So, my money was going down faster than I expected it to. And I hadn’t even started a business yet. I didn’t even know what business I wanted to do.

I knew I would need a company. I would need a Thai company, Thai staff, and then I could get a work permit and a business visa, which I should be able to extend in Thailand.

Forming a Company

It was at this point that I reached out to a company that helps expats to start their own company, and I was quoted 100,000 baht that would open the company for me being a 49% shareholder, and there would be Thai people who would hold 51% of the rest of the company. There would be preference shares in place so I would have full voting rights over the company. And this also included the first three months of a virtual office.

Every company needs to have a registered address, but I wasn’t ready to rent any premises yet because I didn’t even know what I wanted to do. So, with the virtual office, at least the company could be formed. I had to state what the purpose of the company was during registration. And for that, I wanted to put something that helps expats and tourists in Thailand, but they wouldn’t accept that. So, I just put “agency.”

About a month later, the company was formed. It had been registered for VAT, shareholdings were in place, and I was just about at the point where we could hire Thai staff and I could get my business visa and work permit. But not knowing what I wanted to do yet, finding the staff was going to be difficult. I had the company formed, but it wasn’t in use yet. But I felt good knowing that I was ready to go when I needed it.

No Closer to Starting

I spent hours in my condo coming up with different ideas, different plans of what I could do to actually start making some money. At this point, I’d already spent about £10,000, and I was no closer to starting anything. And I’m starting to think like maybe I’d bitten off more than I could chew.

I was where I wanted to be, but I didn’t have any business experience, and I didn’t know what business to actually do. What I wanted was something that would cost as little money as possible to set up and maintain yet that had big potential. Some of the ideas I had such as becoming an estate agent but you’d look around and there were so many companies doing this. Then you’d think about something completely different.

But I decided that what I wanted to do was assist other people moving to Thailand to be able to help them form companies and help them get their visas for them and just work as a kind of agent. Pretty much like the company that I paid to help me start my company.

Finding Staff Was Harder Than Expected

I didn’t know anything about this, but my plan was to hire one Thai professional who knew everything about visas, company formation, and tax. That way, if a client came in, we’d have a member of staff who could do it for them. We would need an office location for this. So, I looked around the Thong Lo area, but I found it was quite expensive to rent an office in that location.

One of the big issues that I did find when looking for office space in Bangkok was that most of the spaces were actually very big most of them over 100 square meters, and that was the norm. And I wasn’t expecting that. I just wanted a small office that was big enough for three people and a few clients. That’s all I needed. And it took me a very long time to find that. But I did manage to find somewhere in Asok right in the center of Bangkok. But it didn’t come cheap.

I found that office space was more expensive than condo space. Perhaps I should have looked a bit further afield, but I wanted to be in a good area. So, I signed a lease and paid the deposit and took it over.

Good Staff Cost Money

At this point, I started advertising to find Thai staff. Finding a receptionist someone to answer the phones was quite easy. It cost more money to actually find them and hire them than I was expecting. Everyone said Thailand is cheap and you can hire people for not much money. But in my experience, to find someone who was actually good and committed and dedicated is going to cost you more than this 15,000 baht per month that people keep throwing around.

My receptionist was 25,000 baht. She spoke good English and she seemed keen and dedicated. And I started searching for a legal professional. I was expecting to be able to pay around 30,000 baht per month. But everyone I interviewed and I actually had the company that helped me form the company come along to the interviews; I had paid them to allow one of their legal professionals to come along and ask the right questions to see if they knew anything about it but it turned out that at 30,000 baht, you’re not going to get people who had ideas about things. It turned out that at 30,000 baht a month, you were going to get people who had ideas about things, but they weren’t anywhere close to the type of person I was wanting.

I wasn’t overly worried about things. I was happy to take time. But at this point, I’m paying a receptionist a salary, and I’m paying rent on the office, rent on my condo, and other business expenses. My money is going down a lot faster than I would have liked it to have done.

The Timeline Shrinks

My hope was to get two full years in business to see if it would work. But now, I had enough money for only 18 months in business and that was if I found someone who could work as a professional almost straight away.

I put up the salary to 40,000 baht, and we did get a trickle of people to interview. But when they were asked to outline the process of helping someone get a retirement visa, for example, they were very vague in their answers. And this goes back to the point: you can hire people cheaply in Thailand, but if you want the best people, you’re going to have to pay them very well.

It took us 3 months to find someone, and the salary they were on was 70,000 baht. So much more than I was expecting it to be. But we were finally set up and running. But doing my sums, we had a year to make it work now. Not two years, not 18 months only a year. And that was a panic.

If You Build It, They Will Come?

When we were open at last, I was hoping to start seeing clients coming through the door. I’d made a website myself, but nobody was finding it. I didn’t know anything about marketing or how to get people into the business. I just thought if you build it, they will come. But nobody was coming in. In the first month, we didn’t have any clients.

I started doing Google AdWords, but one click was costing a lot of money far more than I thought it should cost for what it was. But the Google AdWords clicks were not actually generating many plain clients. In our second month, we did have one client a guy who wanted assistance with his retirement visa. For this service, we charged 10,000 baht, plus the government fees and any travel expenses that we incurred to go there. Things went smoothly. The guy got his visa, and the staff who helped did a fantastic job.

Now, the only problem was we needed 10 of these a week plus a few company registrations and a few other things on top but we just weren’t getting them in the amount that we should or hoped.

In a Predicament

I was in a bit of a predicament. I was starting to think like this might not have been the best idea. I just thought you build a website, people see it, and they come into your business. That’s how it seemed to work when I worked back in England. People just came to the website, and that’s how clients came in.

I had some flyers printed out and found someone to stand around central Bangkok handing out flyers to people that looked like they could be expats. Thousands of flyers I’d made, but this resulted in not much incoming business. I decided to hire a marketing person to help with that. I had no choice. It was now or never. And I found someone for 25,000 per month. But they were talking about doing social media related things. I just didn’t see that being the way I wanted to generate business. But they tried things with Facebook and Instagram, and we did start seeing a few clients coming through the door but nowhere near as many as we needed.

And I didn’t have long enough to weather the storm anymore because I had to pay extra for my staff. I needed more staff, and all the money was going out too quickly.

A Shocking Realization

After 3 months of being open, I’m still clinging on to hopes that things would start to work out. But then I realized: as a foreigner, I’m competing with people who don’t have anywhere near the same amount of requirements to get into this business that I did. That’s one of the things I didn’t think about before I started. If a Thai person wanted to do what I was doing, they could have done it without forming a company, without having to hire any staff, and they could have done everything themselves because they spoke the language. That means they would need 10 times fewer clients than I did in order to make it work for them.

And that was a shocking realization that I came to when things weren’t going well.

In the third month, we turned over 80,000 baht. I would have been happy with a salary of 80,000 baht. But after paying for my staff salaries and the rent and all the marketing costs, I lost so much more than I could afford to lose to keep this going on for much longer. And that made me think of the Thai guy who could open the same business. Perhaps he’s got his rent, but if he’s doing 80,000 in a month after a bit of marketing expenses, he’s probably making 40,000 out of it. Not a fortune, but he’s not throwing money away like I was.

Hemorrhaging Money

So, I’m living in Thong Lo and I’m traveling to Asok every day. Some days I walked because it was only a few stops on the BTS, and I’m right where I wanted to be. But I don’t see how things can pick up to the level that I need them to pick up to in the timeframe that I had. I knew it was a risk going into Thailand and opening a business and trying to make it work, but it was a risk I was prepared to take. But the biggest thing was I was expecting to have a lot longer out of it.

At this rate, my money would have run out after 8 months of being open, and we were already nearly halfway through those 8 months.

We persevered though. I wasn’t one to give up, and I did know that if I didn’t work, I had a job to go back to. It wouldn’t be where I wanted to be, but at least I tried. And I still held out hopes that we could start to get some clients in.

Months four, five, and six go by, and I’m just hemorrhaging money at this point. Our best month was month six where we turned over 130,000 baht. But we were still so far away from me seeing anything out of it.

Pulling the Plug

I decided to pull the plug. And as all the Thai staff had worked for longer than 3 months, I had to pay each one of them one month’s severance pay. It had failed catastrophically and in only 6 months. I thought I had long enough for two years. And if things could have progressed like they were doing, there was a chance that after 2 years, I might have started seeing something myself from it. But I just didn’t get that long.

I had about £15,000 left at this point, and I wasn’t ready to quit yet. I knew I could make that last for a year if it was just me, and I thought about lots of other things that I could do. I looked into remote work, but I knew how much I didn’t want to do some of the things that people did in order to be able to stay in Thailand for example, being in customer service or answering telephones. And I wasn’t going to do that because I felt like my skills would have been wasted.

One Last Idea

Then I thought about the idea of working as an agent who helped other foreigners get jobs working remotely. I really liked the sound of this idea. It would mean interacting with and connecting to companies in England who needed people to work for them in customer service or sales or whatever it is they did. I would invoice them, and I would get people who wanted to work remotely coming through me to get the job.

I started working everything out about this, and I considered keeping on the office space that I had so at least people could visit me if they came in. I had my work permit still, but I didn’t have any Thai staff at this point. And I knew if I wanted to renew my work permit, I would need Thai staff. But I thought I would worry about that later. My lawyer told me as long as I had 3 months’ worth of proof that I had staff, that should be good enough. So, I had 3 months basically to sort it out.

Now, when you are employing staff in Thailand, usually you need four Thai staff to one work permit. But if you are just in the early stages of your company, you can often get two Thai staff for one work permit and that’s what I was able to do. But I did know if I came to a chance of me having to renew my work permit, I may need four staff and two might not be enough anymore. So that was always in the back of my mind.

Cold Calling Hell

I’d never worked harder than I did during those three months. I was cold calling any company in England that I could find, telling them what the services that we could provide were and how we could help them save money on their hiring costs. It might have been the hardest thing that I’d ever worked.

And I did find a few companies who were interested in what I had to offer, but I never got anyone to sign a contract with me. I never understood that some people who do similar businesses seem to be able to find clients. I wasn’t able to no matter how hard I tried.

And at this point, I had to pay the money to close down the company. And I accepted that I’d failed. I tried my best, but I failed.

When the Business Plan Fails

If only that last idea I had would have worked. If I could have found three or four clients, and if I could have had 10 staff working, I’d have been making good money out of it. But it just didn’t work, sadly. And that’s one of those things I had to accept.

Coming to the realization that I might not be able to stay in Thailand was very depressing. I was where I wanted to be, but I just wished it was as easy as looking for a job on a site and applying for it and getting it like it would have been at home. But things are so stacked against you as a foreigner in Thailand. You’ve got really no hope unless you’re one of the few fortunate ones to actually be able to land a good job in Thailand.

My skill set as an engineer I could have probably added value to many companies that needed my services. But getting in the door is just not going to happen. So, I did resign myself to that.

Teaching Wasn’t an Option

I had a good degree, and I did look into teaching. I could have made around 50 to 60,000 baht per month as a teacher. But that was only £1,100 to £1,200. And I wasn’t going to be working for such a small amount of money. The bare minimum I would have accepted would have been 100,000 baht per month. And finding a teaching job for that amount of money although not impossible is very difficult unless you’re working in one of the most prestigious places.

I even started thinking about: could I just answer calls and accept that’s maybe all I could do in Thailand? But again, all I could earn from this would have been 60,000 baht or under. And I’m not working for that amount of money. It’s just not going to happen.

The Reality of Earning in Thailand

That’s one of the things that really shocked me. I don’t understand why some people are willing to work for an amount of money that doesn’t afford you a good life. If everyone put their foot down at the same time and said, “We’re not working for this,” people would have to pay more. But when people are willing to accept amounts of money that you can’t even go out and eat a nice steak when you want to that really made me think that perhaps Thailand is not for people who are extremely ambitious, who are looking for that Thailand lifestyle but with a western salary.

I suppose that’s why most of the guys that go there are already retired. They’ve already got their money. They’ve already got some money that they can take advantage of the difference in prices between where they came from and Thailand. I wasn’t there yet, and I had to think about my now versus my future.

I decided I had to choose my future at this point.

No Regrets

I was still reasonably young, but I did waste £70,000. But I had a good time doing it, and I tried. The fact that I tried to me counts for a lot. If I didn’t try, I would have still been left thinking, “What if?”

True to his word, my boss did let me have my job back, and I’m paid great money. I would take half of what I earn now to be able to live and work in Thailand doing the same thing. And that would still be over 100,000 baht. But at least I’m saving money. I’m saving money as hard as I can because I do want another go in Thailand.

I do know more about how things work in Thailand some of the pitfalls, some of the negatives, how long things take. And I think if I was having another go doing something, I might make the money last a lot longer, and I wouldn’t spend money on things that I didn’t need to spend money on.

Planning for a Future in Thailand

But I’m happy that I tried. And I’m not living where I want to live at the moment. But I suppose it’s made up for by the fact that I’m earning great money.

My plan now is just to invest in property until I have enough property to be able to pay for my life in Thailand. It’s going to be many, many years before that does happen. And maybe when it does happen, Thailand won’t be the same anymore, and I will want to go somewhere else. And that’s fine.

But I don’t regret doing what I did. I would do the same thing again because I learned so much about myself and about how different places are to where you come from. I regret losing the money, but I would do it again if I had my chance.

So that’s my Thailand story. I’m not able to live in Thailand now, but at least I can visit anytime I have a holiday from work.