Retiring in Thailand What Can Go Wrong for Foreigners

1. Your Finances Can Run Away with You

Something I want to talk about that can trip you up if you’re not used to it. In the past, you might have saved up for a year for a holiday. You come out here, you’ve got plenty of cash in your pocket, and money isn’t an option. But when you live here, you’ve got a budget just like you do in your own country. And unless you’re extremely rich, your finances can run away with you.

There’s this perception that Thailand is very, very cheap. You can live on next to nothing. And yes and no. If you want to live like a local you eat noodles on the street, you stay in a room, you don’t put any air conditioning on you can live on next to nothing. But for me, that’s not living, that’s existing. You come out to Thailand and you want to have a good time. You want to live in a nice environment. You want to go out sometimes, have some Western food, drinks with friends, and things like that.

You’ve got to be very, very careful, because it can appear cheap on the surface, and that can be a bit of a veneer. You really got to do your research, do your budget, plan it well, and always allow a little bit more for spending.

2. The Visa Rules Are Constantly Changing

The next thing that can trip you up is the visa rules. They’re constantly changing, and they can be quite intimidating. If you come out here for the first time and you want a retirement visa, what I would suggest the first time is go and see an agent. They can make life so much easier with the paperwork. Remember, it’s all in Thai Thais love the paperwork, okay? There’s lots of paperwork. You go to an agent, yes it costs you. It can be a little bit expensive the first year, but it’s very, very easy. You get it done, and the second year you can maybe look into doing your own retirement visa. It’s not that difficult.

3. Falling for the Wrong Woman

The next thing I want to talk about is falling for the wrong woman. Now, obviously, there are a lot of girls in Thailand who are looking for partners, especially Western partners a certain category of girl on dating sites like Tinder, Badoo, Thai Friendly and they’re always on the lookout for a good man who can take care of them.

Now, you can find nice girls here. You can get into good relationships. I have a Thai girlfriend of over 3 years now. It hasn’t been perfect, but we’re getting there slowly. But you’ve got to be careful. The problem is some guys will go into their favorite bar every night, which has got a bunch of girls in there, and the girls will spin a story that she doesn’t like to go off with customers she only sits there and drinks with them and all that sort of thing. And it’s very easy to fall for these girls fall in love with them and before you know it, you’re in a serious relationship from your side, but she’s not seeing you as a serious relationship, and your bank account can get drained very, very quickly.

4. Don’t Believe Everything You Are Told

Don’t believe everything you are told. When you come here on vacation, Thai people want to make you happy. You’re spending money here, but you don’t always want to believe everything you’re told. Immediately check it out for yourself. That might not seem very important as I’m talking about it here now, but a perfect example: you might be in a bar and you ask the price of something, somebody tells you you check out with two or three other people and it’s completely different.

5. Property Rules Are Complicated

Another thing that can trip foreigners up is property not understanding the rules. Here in Thailand, a foreigner can buy a house, but he can’t buy the land that it stands on, which if you think about it really if you were to buy a house but somebody else owned the land. A Thai person has to own the land, okay?

A lot of guys, what they’ll do, they meet Thai girls and they put the house in the Thai girl’s name. That can work for some guys, but it’s a very dangerous game to play because you’ve only got to fall out with that Thai girl the partner, the girl you thought you loved. Marriages and relationships go downhill all over the world, not just in Thailand. And if you buy a house, you put all your money into it, you put it into your girlfriend’s name just so you’ve both got somewhere nice to live the problem is when you fall out, you’ve got no comeback. It’s not like in the UK where the courts will rule in favor of certain people and the amount of money is shared equally. That doesn’t happen here. If you put the house in your girlfriend’s name or your wife’s name and you fall out, you’ve lost it.

Now, you can buy condos and apartments here as long as there’s not more than 49% of foreigners living in that block. But what a lot of people don’t know is generally it’s on a 30 year lease, and it’s not automatically renewable again and again. Now, I always get comments when I mention this people say, “No, that’s not right.” But I’m pretty sure what I’m saying right now is you can buy a condominium, you just can’t buy the land.

6. Getting Stuck in Holiday Mode

When you’ve been here for a while on holiday and then you come out here to live, some people just can’t get out of that holiday mode. What I mean by that is when you come out here for a few weeks to party, you might go down to Pattaya, you’re staying in a little hotel, entertaining the ladies, on the beach all day it’s just like a nice 3 week holiday. You get back on the plane, go back to work, and real life kicks in again.

The problem is some guys come out here to retire they’ve done their budget, done due diligence, everything’s good on paper but they just can’t break that holiday mode. Unless you’re extremely rich, you can’t be out in bars, go go clubs, nightclubs, jazz clubs, Western dinners every night. You just can’t do it. It becomes expensive, and you can get through your budget very, very quickly.

You need to be disciplined with yourself and get yourself into a routine like you would in your own country. The only difference is here, you’ve got the sunshine on your back in the mornings.

7. Health Issues and Hospitals

Health issues this is something else that some guys tend to ignore. Now, when I say health issues, I’m not talking about insurance. You can look all that up on Google and do your own checking, find out which insurance is good for you. I’m not insured, as it happens. Not because I’m very cavalier or have that attitude that nothing will happen to me, but the best insurance company that I researched for 2 years wouldn’t insure me for a heart attack or a stroke because I’m on a blood thinning medicine. I take it once a day. I’m perfectly fit, but my blood pressure was a little high (it’s not now). They said, “We’ll insure you, but if you have a heart attack or a stroke, we won’t insure you.” And I thought, “Well, what’s the point?”

So, I’ve put a million baht aside in a bank you can work that out in your own currency and all that is to cover an immediate emergency, like a heart attack. A stent would range from 350 to 500,000 baht to get sorted out.

The other thing on health issues: when you come here, don’t just go to the nearest hospital to you, because that’s very convenient. You live on Sukhumvit Bumrungrad is on Soi 3, but it’s probably the most expensive hospital in Bangkok. Very good private hospital, but you can look around. I myself in Bangkok used to use the Christian Hospital on Silom. Saladang is the BTS station. Very, very good private hospital, but the cost was relatively low.

As an example, I had a cancer lump here. I had it removed. In another expensive hospital (which I won’t name), they quoted me 68,000 baht to have it removed. At the Christian Hospital, it cost me just under 10,000 baht. Big difference for first class treatment. So think about hospitals and dentists. You need to look around. If you’re living here, don’t just go what’s on your doorstep you need to go out there and look.

8. Drinking Can Become a Bad Habit

Drinking can become a really bad habit. You can go to the pub or the bar in your own country, and it’s acceptable to go out a couple of times a week and have a few beers. But especially if you’re living here on your own you’ve come to Thailand and you don’t want to be sitting in your apartment watching TV all night (although when you’ve been here quite a long time, you will do ’cause that’s what I do). No, you want to go out and you want to socialize. It’s still quite exciting. You want to make friends, and you’ll go to a bar.

But you’ve got to be very, very careful because it can creep in. You go out drinking every day alcoholism can creep in very, very slowly. I’ve seen it happen to a lot of guys, just out of pure loneliness, especially in a town like Pattaya. They’ve got nothing to do in the daytime, and they start hanging out in bars, and they just have a beer to be sociable. Within 6 months, they need that beer as soon as they wake up. So be very, very careful of that.

9. You Need Something to Do in the Daytime

While we’re on the subject of things to do in the daytime, you need to think about what you’re going to do when you come out here. You can’t just rent an apartment, and that’s it. You’re in Thailand. You need to do something.

When you first come out here, the first month or two, it’s very, very exciting. You find your apartment. You’ve got your own space. You shut that door, and you’re here. You’ve done it. You’ve got the visa. You’ve got the apartment. You’ve left everything back where you come from. And it gets very exciting ’cause you start going out to the big malls and choosing furniture and buying microwaves and crockery sets and everything. That keeps you busy. In the evening, you might go out for a beer or something. It’s all good.

But after so many months, you need to find something to do. I know a lot of people out here are into golf world class golf courses in Thailand. There are clubs for everything running clubs, photography clubs, you name it. You’ve only got to look on Facebook groups. That’s the best place to find these clubs.

10. Loneliness Can Be a Real Issue

You need to have friends here. You can feel very isolated. If you come out here on your own, again, it’s all exciting when you first come out here. But when you get a little bit of burnout by burnout I mean you’ve been going out every night for the last 6 weeks, and you’re just tired. At the end of the day, you are retired, okay? You’re not young anymore. Your body’s not going to take the punishment that a young guy could take. It doesn’t matter how fit you are, how many times you go to the gym you’re getting on in life, right? And we all are.

But you can feel lonely even in a city of 10 million like Bangkok. When you get fed up of going out and you stay home, if you haven’t got a girlfriend or you haven’t got a big circle of friends, you can get very, very lonely.

When I first separated from my wife, I went to Pattaya for 2 months. I was very upset. I’d been married for 33 years. The marriage broke down. I was drinking every night in Pattaya. I was sleeping till 2:00 in the afternoon. I was staying out for most of the night. I was getting extremely drunk. I just had to snap out of it. Eventually, I moved to Bangkok, got a nice apartment, got my life in order, and got a nice routine going. So you’ve got to be very, very careful of that.

11. Understand Thai Culture

The next thing I need to talk about is understanding Thai culture. It might be common sense. You might think, “Well, what could go wrong?” A lot of people get in trouble here in Thailand because they don’t understand Thai culture.

A great example: you might get a married couple come here as tourists. They’re staying in a nice hotel in Bangkok. They go out and have a river cruise in the evening, have some nice food. They want to do the sights, and they go to one of the big temples Wat Arun or somewhere like that. Now, what they don’t realize: the guy might have a vest on, and the woman’s got a very short skirt on. You’re not allowed to go into temples like that. You’ve got to show respect. And what will happen when you turn up at the temple, you’ll have sharks outside who want to sell you long dresses and proper shirts for four times the price. So just try and understand the culture. Read up on it before you come out.

Little things you might not realize in your own country, you drop a banknote, and it’s a little bit windy, you step on it so it doesn’t blow away. That’s not done in Thailand because the king’s head is on every banknote. Understand the Thai culture before you come out here.

12. Running Out of Money

Another big issue here is running out of money. You might sell your house, have a nice pot of money sitting there. But if you don’t have revenue streams coming in, then money disappears very quickly in Thailand. On the surface, it appears very, very cheap. And it is for certain things. You can take a taxi from Bangkok to Pattaya I don’t know what the going rate is now, probably about 1,100 or 1,200 baht which is very, very cheap because in your own country, a 2 hour journey in a taxi, you know what it would cost you.

And all the other little things as well 100 baht for this and 100 baht for that. At the time you’re spending, it doesn’t seem like a lot of money. If you’ve got a girlfriend, she might need a little help with her telephone bill 1,000 baht, she hasn’t got it, and she’s your girlfriend, and you feel obliged to help her. In the UK, you want to have a cup of coffee unless you’re going out shopping or having a day out, normally you’ll have your cup of coffee at home. Whereas in Thailand, you tend to go out to coffee shops and bakeries, and you have a coffee in a bakery 200 baht. It can add up, you know? It does add up over a month. All those little 100 baht here and 200 baht there and 50 baht there adds up, and at the end of the month, your bank account can be depleted very, very quickly.

Budget. You need to have an entertainment budget. You’ve got your rent, your electricity, your emergency fund, your healthcare, all the rest of it. Then you have to say to yourself, “Right, this is what I’ve got left. This is what I’m going to spend on dining out, having drinks with friends.” Then you’ve got to divide that over the month and see how you’re going to do it. Everybody’s got their own way of doing it. Some guys will say, “Right, I’m only going out two nights a week, but when I go out, I’m going to have a blast.” Other guys will say, “I’m going out six nights a week, but I’m only going to have two beers every time I go out.”

13. Thailand Won’t Fix Your Problems

Another problem guys have retiring out here is thinking Thailand will fix their problems. If you’ve got problems back in your own country, coming to Thailand isn’t going to solve those problems. Basically, what’s going to happen is you’re going to bring those problems from your own country to Thailand. They’re not going to go away. So, what I’d suggest is if you have problems financial problems, marital problems, business problems, whatever it is back in your own country sort it out. Get it cleared. Come over here with a clean slate, and you’ll have a much better experience here in Thailand.

14. Overconfidence After a Few Days

Another thing that can happen is you can be overconfident after a few days. You get here, you think you know Thailand really well, and you can trip up very, very quickly. What do I mean by that? You can say the wrong thing to a Thai person. You can do the wrong action.

15. Trusting People Too Early (Especially Other Expats)

Another thing, and this is very, very important trusting people too early here in Thailand. Now, I’m not talking about Thai people, okay? For the most part, all the Thai people I have met have been very, very honest. Very honest. I’ve known cases where guys have dropped their phone, dropped their wallets they’ve gone back, and somebody’s handed them in.

But when I talk about trusting other people, I’m talking about other expats. When you come here on your own, you might go into a certain bar and meet a guy that’s from your country. He seems on the surface like a nice guy. Arm around your shoulder. He’s going to show you around. He sits over beers, and he tells you all the do’s and don’ts of Thailand. Very quickly, he will gain your confidence.

These are the sort of guys not all of them I’m talking about a small amount. I’m just saying you have to put your guard up. Not assume everybody is trustworthy. These are the sort of guys who, after a week or so, might talk about investing in a bar you could live the life above the bar, have a nice income coming in, you put your share of the income in and they disappear. There’s guys who live out here in Thailand that’s all they do they just scam people. So when you come out here, just keep your guard up. Keep your sensible head on. Don’t trust people as soon as you meet them. It’s not a good idea.

16. Have an Exit Plan

Now, lastly, what I want to talk about is having no exit plan. You need an exit plan. Something could go wrong in Thailand. You don’t necessarily have to go back to your own country I’ll tell you about my exit plan in a minute. Now, things can go wrong, and you could get deported for whatever reason. People get deported all the time not if you play by Thailand’s rules; you’ll have no problems. I’m on my fourth year. I haven’t been deported yet, touch wood. But you need to have an exit plan. Something could go wrong, and you need to get out of Thailand.

Now, my exit plan I visited Siem Reap in Cambodia last year. I’m not a wealthy man. I’m not poor, but I’m not a wealthy man. I can’t really afford to support myself living in a country like Singapore, for instance, which is very, very expensive. South Korea, Japan, all those sort of places living as a retiree, I can’t afford those sort of places. So it would be somewhere like Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Cambodia.

I’ve been to the Philippines it wasn’t really for me. I’ve never been to Vietnam I plan to visit sometime this year. But we went to Siem Reap last year just to have a look around. There were two reasons why we went. One was to look at Angkor Wat and all the famous temples. But I wanted to get a feel for the vibe of Siem Reap. I’d been to the capital years ago I didn’t really like the capital, a bit kind of dirty and congested and crazy. Siem Reap is a nice mix for me because you’ve got plenty of tourist restaurants. If you want a pizza or a burger or a steak, they’ve got all that, but you can also live 15 minutes away and live very cheaply. Visas are easy to obtain.

That would be my personal exit plan if it all went wrong in Thailand. There’s no way I want to go back to the UK. I’d go to Cambodia and try to set up again and make my life like that.

Final Thoughts

I lead a good life out here. It can be a bit boring sometimes. I sometimes have arguments with my girlfriend it doesn’t always go right. I have days where I’m not sure what I want to do, and it gets a little bit mundane sometimes. But it is a great country to live in. And if you play by the rules, you’ll have no problems. I just wanted to pre-warn you in case there was anything you hadn’t thought about.