800k baht is not a lot of money. It's best to do it yourself it's not that hard. However the bank account opening seems to be an issue these days.. maybe have an agent for that alone. It's best to follow the legal path. There have been instances of fake visa stamp and eventual deportation.
Poor guy? Certainly choosing a short cut instead of doing it the right way.. they have this impression that anything is attainable if you pay money even though they would not think about doing this in their home country.
A lot of Western's think that Thailand is so corrupt they can get a driver's license without actually being present. They certainly don't think it's possible in their country so why are they so willing to think it's ok to skirt the law by paying someone to get the licence for them in Thailand.
Sounds about right. Healthcare in the US is ridiculous. I pay $800 to Kaiser every month for poor service. In Thailand or India i can get top notch care and get seen right away.
I think these days you have to use an agent to help you open a bank account.. It's getting very difficult to open one. It's very useful to have a local account to do payments to others using bank to bank transfers and also for shopping using the banks app.
It's still very useful to have a bank account since you can make those payments using the QR code and also payments to others rather than use your debit card or wise especially because with Schwab the debit card seems to get compromised every time I'm overseas and then they block it.