@Narelle ********

thanks..hoping the info helps some people who are worried about moving to Thailand and not realising lots of great places to go if rules in the future make it difficult to stay here.

@Hans-Georg *****

😀

@Julius ********

ugggggggggg

@Shai *******

sure thing!😀

I have lived in several countries and so I am fine with moving again if necessary. I have many backup plans.

I have visited 78 countries (43 solo) and there are many great places out there.

Most likely I would move back to Turkiye or Oman. I keep updated on other options on the YouTube channel called the Nomad Capitalist. Andrew does a great job of updating best visa and passport options in the world. Luckily, I opted for the 800k thb in Thai bank which will make it easy to have moving money if I need to leave.

Oman makes it easy to live there permanently if you are willing to buy a condo for about 120k usd in specific developments. I loved working there for 6 years. Muscat has an amazing opera house and amazing beaches and super nice Omanis and many people speak English well and were very patient with my hearing loss. Almost bought a condo in the lovely Sifah development since super nice area but no good hospital nearby yet since too far from Muscat. Good medical care in Muscat but medical insurance is tougher to get since all the citizens have birth to death free medical care. Public transport is minimal but they have Uber equivalent. Driving is on the right side and easy.

Turkiye used to make it easy to stay there long-term with very little investment but currently they have too large an influx of foreigners so they have made it more difficult. But beaches in Antalya were amazing (Konyaalti is my fav) and nice people. Turkiye is great for exploring since such diversity in landscapes. It is also another country where many people go for medical and dental procedures since good and affordable. When I lived there for a year, I paid cash for a lot of preventative stuff for way less than my home country of the usa. Also it was easy to buy medical coverage via Allianz etc. Just leave money outside Turkiye if you can since the currency is still losing value. Plus lots of inflation now. Recently Turkiye made it easier for usa passport to visit on 90 day visa exempt tourist visa.

If you have a USA passport, Albania lets you go there without a visa for up to a year. Nice beaches but gets too cold for me. I also considered Bulgaria but also too cold for me at times. Bulgaria and Romania are both affordable and just joined Schengen area in March 2024. I enjoyed wandering around Eastern Europe for 7 weeks (2 weeks in Romania) and lots of good potential there if you don’t mind being colder.

I am also hopeful that Malaysia will have affordable residency plans again if I ever need to leave Thailand. Enjoyed many visits there.

I also have a 5year tourist visa for India and I can stay there 6 months per visit. Lots of friends in various cities and always enjoy my 10+ visits there. I also enjoyed visiting Sri Lanka a couple of times and have friends who could help me settle if I chose that location.

I have a 10 year multiple-entry tourist visa for China and enjoyed multiple trips there but another place that gets too cold for me. Hehe

I have visited South/central America a couple of times and lots of options there but I have always been a bigger fan of Asia. I still want to visit Panama and Costa Rica since those both still seem like good retirement options. I have visited a few countries in Africa but none called to me like Asia.

I currently have a 2-year residency card in Portugal but the d7 visa I have is too strict about time in Portugal (8 months per year) for my needs so I won’t be renewing.

I spent a month in Greece and I am hopeful they will figure out they could have great retirement visas in the future.

I spent a couple of months in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, UAE, and enjoyed my time there. It can be expensive or affordable depending on your lifestyle choices and I am hoping they will have better options for affordable retirement visas. Really liked their public transport and healthcare while I was there.

I visited the Philippines a couple times and I keep them on my list of possibilities.

Loved working in Singapore for 4 years and had an affordable place at the time but too small a place for them to have affordable retirement visa options.

It is very unlikely I would move back to the usa. I have already visited all 50 states and lived in Missouri (too cold for me) and Hawaii (Lahaina is too expensive after the fires) and Florida (insurance companies are too nutty there now and dropping customers). Life has been pretty great and affordable for me outside the usa for the past 12 years so it would be a bit too much of reverse culture shock.

I keep my maths teaching license updated in Florida USA, so I could go back to work and live in various countries on a work visa if I get bored with my early retirement. I would renew my subscription to the search associates job platform to quickly get interviews.

I use numbeo.com to get estimates of living expenses for cities I am considering. It is like Wikipedia where it can be accurate if you see recent updates by others like yourself.

I guess the hard part for me would be picking a new place since there are still so many great options as a backup plan. As Andrew says on his Nomad Capitalist YouTube channel, “go where you are treated best”.

@Chuck ********

he is awesome!!

@Ian *******

I was able to use the bank book from the fixed for my approval of my first one-year extension but I also took both bank books with me. Hopefully this will keep working each year.

@David ***********

hmm if I have two bank accounts at the same branch of Bangkok bank and I use one of the accounts often and both show in the app, I wonder if this will be an issue for the static account…

But based on your comment, I just did a small transfer from my daily account to the fixed account. Thanks! 😀

@Tod ********

ugggg and this is why I have one account that I don’t touch and a separate bank account for my daily spending in Thailand. Hehe

@Andrew *******

hehe in usa there are so many meanings for flashing headlights. It can mean get out of my way, slow down because there is a traffic coo ahead etc