Any form of contractual 'work' is forbidden without a work permit.. meaning where you are employed by a third party and earn a wage for your toil.. this extends to charity work where you will be labouring on a volunteer basis.. however, there is no law that prohibits you from undertaking routine maintenance on your own home.. or motor vehicle for that matter.. should you wish to do so.. judging by some of the comments here you'd think it was illegal to go out and buy your own groceries.. or even buy a take-away meal and return home to eat it.. because you should have had grab or deliveroo deliver it to keep thai's employed of course!

I'm a Brit married to a Thai and living in CM.. our local Amphur did not require a copy of my birth certificate to register my residence in the marital home.. but did require a translated (English into Thai) copy of our marriage certificate in order to issue a residence certificate.. which had to be certified by the embassy of the country of marriage and authenticated by the BOI.. we used an agent to expedite this process and thus avoid having to fly to Bangkok.. once i had that document i could present it to the office of the Municipality to obtain my 'yellow book'.. which has precluded the need to ever produce a residence certificate for any purpose thereafter.. every govt agency accepts the yellow book (or a copy alongside sight of the original) instead.. so no more visits to immigration for a residence certificate for the LTO etc.. and upon returning to the Amphur with it they were willing to issue me with a 'pink' ID card.. a laborious process but once completed it makes your life much easier.. especially when opening a bank account or applying for a driving license!

Despite this being a very genuine and reasonable 'excuse' to break the lease.. agents and landords will have very little sympathy.. and imo you should look to mitigate your losses.. that means planning your exit and effectively moving out prior to notifying the agent.. as others have advised here.. such that you do not risk having any personal items or possessions impounded because of your failure to pay the rent.. it's clearly better to lose a 2-month deposit than to pay another 8-months rent on an empty property.. and whilst the agent won't be too happy they will surely understand your reasoning.. any threats are futile because they will have no way of seeking legal redress once you have left the country.. and in any event it would not be economic to begin litigation for the sum involved.. and remember if they re-let the unit fairly quickly then this diminishes your liability.. because a landlord can only 'sue' for any actual losses incurred by you breaking the lease.. meaning if a new tenant is found and moves in after say 2-months of you vacating.. then he hasn't lost 8-months rent but only 2-months rent.. and could also seek compensation for any agents fees related to the re-letting.. less of course the deposit they are holding.. so the sum involved would be much smaller than you think and in all likelihood will be written off as irrecoverable.. and in all probability they would rather have the property occupied than unoccupied for the next 8-months.. from both a security and maintenance point of view.. immigration doesn't get involved in civil matters and should not be a concern when you leave or re-enter the country.. just do what you have to but don't make it more stressful for yourself by telling the agent until you have vacated the property.. you are breaking a legal contract to fulfil a moral contract and the latter is far more important imo.. and i doubt you will lose points for it when you are standing outside the 'pearly gates' one day!

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

The reality is that after 20 years of 'defrauding' as in your example.. a UK pensioner would be 87 years old already.. and in all probability wouldn't care less what the govt thought or did.. and there's every likelihood that such discriminatory rules will be repealed before then anyway.. the corrupticians that have been allowed to run the country for far too long are about to be exposed for the criminals they are!

It's never advisable to have an overstay stamp on your immigration record.. what you think is unimportant now can become very important at a later date.. it can mess up any future visa application or even create issues in trying to enter as a tourist one day.. nobody knows where life will take them in the future.. so it could come back to haunt you.. and you would be alerting every other border control that you may not respect their regulations either!

If they are really 'old and battered' you may be better advised to save the cost of extra baggage and put it towards a 'new' set of clubs.. expat groups in Thailand (eg. on fb) are full of listings for used sports equipment at relatively low prices.. i spent less than a hundred quid and got myself some decent clubs.. the higher the transportation cost the more this starts to make sense 😉

@Danny ******

You can use SG bank debit card to make payments in Thailand.. provided you have activated the card for overseas use.. which avoids the need for QR application.

@Dave *********

Hang on.. did you or did you not state that 'uncle sam' will just print more money.. which i refuted.. so you are contradicting yourself here!

@Dave *********

Sorry but this is very short sighted thinking and is clearly based upon your misunderstanding of Uncle Sam's abilities among other things.. the Fed is effectively defunct and can no longer 'print money' like it used to do.. the US Dollar will shortly become an asset backed currency (eg.silver/gold) once again.. which means you cannot have an infinite supply of 'money' in circulation.. this is the death knell of the 'petro' dollar (USD) and the advent of the US Note (USN) which will be referred to as the 'rainbow' dollar moving forward!

John Jowett I think your comment needs to be considered with a little more perspective my friend.. imo if an agent acting on someone's behalf follows the legitimate process for obtaining a visa.. and their sole purpose is to guide you through it and attend to all the necessary filings.. thereby saving you time and energy and the headache of communicating with immigration directly.. and you are happy to pay for such a service.. then it a very 'positive' arrangement for everyone involved.. however many people turn to an agent because they do not meet the criteria to obtain the visa they want to secure.. often because they cannot meet the financial requirements.. such as the seasoned deposit in a Thai Bank account.. and some agents will offer to fudge this by presenting an application to a 'friendly' IO at an immigration office they 'work with' to get it passed without too much scrutiny.. in other words they have someone on the inside on their payroll.. and this practice is indeed illegal.. and the applicant, the agent, and the obliging IO are all breaking the law.. and whilst everyone turns a blind eye and nobody cares that the system is being abused like this it will clearly continue unabated.. however the danger is that there will come a day when someone does start to care.. when the authorities decide to clean up the agent process.. and to begin auditing these visa applications more stringently.. and if it's your application that is found to have been illegally obtained you could find your visa is terminated and / or worse.. that you get banned from the kingdom entirely.. that's the risk you take if you decide to use an agent to try and beat the system.. and in this latter scenario it doesn't just have negative implications for said applicant.. it has a knock on effect for all of us that need to renew our visa's periodically.. since we could find we have more hoops to jump through in the future and greater costs as a result.. the process is already a bureaucratic nightmare without any more red tape being introduced!