@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 and there's every likelihood that such discriminatory rules will be repealed before then anyway..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!

@Dave *********

I think you must have mis-read my comment.. the very point i was making was that Thai banks are every bit as safe as (if not safer) than banks in western countries.. and it's the western banks that will go under first when the sh1t hits the fan.. every retort has automatically focused on US deposit schemes for some reason.. whereas the term 'western' covers just about every North American, European, and Australasian country on the map.. and I'm pretty sure we have expats living in Thailand from a multitude of such origins.. all with different banking regimes and different deposit insurance schemes.. and taking a cross section of the 'rest of the world' into consideration I'd suggest it's safer to trust the (bigger) Thai banks with your money.. so I'm not sure what you think is 'hogwash' exactly.. unless you have a crystal ball of course!?

@Jason **********

I'd like to know your definition of 'safe' then.. because btc is largely unregulated and largely untraceable.. it was invented by a 3 letter agency as a means of funding their black ops.. an ideal 'currency' for the criminal underworld to trade without conventional banking oversight.. which allows its value to be manipulated of course.. but then it was sold to the man on the street as an 'investment' product.. to suck more money into its coffers and to try to legitimise it.. it remains a soft target for cyber criminals and fraudsters.. and the biggest risk has to be the volatile nature of its value.. with the current high of around $73k comparing to a low of just under $16k 2 years ago.. and its been a rollercoaster ride in between.. so it's definitely not for the faint hearted or anyone that cant afford to lose all of their holdings.. most people are also unaware that the world is on the precipice of a quantum financial revolution.. the evolvement of BRICS being a taster of what is to come.. but ultimately only 2 recognised (and regulated) crypto's (XLR and XRP) will exist in the quantum world.. so the future of btc is precarious to say the least.. when it starts to drop again it will look like a lead balloon on steroids!

The irony is that people are fearful of trusting Thailand's banking system with their savings.. but many banks in western countries like the US and the UK are on the verge of going under.. and when they do something called a 'bail-in' will happen.. which basically means they swallow up your money and say sorry we can't give it you back.. since the state insurance schemes are only funded to cover approx. 10-15% of all the monies deposited with the banks.. you could lose 85-90% of your savings in such a scenario.. you have been living with a false sense of security for too long.. and if you think the western banking system is 'safe' (or safest) then brace yourself for a nasty surprise.. and while we are on the subject of investments.. you'd better prepare yourself for the mother of all stock market crashes.. sorry to be the bearer of such bad news but personally I'd get out of cash and paper investments (including digital 'money' like btc) and get into real assets like gold and silver.. the stuff you can hold in your hand.. there's a reason why the spot gold price hit a new high these last few days.. you just gotta figure out why!