The Red Velvet Lawyer

An Expat's Life:  Appetite for the New and Novel As I plan my retirement abroad, I'm reading a ton of books about expat life and living overseas. One book in particular has a passage that seems to sum up very well traits that successful expats share. Here is the quote, Being an expat requires a true appetite for new and novel situations - or at least a hefty tolerance for them - because it's unlikely you'll ever clear up an unfamiliar situation by saying, "This isn't the way we do it back home." Successful expats thrive on novelty and unfamiliar situations. They relish the challenge of figuring out how to get things done, often in new - and possibly better -ways. You will never really know if you are cut out to be an expat until you try it.  Suzan Haskins and Prescher Dan. Guide to Retiring Overseas on a Budget (2014). Thought it was worth sharing.  I was born ready for the expat life.

Filing the TM30 and TM28 Forms; Reporting Week-end Travel So, after spending the summer reading about Ecuador, I had decided to continue to explore Thailand as a retirement destination. Ecuador looks perfectly fine, but I am not ready to leave Asia. Even so, I may need to explore other destinations. Glad I have a year to figure it out. In the past few months, Thai Immigration has begun strictly enforcing a 1970s-era law allowing them to closely track the movement of "foreigners." The law was passed at a time when Thailand saw an influx of 600,000 refugees. One news article explained: When the 1979 law was enacted, Thailand had well under 2 million tourist arrivals annually, but was experiencing major influxes of refugees from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. This followed the fall of Indochina to communist forces in mid-1975, and the invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam at the end of 1978. Today, immigration control is a much changed proposition. Forecasts for leg