The Lawyer Who Became Thai: Surviving the Bureaucracy with Benjamin Hart

[00:00:00] Benjamin: I think the DTV gonna go through a reshuffle. They’re going to like tweak it, tighten it, and do all kinds of things too. Take your time, get into a visa that’ll allow you to be here for a minimum of a year. A million things that you think you know cold coming in are just wrong.

[00:00:14] Scott: Absolutely.

[00:00:14] Benjamin: You don’t know what you don’t know, especially when it comes to the issue of just how in demand you’re gonna be.

[00:00:19] Yes. Because you think you’re gonna be a lot more in demand

[00:00:22] Scott: Yes.

[00:00:22] Benjamin: Than you probably are. When that employer is looking at you. It’s not just your sal worried about paying, it’s also you gotta have a work permit. There’s all kinds of hidden sunk costs that go in from the employer side that I think when you’re new especially and you’re young, that you don’t really see and it’s just not something that factors into people’s thinking.

[00:00:44] Scott: So today I am sitting down with Benjamin Hart, the American lawyer and managing director of Integrity Legal, who of course, uh, is well known on YouTube. He arrived here well before me, in fact, in 2008. Is that right, Ben?

[00:00:58] Benjamin: Yeah. I got here March of 2008 and went, I moved to Korea in August of oh seven, but I got to Thailand in March of oh eight,

[00:01:04] Scott: so quite a few years.

[00:01:06] Another thing that, it’s really interesting that I reason I really wanted to have you on, uh, Ben, was you became a naturalized citizen.

[00:01:12] Benjamin: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:12] Scott: Which is a big deal. So I, I really want to talk a little bit about that. Let’s see. There were a few other topics we’re gonna discuss today. Things like the difference between a nomad and an expat, um, because we both spend a lot of years here and you kind of see that some people coming in may be a little naive and not really understanding the Treaty of Amity because for CI US citizens, I think this is something a lot of people might misunderstand and, and you’ve dug a lot deeper into that.

[00:01:34] And then some leading indicators and changes that we’re seeing in Thailand. Mm-hmm. Which, again, I’m not gonna expose right now, but is very interesting of your, your theory there. And then how hard it’s been as an expat, because I think a lot of us really struggled for a lot of years. Mm-hmm. And I don’t know, I, I wanna know whether or not you think it’s getting easier or harder, uh, over time for expats that are actually coming over here, starting businesses here and whatnot.

[00:01:55] So,

[00:01:55] Benjamin: yeah. So actually for me coming in, uh, I, I tell people this a lot. My first two years was that were not that hard. Mm-hmm. Because I started doing purely US immigration work. In fact, my original work permit was handwritten. Mm-hmm. And so that I only was doing stuff that was purely within the bailiwick of American law because as you know, you know, legal pre all professional services are highly restricted by the Thais.

[00:02:24] So at the time. That was how it was set up. But yeah, for the first two years I was here was like the tail end of the Bush presidency in the beginning of the Obama presidency. Mm. And Iraq and Afghanistan were going hardcore. Mm. And all the guys that were contractors up there that just had oodles money that were meeting the loves of their lives down here in Thailand and wanted to get ’em back to like Iowa, where you know, they can get the hottest girl they’ve ever met back to Iowa, you know, and there’s some guy that’s working as a gas station attendant in cobble.

[00:02:54] Basically, it was like, yeah, I, that first two years was not hard. My hardest time was starting in 2010 with the red shirt riots. And then really, really, uh, the worst I ever remember it was when the currency went upside down in, in 11,

[00:03:09] Scott: right.

[00:03:10] Benjamin: When, when the, when the baht went real strong and, and like, yeah, that was a hard time.

[00:03:16] And that was when I started looking at maybe doing some other stuff. That was when I first found the Amity Treaty. But going back to naturalization, yeah, I, I, you know, it’s sort of a, it was all sort of one fluid motion, but it took me 11 years and then, yeah, I was NAS in. Uh, my name was in the Royal Gazette in December of 17.

[00:03:38] So you just got pr, like how long have you had it?

[00:03:40] Scott: Uh, a few months.

[00:03:41] Benjamin: Really? So how long have you been here?

[00:03:43] Scott: Uh, 13 year. Well, since 2012.

[00:03:46] Benjamin: Okay. All right. Yeah. At the time I was actually gonna go through the PR line and do it all like that, and they actually kicked me over to citizenship. They were like, for you, this is gonna end up at the time.

[00:03:57] Because I went through in, I would’ve started that in January of 16. And at the time they told me they were like, it, it was actually because. Ironically and say whatever you want about military governments. At the time they were doing good guys in, bad guys out, and they were expediting and streamlining.

[00:04:15] If you could prove that you’d been here and been paying taxes and everything was hunky dory, they were pretty happy to see you coming through. And they were like, look, you can go through a lot more RGA morale and go through the Red Book line, or you can just try for the whole thing. Now the problem with it was it wasn’t a half step, so you just go from one to the other instantly.

[00:04:33] But once you have it, yeah, it’s great. Now that said, they do, um, you go through the process, you come out. I very much think more like a Thai now than I ever, I’m not ever gonna say I don’t think like an American, I’m still from America. I love America. It’s great, but I think like a Thai in many, many ways. And naturalization did a lot to make that happen.

[00:04:55] Scott: That’s interesting. Now, was the process, it, it sounds like you said it was a time when they were expediting it, but was it still a pretty difficult process? Oh

[00:05:02] Benjamin: God, it was. Yeah.

[00:05:03] Scott: Yeah,

[00:05:03] Benjamin: it was really hard. Well, c well, there’s 11 years where all I was doing. Mm. In fact, I knew I wanted to go for citizenship. So a mentor of mine, shout out to a guy named Ron Crystal’s.

[00:05:13] Been out here Lon. He, uh, was like a mentor of mine out here. He’s, uh, came out here in Vietnam. He was a, he was a lawyer for the Air Force, and then, you know, decades went by and he himself naturalized. So I had somebody I could bounce stuff off of. But he told me, like my third year in, he was like, if you’re really serious about being here, you need a plan to become Thai from this mo like you need to, and I had binders and stuff when I was going through processing, like you, you know, I would pull ’em all out, look at everything over and over and over again.

[00:05:46] I started doing that even up to eligibility. I mean. I was actually ineligible the first time I went to apply ’cause they had some kind of problem with my, one of my tax returns from three years prior. So I had to, I had to kick it back, wait. ’cause I filed the first time. I tried to file the first time and I think, I wanna say like April of 15.

[00:06:06] And they were like now, and so the first business day of 16, I had filed a new return and I was able to get back in there and they were like, okay. They accepted it. And put me through. So, yeah, I mean if, yeah, actually if you wanna look at it, it really took me about three years to get it done by the time you look, if you look at just the processing, but 11 up to that point.

[00:06:27] So, yeah, it, it’s not easy. They do not make it easy. So it, you know, they don’t like, it’s not that they don’t want people, but it, they want you, I think, to think more like a tie when you come out of it. And honestly, because I use English so much and things, my, my language could have been a little bit stronger.

[00:06:43] Frankly. It slipped a lot from when I had to be tested to go through all of that stuff. But yeah, I’m, yeah, it’s, it’s good. I’m hunky dory now. It’s all fine now. Once, once you get it, it’s like you, 2018, I was walking on air. I didn’t care about anything. It’s all good.

[00:06:58] Scott: Yeah, I, one way I’ve described it, I’m curious if you agree, but it’s, it’s simple but not easy.

[00:07:03] Right. Like once I started to realize how. How they think of it when, now this is for pr, right? Right. Just to be clear.

[00:07:09] Benjamin: Yeah.

[00:07:09] Scott: No, that, but, but

[00:07:10] Benjamin: I’ve processed PR too.

[00:07:11] Scott: When you think, what are they looking for? Right. And you start to realize, as you said, you’re gathering documentation and you’re saying, okay, they, you know, tax returns are important, what you’ve contributed is important.

[00:07:19] Um, you know, having all this stuff prepared is very important. Then it’s kind of like a matter of, it’s really hard to gather that information sometimes if you’re not preparing ahead of time. And so, yeah. So I like, once I understood the, the, the view that they’re looking at it in and what they want to see.

[00:07:32] Mm-hmm. And to me it was a relatively simple process and a lot of people complain about how difficult it is, but I get it. Right. Mm-hmm. I, I, I empathize as long as you can see from that perspective, but you gotta start early, right?

[00:07:42] Benjamin: Well, and, uh, when you understand that the problems they’re going to give you are problems that they will give you in retrospect.

[00:07:50] So what I mean to say is, is I would say the tie bureaucracy does this a lot. They like to, they like to use time as a factor. So, for example, if they’re gonna jam you up on something, they’ll jam you up on things. I mean, we can go a, a little bit, this, this actually goes into some of the new visas they’ve created.

[00:08:08] Mm. So like the LTR, the DTV.

[00:08:10] Scott: Yeah.

[00:08:10] Benjamin: Like, people look at that and they’re like, oh wow. You know, I can get instantaneously, I can get locked in for some serious time in Thailand, blah, blah, blah. But none of it’s work authorized in the same way that it used to be. And they’re not visas created under the old act the way that they used to be.

[00:08:24] So the Thai, on the one hand, it looks like they’re really given something. Mm. But first of all, when you re realize that all of those visas can be rescinded at any given moment. Drop of a hat, no problem. But also that you’re not tabulating time toward PR or citizenship. Right? Then you see that, oh, they’ve, you know, by the time you realize that three years, four years into a DTV, you go, oh, well, well, you know, that’s how they kind of like to do things.

[00:08:52] So I’ll, I’ll give you one example. I was supposed to take ano, I was supposed to take a tax rebate in 15 and I almost did it, and I later realized that the way I would’ve done it would’ve restructured my tax return and. We didn’t end up doing it because if I would’ve done that, I would’ve fallen under some arbitrary threshold.

[00:09:15] Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they’re not all out to get you. Maybe they were trying to get, I don’t think that was what was happening, but those are the kind of things you have to worry about. Like prospectively with citizenship, you have to sit around and like, you almost have to game out how this is gonna look.

[00:09:30] By the time you get into where you’re being determined if you’re eligible for citizenship or pr, and. You have to like build it backwards from there.

[00:09:40] Scott: Right.

[00:09:40] Benjamin: Is I guess the best way to put it.

[00:09:41] Scott: Well, and it goes back to what you said you got from the mentor, which is a, you know, are you, are you serious about this?

[00:09:47] Because if you’re serious about it, you work backwards from that, don’t you?

[00:09:49] Benjamin: Right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and the other thing is, look, the ties, I read this great book one time about Tiger Woods, who’s, who’s mom’s tie that the most amazing thing about Tiger Woods is he did not think from the tee box to the hole, he thought from the hole back to the tee box.

[00:10:05] He like, he sort of thinks backwards. Well, in, in retrospect, I realize he just thinks like a tie in many ways. Like that’s, and the bureaucracy here does that too. They’re like, well, if we’re gonna thwart you, we’d rather not thwart you right at the desk and give it, and give sort of an opportunity for conflict.

[00:10:22] Oh, no, no, no, no. It’ll be something from four years prior that there’s nothing you can do about it now, and you’re just stuck with it. That’s, that’s how they like. So, yeah, you’re, you are aware that you have to kind of be like, I view it as the time I spent actually going through the adjudication of nationality.

[00:10:39] It was like a half flex muscle.

[00:10:41] Scott: Mm.

[00:10:41] Benjamin: And then the minute you’re done, it’s just like you can relax.

[00:10:44] Scott: Yeah.

[00:10:44] Benjamin: You know,

[00:10:45] Scott: I, I have to share a couple recent circumstances that I was in that really reinforce what you just said there, which was number one for PR I, there was this process where you’re, you’re floating, you’re basically your application with the officials early, right?

[00:10:58] Benjamin: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

[00:10:58] Scott: And, and so they’re, that’s when they pick out a lot of it, the vets. Yeah. Right. And that vetting process, by time, you’re then getting into, oh, now we’ve accepted your application. Or fast forward a little bit where they’re actually interviewing you. From my understanding, they really want you to succeed at that point, but they’re stopping a lot of people at the early stages.

[00:11:15] Um,

[00:11:15] Benjamin: part of that, part of that is because the minute a fee is paid

[00:11:18] Scott: Yeah.

[00:11:19] Benjamin: There’s now due process. So if they deny you have a, you have a, you have standing to ask why.

[00:11:27] Scott: Okay.

[00:11:28] Benjamin: You know, and, and they don’t really like, this has just been, I, I’d never heard this officially said, this is just my observation of how they operate, that once you’ve filed, they don’t want you to not, they don’t want you to not really get it.

[00:11:43] Mm-hmm. Because if you don’t. Then you’re gonna file an appeal and there’s gonna be all kinds, you know, they’re bureaucrats at the end of the day. They want, they want it to just be put on a conveyor belt and just sort of move. And it, that’s why they do all that like, heavy, heavy vetting.

[00:11:58] Scott: Right. Uh, well, so the simple example though, that I experienced was getting a renewal from my driver’s license.

[00:12:03] This was just a couple of weeks ago.

[00:12:06] Benjamin: Yeah.

[00:12:06] Scott: But this was a situation where I had just gotten PR and I was supposed to get, uh, you know, be in the tabien baan and have that ’cause we have a house or my wife has a house. Yeah,

[00:12:14] Benjamin: yeah.

[00:12:14] Scott: And so you get into the book, we’re stuck in that. Right. And, and we’re stuck at that stage.

[00:12:18] But then I’m gonna, oh, now I have to renew my driver’s license. I go there and they say, oh, you have a red book. Great. You have residents. Perfect. Now we need the tabien baan. I’m like, oh, my district office hasn’t given that to me yet. I have these other steps I have to go through for that. So they were kind of like, sorry, uh, but no thanks.

[00:12:32] And I’m thinking it’s expiring. What am I supposed to do?

[00:12:34] Benjamin: Yeah.

[00:12:35] Scott: I eventually got through it all, but my point is it’s all had to do with that vetting stage, but as soon as I got what was needed, man, that process was easy. Yeah. It just is like, it didn’t used to be that easy. I mean, years ago, I’m sure getting a license, I dunno if it was as efficient, but now it’s like, it actually is like a, a mechanical process where it’s like, go to this station.

[00:12:51] Go to that station. Mm. It’s quick, but man, they, they stopped me at that first step. Right? The,

[00:12:56] Benjamin: oh, I don’t know. I was just talking to my wife yesterday who actually works in our firm and she said that she won’t even do her own license now. It’s just gotten so

[00:13:05] Scott: crazy.

[00:13:06] Benjamin: Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot, there is a lot to that.

[00:13:09] They want all the tumblers in the lock and then they just want it all to flow smooth. What with pr, what they’re really worried about is that you get into the system. And then somewhere along the lines, there’s a genuine reason for denial and then it creates a bunch of conflict and you’re sitting around appealing and they, they just don’t wanna go through that, that, so they pre-vet, that’s, I think that’s why they do that.

[00:13:31] I, I’ll tell you, I would, the only part of citizenship that actually made me kind of mad was after I’d been through everything. And I had my certificate of nationality, but I went down to the local CAT office, the district office to get my ID card. Mm. And they were like, oh, well we need to review everything.

[00:13:49] You need to come back in a week. I’m like, you need to review everything. What are you talking about? I mean, I’ve been completely review. You know, I, it was one, it was the only point. Everything else, ’cause you go through special branch, then you go over to the interior ministry, then it goes to the palace, then it goes back to the Royal Gazette at somewhere along the way, the Prime Minister has to countersign that.

[00:14:09] For it goes in the Royal Gazette and then you come out and your name has been in the Royal Gazette, and then you got some bureaucrats. It’s like, well we gotta review it. I’m like, what are you reviewing? You know? But I get it. They have their mandate. But I came back like two days later and they gave me my id, but it was very anticlimactic getting my id.

[00:14:26] ’cause they were all very not happy with me. ’cause I’ve been unhappy about not getting my ID just on the spot. But the, that was the only part I got particularly angry. The rest of it was just patience and you go through it. But the um. They were doing their job. But I gotta be honest with you, that seems a little nonsensical after you’ve been through all of that.

[00:14:44] Scott: Yeah. But at least once it’s all done. It sounds like you did at least have probably a year of celebration.

[00:14:49] Benjamin: Oh, you one? No. And one, and once you’re done with it, I, I can’t explain how little, the stuff that I had a, I had another friend, he was an American born tie, he was tie by blood, but born in America and he never got around to getting, they, his, you know, this happens a lot.

[00:15:05] People, they, the folks don’t get around to getting their kids’ nationality sorted out on the, on the tie side especially. We see this happen a lot. And then they sort of come back and then they want to get it. I went, we helped him get it. And I’ll never forget, he, he treated immigration and everything, like all of us did.

[00:15:21] You know what I mean? The minute he had his id. He just stopped caring and it was like, and I was just sort of, it was because he had been here on an visa. He had Thai parents and all of this good stuff, and, but the minute he had it, he just stopped caring. He was just like, yeah. Well, I remember once I was talking to him about something going on with my visa and he was, he’s just like, well, do, do, do, do, do, do.

[00:15:43] He, you know? And I was like, yeah, thanks a lot. Yeah. 2018 and onward one, if you get citizenship. Believe me, naturalized ties it. It’s like Gollum in the ring. It’s like, it’s like it’s our precious, we we guard it zealously.

[00:15:58] Scott: Well, that also takes me to the other end of the spectrum, which is the individuals that come here, whether they’re backpackers or whatever else, and they just get on these, you mentioned LTR, but there’s the DTV as they dvs too.

[00:16:10] DTV and uh, I don’t know. Like there’s this transition that I think a lot of us go through where you’re a tourist here. Yeah. Or you’re maybe a long-term tourist here. Yeah. And then you’re making this transition to being an expat. Right. So how do you feel the difference between like a digital nomad or a tourist versus an expat?

[00:16:25] Are they one of the same or is there actually a big,

[00:16:27] Benjamin: there’s a big spectrum. So there’s tourists, to my mind, there’s tourists, digital nomads, expats, immigrants. And then there’s like the true. You, you’ve just completely immigrated and become and gone native, I guess you’d say. Gone native would be the last.

[00:16:43] So tourists are what they are. We all know tourists. They come and go, they do their thing. Uh, the new edition is this digital nomad and that had a prior iteration. You, we were talking I think off air before we went on, but about, um. When I came in and we were kind of talking about how you come up, it’s like a, it’s like climbing a cliff in certain ways.

[00:17:07] I was very fortunate in that the first two years I didn’t have to worry so much about getting the work. Like I, there, there was, there was enough work coming in for me that, that I, I was pretty well okay. On that side. So I was just sort of getting acclimated. Now, I, I later had to deal with the problems that most people have right up front.

[00:17:25] In my third, fourth, and fifth years I dealt with that. Most people deal with that. Right at the beginning I was fortunate, but in many ways it had added challenges by doing it differently. The, the difference be, so nobody really came in at the same time I came in. There’s not a lot of people that are like my age, that are like early forties, you know, between 40 and 45.

[00:17:47] You’ll meet a ton of people here now, especially that are like right under 30

[00:17:52] Scott: mm.

[00:17:53] Benjamin: Uh, but like somebody that’s been out here almost 20 years that’s my age, find some, it’s pretty hard. Like when I do, I’m always like, uh, we usually end up being pretty good friends because we have a lot of the same experiences and things.

[00:18:06] But no, there weren’t a ton of people coming in at that time. You gotta remember we were coming off, uh, the global financial crisis. We were going to that six, seven, and eighth. That was why I left. Right. We stayed, it was a big reason. ’cause I was looking around, I was like, oh, let’s see what this Asia thing’s all about.

[00:18:20] And then, uh, so when I, yeah. When I came in, it was still very old school. Like you had to go in, you had to, I never have been here without a B visa. Mm. I always had a b. Wow. Yeah. So I was always in non-immigrant status and, and so I didn’t even come in the tourist side. I was planning to work down here. The nomads are different from the expats.

[00:18:41] Expats, I. Retirees take this how you want to take it. No offense, like I, I just would put all retirees into the expat category ’cause that’s the universe that they live in. They’re not, some of them like to work or have something going on on the side or offshore or whatever, but most of ’em just wanna be in Thailand and hang out.

[00:19:00] And that’s that. The nomads have, they have plans. I don’t know if their plans are gonna go anywhere all the time. Um, but they do have a different mentality. Uh, Matt Smith, we were talking about, uh, Doug Casey earlier, and he’s a guy that talks to Doug from time to time. And, and Matt Smith brought up a good point in one podcast I saw years back where he said, you know, the problem with nomads is they’re somewhere between really putting down roots and being a tourist.

[00:19:30] Mm. So it’s, it’s kinda like. The, we, you know how like the Marriott has like residential side, that’s where the, like the nomads are at. They’re still in a hotel, but they’re in like the Oh,

[00:19:41] Scott: okay.

[00:19:41] Benjamin: Monthly rentals.

[00:19:43] Scott: Yeah, yeah,

[00:19:43] Benjamin: yeah. And then, and then your true expat has really transitioned over to, I need to work from, man, I’m paying taxes here.

[00:19:49] The big through line through all nomads is they’re constantly, always trying to avoid tax in like all jurisdictions, no offense, I get it. They’ve, they’ve been sort, especially their, uh, their demography and, and the timing of like how they’ve come up. It’s kind of compelled them to be truly nomadic and have to wander around through all these jurisdictions so they’re not getting banged over the head by tax.

[00:20:11] ’cause it’s hard enough to make money online or whatever it is they’re doing. I get the thinking it makes complete and total sense, but the, but that mentality is very different from expats.

[00:20:21] Scott: Right?

[00:20:22] Benjamin: You know, we, we were talking, uh, on the way over here about. British Chamber of Commerce and this old boy who used to run British Chamber of Commerce, guy by the name of Greg, I’m forgetting his last name, but I remember talking to him years ago.

[00:20:33] He just looked at me. I don’t remember in the context of what, but he just looked at me and he goes, do you know who pays the top rate of taxes in Thailand? Do you know who’s constantly in the top? It’s always foreigners.

[00:20:44] Scott: Yeah.

[00:20:44] Benjamin: It’s the expat community. So the difference between nomads and expats to my mind is you’re an expat if you’re sitting here and you’re chucking out some tax money.

[00:20:53] Scott: Yeah.

[00:20:53] Benjamin: If you’re not, you’re probably a nomad. Or you’re, yeah.

[00:20:57] Scott: Right. I mentioned this in another discussion I had, but it was, uh, I, I got the benefit from having paid all those taxes. So I’ve been paying taxes for many years. Yeah. But it made my experience, uh, going through the PR process. And I assume citizenship would be the same way.

[00:21:11] They like to see how much you’ve contributed.

[00:21:13] Benjamin: God, yeah. They,

[00:21:13] Scott: right.

[00:21:14] Benjamin: Yeah.

[00:21:14] Scott: Yeah. So I’ve seen people bite themselves because if they’re maybe, uh, a nomad or maybe they’re making that transition and they’re optimizing for their tax too much, they might not be spending, uh, or sending enough money through Thailand or setting their salary high enough and those things like, yeah, you’re saving a bit of money on taxes, but there’s downsides to that as well.

[00:21:30] Benjamin: Yes. You and, and look, they, they joked, I, I remember there was this colonel and these two like majors, or maybe one was a major and one was a captain. Uh, when I was doing my national, uh, special branch, I was going through special branch at National Police Headquarters. It’s like the first, I think I was in basically what I would call the second phase of the nationality process.

[00:21:51] And the, um, they actually looked at me and they said, Hey, do you wanna know how much taxes you paid here between yourself and through your corporation? And I was like, not really. And they were, and they were like, well, you’re gonna know. So they told me.

[00:22:02] Scott: So you’ve paid quite a bit in taxes, it sounds like.

[00:22:05] Benjamin: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I would say, I would say I’ve, I’ve paid my fair share as it as it were. The, um, yeah, but that, that’s a big differentiator to my mind between a nomad and an expat is, is the tax thing. And, and circling back to what I was saying about what Matt Smith said is, you know, these, these nomads, and not all of them, I’m not trying to make a broad sort of stereotype here, but.

[00:22:26] It there, there’s, they’re somewhere in between. They’re, they’re not, they’re not exactly here full time, but they’re not exactly, not here full time. You know, it’s Thai and frankly used to handle this a lot better. We used to have what was called Multiry visas. That could be, you probably remember this. Yeah.

[00:22:42] You could get ’em from honorary consulates. Yeah. And they’d be like a year duration. You get 90 days a pop. I had tons of guys that were on those, and especially the guys that like worked off offshore. They were in the military, they were contractors, they were this, that, or the other thing, you know? Or they travel lot internationally.

[00:22:57] You know, they’d spend six months here, but it would be in three month increment, three month increment. And that was that. That’s, that, that is largely gone. I mean, the honorary consulates have been gone. I, I remember making the videos talking about the honorary consulates and then those all were pretty well gone by COVID.

[00:23:14] But yeah, the, the difference between nomads, they, they’re just, they’re not quite living in the, it’s sort of in it, not of it, or, right. You know what I’m saying? Like you

[00:23:24] Scott: working from Thailand versus in Thailand.

[00:23:26] Benjamin: Exactly. Yeah. Very big difference there. A very big difference in fact, that it all comes down to that I’m working from Thailand, I’m working in Thailand.

[00:23:33] That’s a very big difference, which comes down to work authorization on a lot of this stuff. Which again, there’s standard work permits where you’re work authorized in Thailand, and then there’s sort of everything else. So

[00:23:43] Scott: another thing, this is just my opinion on the retirees, and I don’t mean to speak bad about it, but, but I do remember, I, I love

[00:23:49] Benjamin: your retirees, but all of you guys,

[00:23:51] Scott: I’ve done, uh, cost of living videos and I often in my comments will have, uh, the retirees saying, oh my gosh, it’s crazy how much you spend.

[00:23:58] And, and I, I don’t know. I can’t help but say like, okay, I’m raising a family. There’s this expensive thing called school.

[00:24:04] Benjamin: Yeah.

[00:24:05] Scott: Uh, and, uh, and transport. And I’m not relaxing here. I’m, I’m here to work. Um, I’m here to make as much money and essentially build, continue building up my nest egg. And I think that’s a little bit different than when you’re depleting your nest egg.

[00:24:17] Mm-hmm. And of course, I think you can get by very cheaply here. Sure. But, but not if you’re. Raising a couple of young children.

[00:24:23] Benjamin: Well, yeah. You’re, you’re building not burning. I mean, that’s, that’s what you Yeah. As they say back home, the, you mentioned school, the great equalizer of all of the cost differentials and everything for, for an expat, especially to my mind, is international school.

[00:24:39] Scott: Hmm.

[00:24:39] Benjamin: Because that’s where it all comes back. All the cheap food and all the, oh, we can rent a place that’s amazing for nothing. You know, like, it all comes back when you have to send kids to an inter international school. And I’m not even talking about, they all have to go to the, you know, super duper expensive ones.

[00:24:55] But, you know, even kind of middle of the road schools here, it’s significant money. That you’ve gotta find and you gotta find that money. Or they’ll just be like, well your kid’s not going. So have fun with that. Yeah, I, there’s a big difference between the retirees and the younger guys of that. There is no doubt that said the retirees are self-aware.

[00:25:14] Hmm. And that would be something I would say that the nomads maybe lack a little bit, is a little bit of self-awareness where it’s like, yeah, yeah, you’re here, but again, are you in it? Are you of it? Are you really here or are you just kind of passing through? And you know, lately, and I’m not casting any aspersions here, but lately, ’cause we’re at the tail end of high season, you always notice, at least I do, at the tail end of high season, the folks that have been here a bit and have decided they’re right on the cusp of wanting to, to stay.

[00:25:44] And then you als I also noticed that they seem to be, you know, from bar stools or wherever you go where there’s expats talking, you’ll also see the guy that’s been here like three years.

[00:25:53] Scott: Yes.

[00:25:54] Benjamin: Telling those folks, the guy that’s been here like. Yeah. Six and a half months, like, okay, now this is how you got blah, blah.

[00:26:00] Yes. And it’s like, sometimes it’s not bad advice, but, and I’m not saying it’s all bad advice, but it’s, it’s also a little like, Hey there Haas, like, you know, three years in, yeah, you have a few things to impart, but it might not all be like what you think. I’ve, I’ve often said there’s a 1 3, 5, 7 rule. It’s like, there’s a stereotypical kind of stereotypical kind of expat that does a, or whatever you wanna call it, that does a year here, they come in, they do a year, it’s like a year abroad.

[00:26:25] You know, sometimes you’ll meet a guy that’s on like a one year specialized work contract. They’re just in, they’re out three year people. Or like embassy folk, corporate people, expat packages, although there’s fewer and further between of those. I remember when I came in, in oh eight, the era of the expat package was ending, right?

[00:26:45] And that, and that was going a different way. And then you’ll meet the guys that, oh, I’ve been here five years and they leave. They’re almost always a terrible story. Like I bought a gala house and it’s her house and ain of my house. And then there’s seven, seven years, there’s. Are the guys that, and there tend to be men, and we can talk about the difference coming in that, but the seven year guys tend to be, I, I’ve had a few of these over the years.

[00:27:08] I had one guy, the first one I noticed with the phenomenon calls me up from UK and it’s like, Hey, I need you to, uh, pack all my stuff in my house. And ship it back to me. I’m done with dialing and he just threw up his hands, got on a plane and he just left.

[00:27:22] Scott: You know, another thing that I’ve seen, uh, is individuals that have been here for a month sometimes think they know more than they know.

[00:27:28] Then they get here three years or one year and you start seeing, and again, I like a lot of the YouTubers out there. I think some of them provide a lot of value, but some of them are saying, oh, I’ve been here for one year, and they start preaching. You know how it all works. Yeah. And I’m always thinking it’s the same point about the three year.

[00:27:43] Benjamin: Okay. Kids.

[00:27:44] Scott: I mean, yeah. That’s just one of those things where I, I really like your analogy of, uh, you know, someone who has gone from being a hotel, hotel guest to working or to living from the hotel residence. Right. And they really feel like, oh, now I’m in real Thailand. Now I understand real Thailand. And you know, I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point where I’m like, I understand real Thailand.

[00:28:02] I think the more you know, the more you realize how little you know, um, now you,

[00:28:06] Benjamin: you know, less the longer you’re here.

[00:28:08] Scott: Right.

[00:28:08] Benjamin: I actually kind of it there in a weird way. They’re not sort of wrong ’cause they, their, their first impressions are oftentimes the best ones. Mm. Yeah. Or most accurate. But yeah, the, the, yeah.

[00:28:22] The giving advice at a year in, that’s a little, that’s a little over the top. And one of the weirdest phenomenons for me, actually, phenomena for me, just, and I experience it almost daily, is dealing with people that are significantly older than me and significantly wiser than me in their own sort of bailiwick their own world where they’re coming from, you know, like they, they retired outta the military, they’re an airline pilot, or they’re a whatever.

[00:28:46] Like in their world, they’re very good at what they do. And, but then they come to me and, you know, they’re, look, they’re talking to this guy who’s 20 years younger than them, but I’ve done 18 years here. Right. You know, like I, it, it’s a different, it’s a different thing. You have a different, I I often say I’m either the oldest young guy in any given room here in Thailand or the youngest old guy.

[00:29:07] Scott: Yeah, that’s what it always seems like. And that may just be my midlife crisis occurring.

[00:29:11] Benjamin: Who knows?

[00:29:13] Scott: Yeah. Uh, I just turned 40 and so I, I’m a few years behind you in age and a few years behind you in experience here, so I, I like your formula, but, um,

[00:29:22] Benjamin: well, but you’re in pr if you’ve gone through that much bureaucracy, you’re in, you’re, you’re in Thailand.

[00:29:27] I mean, you’re not going anywhere.

[00:29:29] Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, yeah, I’d love it here. And I’ll be honest, there were stages that I, I wasn’t to throw out my hands, uh, but I definitely remember, maybe it was around that seven year mark where I was still pretty impatient. Right. And, and I think, I don’t know what year it happened, but I definitely am way more accepting of the way things are here.

[00:29:44] And I’m also not so accepting that I say I don’t wanna push things in terms of business, or I don’t want to, uh, you know, make it effective company or whatever’s like. I am actually very motivated still, but I’m also a better understanding of how things work here. And I’m not getting upset at every bank, you know?

[00:29:59] Uh, tell.

[00:30:00] Benjamin: Yeah. Right, right. Yeah.

[00:30:01] Scott: You know, so, I don’t know. I think, I think there’s things to work through and you might be surprised how long it takes you to level up. ’cause it definitely took me quite a few years to find that, finally have that epiphany and stop trying to change things, but then still have the motivation and not just say, oh, I’m, I’m fully here and I, I I want to be indifferent and totally fine and just go with the flow.

[00:30:19] I still wanna push things forward, but I’m not pushing it so forward that I’m actually hurting my own, you know, hand as I’m punching.

[00:30:25] Benjamin: Well, I’ve, I, I’ve, I’ve observed there’s essentially three kinds of expats overall and what, so, and it, and it’s really, it’s like 10% are probably fall into your and I category.

[00:30:39] Yeah. And then the, and the other 90% are pretty well evenly divided between one of the two. One is the type that wants to come in. Change things. I’m bringing something new to Thailand, we’re gonna boom, boom, boom. Those guys burn out really fast. Right. I’ve watched that over time. There’s another type that is a far more slow burn.

[00:30:58] It’s the complacency.

[00:30:59] Scott: Yeah.

[00:31:00] Benjamin: You get into real complacency in Thailand, and I see this, I saw this, especially when they rolled out the blacklist. Mm. Because if you recall, within a year after that, they were finding all these guys with like, I’d been here 12 years on overstay and da da dah dah. Yes, I remember that.

[00:31:15] That’s all complacency bias. That’s all normalcy bias. It’s never gonna change. You know, Thailand is strange and so far as they don’t change often or particularly quickly, but when it changes, we’re on a new thing now and we’re doing this. It was like the blacklist. I told people, I was like, they’re really doing this.

[00:31:33] Oh, they’ve said stuff like that. Don’t worry about that. Da da da da da. And by God they went and did it. And then there’s the third type, which is kind of a mix, which is you have to beat, you have to have a motor. To be able to get down the road, to do things, to do business here. You can’t be just com like completely, you know, just, just completely unmotivated.

[00:31:55] But then at the same time, you gotta watch that complacency side of things. Yes. ’cause every time you think everything’s just hunky dory and it’s all just gonna be like that forever, that’s usually when something changes.

[00:32:06] Scott: Yeah. Yeah. I, I still look at. It’s important to fight the complacency, but I think it’s important to sometimes travel back home, sometimes get a little bit of another perspective or, uh, hang around in some cases.

[00:32:17] I know hanging around with expats and ties, right. You gotta find a balance because I, I feel that it’s important to still have a little bit of that fire in you. Mm-hmm. Right. And I, I can hear the fire when you talk, and I know you say you’re, you’re more, you know, acclimated now, but at the same time you still have the Americanness in

[00:32:31] Benjamin: you.

[00:32:31] Yeah. Well, yeah. I will get off on a rant about anything if you gimme enough rope, so, yeah. Fair enough.

[00:32:37] Scott: But I still like, when you find the balance, I still think it’s an unlock because there’s enough of, there’s not enough complacency to just be going with the flow with everyone else. You have an, you have a competitive advantage because you’re able to push things, but not too hard.

[00:32:48] Right.

[00:32:49] Benjamin: Well, and, and, and the Thais. I, I, I, I feel it for lack of a better term, from the ties if I am way off.

[00:33:01] Scott: Yeah.

[00:33:01] Benjamin: You know what I mean? Like, if I’m way, way off, the ties will kind of bump you and kind of nudge you back in. But for the most part, I get the impression that they kind of, yeah, they like that there’s a little bit of that fire.

[00:33:12] But

[00:33:12] Scott: when you accept that though, I, I think life is not so bad. Uh, and we get picky, you know, that is the thing. I think about Americans, we get a little bit too picky and I think we forget it’s not the end of the world. If you have a topping you don’t like,

[00:33:22] Benjamin: you live in the most pampered bubble out. I mean, in many ways us, us foreigners, that if you can find a niche and you can find something to make a living at and live in Thailand, you know, for the most part you just kind of get to do whatever you want.

[00:33:34] So we get a little entitled

[00:33:36] Scott: Yeah.

[00:33:36] Benjamin: When it doesn’t just. Perfectly go our way. It’s a real problem. I do it myself. I’m not, I’m not immune to it.

[00:33:43] Scott: And I know we’ve talked about this, but I think you, we, we talk about that transition of when you start earning in tto, things change, right?

[00:33:49] Benjamin: Yeah, yeah.

[00:33:50] Scott: Um, because you mentioned the digital nomad.

[00:33:52] Say, let’s say that they’re working for an international company. Let’s say they’re selling something online, right? They might be earning in US dollars and they’re could be living a fine life. They could have a low cost of living in Chiang Mai, something like that. Right? Totally fair. But as soon as you start saying, I have to earn in Thai bot and then my expenses are in Thai bot, yeah.

[00:34:07] It’s, it’s tough.

[00:34:08] Benjamin: It’s a different earning and earning and spending in the local currency is very different. Actually. Up, up to our conversation leading up to this, to this interview. I was actually thinking about something about the DTV and about the bot because I’ve been critical of the DTV. I still don’t think the policy was a good one in, in how they brought it out and they sort of did it to hype up Paetongtarn Shinawatra when she was coming into office, whatever.

[00:34:30] I won’t go into all that. That being said, it took it recently. Since I talk to you, I’m actually starting to think that DTV. Might be being, one of the things it exists for is in response to what is happening on the international currency markets, the Americans, you know, I, I don’t know if you saw recently, Rubio just did a thing where he was talking about, Hey, the dollar, this isn’t gonna be the way it’s been, kind of.

[00:34:55] Yeah. And not to go too deep into that, but ties especially to policy level are really good, especially watching stuff that involves the currency. And especially after the nineties, you know, they’re, they’re hypervigilant over that stuff. Oh yeah. If you think about it, if you’ve got a bunch of foreigners in here.

[00:35:12] They’re actually earning in foreign currencies, but they’re here and then they can’t have bank accounts here. So they’re not doing a wire and then, and then it’s converting instantaneously. And then that goes on to the BOT books as a, as a currency exchange? No, no, no. They’re just pulling it out from ATM cards, which that’s a, that’s a credit banking transaction.

[00:35:32] So I don’t know exactly how that’s tabulated in terms of like the BIS or the Bank of Thailand and how they tabulated vis-a-vis the Federal Reserve or something like that. The whole DTV might have been created with the thought in mind that, well, you know, we’re gonna have some, let’s call it turbulence in the currency markets between us and our favorite countries.

[00:35:53] The people we kinda like to do business with, especially the west, the Thai, Thailand doesn’t have an affinity for the west. And then we will u we will u you know, essentially these people working here or working from, as you say, as opposed to in Thailand, those people are have, are bringing in funds from offshore.

[00:36:11] Scott: Yeah.

[00:36:12] Benjamin: And in the moment, yeah. So you’re literally seeing, you’re literally seeing an offset between those currencies happening instantaneously every single day. That could change the tempo of that.

[00:36:23] Scott: Got it. So does it, it sort of, um, it keeps such a stark, uh, shifts from it. It kind of blends it a little bit because you’re, you’re getting the current exchange rate and it’s just being spent into the market.

[00:36:34] Do you like, how is it helping Thailand? Why? Okay.

[00:36:36] Benjamin: So think, okay, so think about this. I, for years, I, I remember I went to some panel, it was around the time everybody was flipping out about the TM 30, and it wasn’t a panel on the TM 30, it was something else, but they, there was a handout that I got given and it was by some, it was something having to do with the UN and, but they had the visa categories on there.

[00:36:58] Scott: Yeah.

[00:36:59] Benjamin: And this is probably 2018, I would say.

[00:37:02] Scott: Okay.

[00:37:02] Benjamin: And, and. Between married to Thai and o retirement visa holders. At that time they, and this was the un, this was like a UN handout. They reckoned that there were about a hundred thousand, what we would call just retirees. Like the, the people that bring in 800,000 baht, leave it a nerd in a bank account and then just are here.

[00:37:24] Okay?

[00:37:24] Scott: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:25] Benjamin: So at a hundred thousand people, I did, I did the math and I was like, so it was like about a billion dollars in foreign exchange was just coming in and being dropped here.

[00:37:37] Scott: Wow.

[00:37:38] Benjamin: So that creates a new demand for the baht in those currency terms. If you strip that away and you’re not gonna completely strip it away, ’cause the retirees aren’t going anywhere.

[00:37:49] But if you’re bringing in a new group of people and you don’t want more of that heavily weighted currency situation where it all just gets dumped onto Thailand. And then it gets held here. There’s good sides to that too, but there’s bad sides. One of the bad being, again, these foreign currencies are chasing the bot, therefore the baht is rising.

[00:38:12] Scott: Yes,

[00:38:13] Benjamin: yes, yes. Which has problems for ex, for exports, tourism, whatever. If it’s happening on a daily basis in the currency markets, that has to be having a different effect.

[00:38:22] Scott: Okay.

[00:38:22] Benjamin: They’re not feeling it’s, it’s not, it’s like an albatross. And I said at the time too, ’cause Thailand’s got a constant Sophie’s choice.

[00:38:29] It’s constant, it’s like year to year they make a decision. This pa going into this high season, I think it’s, especially in light of us going into the royal funeral and losing her majesty and everything. And on top of it, there was all the politics and stuff, they kind of wrote this tourist season off. So if you saw from a policy level, they were looking more at goose and exports.

[00:38:49] Scott: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:50] Benjamin: Mm-hmm. So that said, it didn’t, didn’t really stop tourism from going through the roof because everybody wants to come to Thailand, but. The, the point I’m trying to make is from year to year, they have to make a decision due to their currency position. Do we want to have tourism do really good or do we want to have exports do really good?

[00:39:09] Right. And the retirees, these people that are just kind of here, their money was acting like an albatross under certain circumstances and they, you know, they don’t really fit into the mold of a tourist or whatever. So I think at the end of the day, Thailand decided, no, we’re gonna keep our retirees. And as I’ve said, at some point they may just grandfather ’em all in and not allow more, but I don’t think they’re ever gonna reject them and say they can’t come or whatever.

[00:39:33] They’ll always be able to get the visa they came into. So, but the point I’m trying to make is, I think there was a, there was a concerted decision at some point that if we start bringing, if new people start coming in, we gotta figure out a way that they’re not just gonna have a tremendously. They’re not gonna have a tremendous impact, good, bad, or indifferent.

[00:39:54] Tremendous impact on our currency when they do. And the setup of the DD of the DTV is pretty damn conducive to that.

[00:40:02] Scott: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it’s very interesting to look at the, uh, exchange rates and, and you’re seeing, as you said, uh, Rubio, I didn’t hear him, but I, but I’ve obviously heard the US starting to talk about how they don’t necessarily want the strongest currency and how they’re Okay.

[00:40:14] Like, this is very strange because you’re getting this around the world where everyone’s starting to strike that balance and saying how strong do they want their currency? And of course, where recently you see the, the Thai bot is pretty strong now. Like, I mean, we’ve seen these different cycles, right, right.

[00:40:27] And. And gold is another very interesting thing in being in Thailand, right? So you’re starting to see, oh, this is a little bit of a different subject, but I’m always a little bit interested to see why the bot has been so strong, whether or not the government wants to weaken it. Um, and then also noticing that the, uh, not as many ties seem to be buying gold.

[00:40:47] And I don’t have the stats behind this, but I don’t see packed, you know, people buying gold right now because of course it’s so expensive in Thailand. And on every corner you see the 70,000 bought price, which I mean, you and I when we came here, right,

[00:40:58] Benjamin: it was 16,000 bought, I first started buying the bought weight gold at 16,000.

[00:41:03] You want my theory on what’s going on?

[00:41:04] Scott: Please tell me.

[00:41:05] Benjamin: It has to do with Japanese carry trade.

[00:41:07] Scott: Okay. Right,

[00:41:08] Benjamin: right. I think that they’re laying off action down here.

[00:41:10] Scott: Mm.

[00:41:10] Benjamin: Because, and the other cool thing about it is they can lay it off into Thai gold because it’s on a different weight and measure.

[00:41:16] Scott: Ah.

[00:41:17] Benjamin: Remember, Thai bot is baht weight.

[00:41:20] the constitution weights and measures. It’s very, very important stuff. This is the fundamentals of even sovereignty is getting to decide what weights and measures are in your given country. Thailand’s one of the few places on earth that has its own gold standard, right? So when stuff moves in and outta here, it doesn’t affect the rest of the world, the way it affects other places.

[00:41:40] Scott: Mm,

[00:41:40] Benjamin: and it, and it can come in here very opaquely too, and Thailand should do nothing to change that. I know that there’s a bunch of bureaucrats running around talking about adding VAT to gold and everything. You’re gonna shoot yourselves in the foot. It’s gonna be bad if you mess with the gold. If you mess with the gold markets, the system works good.

[00:41:57] But what what I think is going on is, look, uncle Sammy has created a lot of inflation since quantitative easing started a bajillion years ago. They gotta lay it off somewhere. Southeast Asia isn’t a terrible place now. I don’t think it’s being laid off directly into the Thai economy. I think it’s coming in and then bouncing back out to other places.

[00:42:16] Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, ring a bell. Vietnam as well. But you can bring it in and put it into Thai gold. Know where it’s at, know what it is. Mm. And nobody else can tell on their financial sheets or even in their own gold markets that anything’s really happened. It’s the perfect way to move stuff around.

[00:42:33] And my personal opinion is everybody said, well, why didn’t, why Dave Colum, a guy that I listen to a lot when he podcasts. He’s a, he’s a professor from Cornell University. He was saying, if somebody can explain to me why the carry trait hasn’t exploded, I’d love to hear it. Well, Dave, here’s me telling him my theory is they’re laying off action into the Thai gold market.

[00:42:51] That’s my theory.

[00:42:52] Scott: It’s very interesting. Um, you know, something else that I found kind of interesting recently was silver. Of course Silver’s gone crazy. But the other thing that’s interesting is seeing silver sold in gold shops. Now that was, I mean, I don’t know if that’s

[00:43:04] Benjamin: Oh yeah. Well, well, I mean there’s demand, but they’re coming.

[00:43:07] Scott: But the fact that those bars, I mean, I know that there’s always been a little bit of a silver market and I know that there is plenty of silver that

[00:43:13] Benjamin: has that too. Don’t forget.

[00:43:14] Scott: Right. And that, that’s the interesting thing. ’cause I remember just going to the regular gold shops that I see all the time, seeing the fact that they had the gold bars in probably bought weight.

[00:43:21] Right. Sitting there and it’s like, well that’s strange. And then I started looking at the premium. Number one, they had a very high premium compared to gold. Yeah. Uh, and then number two, they have the vat, the 7% on top. And, but it was just strange because I know we’ve talked about this in the US in the past, is that, or not you and I, but, uh, the fact that.

[00:43:36] Silver is the poor man’s gold, right? Mm-hmm. And it’s when people can’t afford gold, they go to silver. Mm-hmm. And we’re seeing that play out in Thailand. Very interesting.

[00:43:43] Benjamin: Yeah. Well, and, and I mean, satton.

[00:43:45] Scott: Mm. Right.

[00:43:46] Benjamin: Silver,

[00:43:47] Scott: yes.

[00:43:47] Benjamin: You know, box satton, gold, silver, the, uh, yeah, I’m not, I’m really not at all surprised about, about the rise in silver other than, I mean, it, it had to have such a hell of a rally out here.

[00:43:59] To overtake, as you say, the premium as well as the vat to make it really desirable. But hell now, I mean, it’ll probably be a secondary medal now, you know? Yeah.

[00:44:09] Scott: Ah, it’s very strange. But yeah, I hope, I hope no one changes anything about the, the Thai gold market. ’cause I’ve always spoken about how much I love that in Thailand.

[00:44:15] Yes. I think it’s absolutely just one of the coolest things, and this is very different than individuals that are coming here and thinking they’re gonna make some money by, by buying gold in island. I’m not talking about that. No. I’m just talking about saving money in gold here is so easy. Going to the gold shop and saying, let me just get a bar of gold, let me get some jewelry, is so easy.

[00:44:30] I absolutely love it.

[00:44:30] Benjamin: Well, and and, and it’s completely fungible. Yes. As long as you’re there during the hours of the Gold Trader Associ Trader’s Association.

[00:44:38] Scott: Yes.

[00:44:38] Benjamin: You can just turn it right back into cash, you know? So, I mean, it’s like perfect. And again, I, I, I can’t stress enough, don’t mess with it. This is one of those things.

[00:44:47] It ain’t broke seriously. Don’t fix it.

[00:44:50] Scott: Alright. So gold and silver. Very interesting. But I want to transition over to back to business because, you know, you and I have talked, uh, about the US Treaty of Amity. Mm-hmm. And I think it’s very interesting. You said your, your company is

[00:45:02] Benjamin: registered. Yeah. Yeah. I treaty certified out here years ago.

[00:45:04] Yeah. I love the treaty. So

[00:45:05] Scott: why, why did you decide to go that way? Because

[00:45:07] Benjamin: I could own it.

[00:45:08] Scott: Yes.

[00:45:09] Benjamin: Yeah. I mean, yeah. Uh, wait, look, Thailand in the US it’s, it’s like Thailand just fit me like a glove. ’cause I got out here in 2008 and it was still like, it was like 1988, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. I mean, and, and Thailand and the US’ diplomatic relationship goes back now 191 years.

[00:45:28] We’ve been in contact with each other for over 200. Mm-hmm. So 191 years, we’ve had some iteration of what now is called the Treaty Amity. The latest iteration was ratified in 1966 under the provisions of the Treaty of Amity. It stipulates that, notwithstanding the fact that a company has to abide by the Foreign Business Act, if said company is determined to be an American company, then it’s granted national treatment.

[00:45:56] So it’s just treated as if it’s a Thai company. So we can own our companies a hundred percent if they’re Amity certified. Okay. On top of that, I discovered this about six, seven years ago, and this to my mind is like the really, it’s like, what’s that line from Seinfeld where he says, it’s like discovering plutonium by accident.

[00:46:16] You know, the on top of it, when Trump, in the first term created Trump tax. Mm. Part of what they created under that was something called, uh, they created. Specific scrutiny and specific provisions for what were called controlled foreign corporations. Now everybody else in their dog in the tax world ran off and tried to figure out how to make like one share control a company so that the, they could mess with the control.

[00:46:40] I didn’t really go that route. I was like, well, what’s foreign? What does foreign mean? So I went and looked it up and in our tax code it says A foreign corporation is not domestic. So what’s domestic? Domestic says Any company created or organized under US law. Now pursuant to Article six of the Constitution, the supremacy clause.

[00:47:00] When the Treaty of Amity was ratified by two thirds of the Senate in 1966, it became the supreme law of the land of the United States. Treaties are higher level law than even statutory law. They, because it’s done through the President and the Senate’s a different process, it’s with a foreign nation, it’s viewed as higher up.

[00:47:19] So it’s, it’s covered under the supremacy clause. So I go back and say, well, all of these companies have to at least be organized under US law, because otherwise they’d have to abide by the Foreign Business Act, and they couldn’t be a hundred percent American owned to begin with.

[00:47:33] Scott: Right?

[00:47:34] Benjamin: So that makes ’em domestic.

[00:47:36] So then I go over to the double tax treaty between us and the ties. And under that thing it says non-resident corporations are the corporations of any. Of the contract of the two contracting parties that do not do any business within the jurisdiction of the other party. So IE they have no branch, they have no subsidiary, nothing.

[00:47:55] They’re only doing business in the jurisdiction of the other contracting party. They’re not having any business done within the United States.

[00:48:02] Scott: Okay.

[00:48:03] Benjamin: So that makes a domestic non-resident corporation of the United States. Non-resident corporations are affirmatively forestalled from being taxed under a treaty.

[00:48:14] We ourselves signed, and these companies are domestic by the terms of a treaty we are ourself signed. We created a massive, what some would call a loophole. It’s not a loophole, it’s just a legal fact that these are domestic, non-resident corporations of the United States. What’s that mean? They just fall completely outside of their purview.

[00:48:33] They’re nothing, as long as they’re not doing business in the us they’re nothing. It’s another reason I think that they may have created the DTV because if you come under one of these and you have an Amity company, I don’t know that anybody, tax wise from over there is they were gonna be able to come after the company.

[00:48:48] Now there’s a very big difference between the individual American right, and one of these corporate structures. And again, I’m not gonna go into any further real deep legal analysis, but the thing to understand here, these are really special. We get benefits that no other nationality gets out here. And under many circumstances, you may be in a position where you’re better positioned vis-a-vis the US tax man.

[00:49:11] Scott: Wow, that’s so interesting. So, so would you say, is there any circumstance that a US citizen that’s working and doing business in Thailand and let’s say not a hundred percent Thailand, I think a lot of companies will primarily, uh, work here, but maybe they’ll work with, uh, Australians or whatever. They’ll, they’ll have some other stuff going on.

[00:49:27] Mm. Would it mostly make sense or in most cases make sense for them to consider a US Treaty of Amity Company as opposed to something like BOI?

[00:49:34] Benjamin: Absolutely.

[00:49:35] Scott: Yeah, so it’s just,

[00:49:36] Benjamin: well, Bois and I have no issue with BOI don’t get me wrong, but BOI has a lot of administrative oversight,

[00:49:42] Scott: right?

[00:49:43] Benjamin: They’re constantly looking at you, especially if you get tax concessions as like what exactly are you doing?

[00:49:49] What exactly are you invoicing? Because they want their money in the tax context. With Amity, it’s just, it’s a different process. It’s a different crew.

[00:49:58] Scott: Yeah. And that, that brings up things I’ve seen with BOI companies here is it seems like the pendulum goes back and forth too, where they’ll crack down a lot more on BOI companies because they’ll, they’ll not crack down.

[00:50:07] That’s the wrong way to put it. But I would say that they, uh,

[00:50:09] Benjamin: scrutiny.

[00:50:10] Scott: There’s more scrutiny. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think some of the tso, TISO, um, categories, I’ve, I’ve seen more demands out of them. Um, I dunno, so, so it seems like it’s changing a lot. That makes Well,

[00:50:20] Benjamin: but remember the, the concessions on some of those are huge.

[00:50:23] Scott: Yeah.

[00:50:23] Benjamin: It’s not like scrutiny. Apropos not,

[00:50:25] Scott: no, no, no, of course.

[00:50:26] Benjamin: Yeah. No. Now Amity is just a different thing. It, it, it’s actually, I wouldn’t even hardly compare it to BOI because really all that the Amity company is getting is an Amity certificate, which is semi analogous to a foreign business certificate by BOI Now, BOI has the option to give.

[00:50:45] Umpteen bajillion other types of concessions. Amity is just, I can own it.

[00:50:50] Scott: Okay. That’s, that’s really it. And that was the main reason that of course, you, you went down that direction as you started, right?

[00:50:56] Benjamin: Yeah, when I started and then later when I, when, when I really dug into this and I was like, holy crap.

[00:51:01] Like now that’s it again, the individual is not the same thing as the company. Right. And we’re all paid individually. But if you’re, if you get the foreign earned income exclusion and you have an amity company for most of my ses, I mean, you’re done worried about most things, you know?

[00:51:18] Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Great point.

[00:51:19] Great point. Now, um, I’m very curious about your opinion on the outlook for Thailand. I mean, we’ve been pretty positive. I think we both feel pretty good about Thailand, right? We wouldn’t be here otherwise, right? Yeah. Yeah. But how do you feel now? Right? The, we, we just had the election. I think everything’s going on now, so it’s a little bit of a tense time potentially.

[00:51:35] Yeah. But, but I want to know, where do you see the future? Are you positive? Is there a negative, positive outlook?

[00:51:41] Benjamin: I’m so positive. I like, yeah. I, I, I feel so good about the future of Thailand. I can taste it in my spit. Like this, this place is gonna do so well Now I, I really do believe that, I think 15 years of a lot of baggage and a lot of, uh, feedback loop, negative feedback loops in politics are gone now.

[00:52:00] Good, bad, and different. I, I really don’t care in a partisan way much, you know, I, I have my own thoughts and I have my own sort of, uh, preferences as far as parties, but the real thing I’m very happy to see is I think finally Thailand. Okay, we’ve got a parliament. They’re gonna go off and do what parliament does, Thailand can get, get on with making money.

[00:52:20] Mm-hmm. You know, I’m just sick of having to just this constant feedback loop of Oh my God, you know, and who’s gonna be the next this and that and the pageantry of all of these, you know, that I, I covered pretty extensively the return of, of, um, when the new government came in, in the aftermath of the military government.

[00:52:38] Yeah. And. I was optimistic, but it just, the same feedback loop just basically started again. And I think everybody that had been here a while was all just sitting there going, we really doing this again. I, I think all we are in a new era, like I and I, I’m gonna be very interested to watch what the new opposition does, because I think they’re gonna have a totally different paradigm than in the past.

[00:53:03] I think that the new majority, I think the new government will have a totally different paradigm in the past. I think, I think it will be primarily pro business, but my hope is just from what I’ve watched them do, especially on it, and when he was kind of the, usually the second partner in whatever coalition he was usually in, their attitude tends to be, can we all just make some money?

[00:53:26] You know? And that’s what I agree with. So I, I, I can’t tell you. Yeah. I’m very, very optimistic. I think the demography is here now. I think the young folks are coming in to enjoy Thailand and we’ll get the sort of the nomad money. I think that there’s gonna be real business investment here. Did you see that foreigners bought more stock than they bought in like, I don’t know, half a decade?

[00:53:52] Just on the news? Just in the aftermath of the election? Yeah. I mean,

[00:53:56] Scott: yes, yes, yes.

[00:53:56] Benjamin: I think everybody that’s sort of been following it is pretty optimistic about where things are going. I, I, myself am.

[00:54:03] Scott: Yeah, the set, I remember I, I’d been putting money in for a very long time, and it’s always been flat, you know, at least for I remember 10 years.

[00:54:09] But, but now again, things change. Yeah, right. Uh, it seems like everyone’s just looking for something that is stable. People actually know what’s coming next, and with stability comes, you know, investment.

[00:54:18] Benjamin: Well, and that, and, and, and actually that’s a good point. And that’s more to my point is look, the way that this thing has ha, I know there’s some discrepancies and the whatever, but however this plays, we’re looking at a, a pretty stable coalition, I think for at least two years.

[00:54:35] Scott: Yeah.

[00:54:35] Benjamin: Which is more than we could say. I mean, the military governments were what they were, I mean, we had nine and a half years of it, but I don’t know if you remember the first three or four years where Ute every other week was like, okay, three months from now we’re gonna do something. Oh, I remember because you didn’t, again, and nothing, there’s a lot to say about those folks, but that wasn’t exactly the same kind of.

[00:54:57] Certainty that I think we’ve gotten since this election. Right. And, and again, it’ll be curious to see how it plays out, but I’m very, very optimistic. I’m very, very optimistic.

[00:55:09] Scott: Now, you’d mentioned a theory that you have to me, uh, off camera, something called the Suez Canal Theory, and I’d love you can expand on that.

[00:55:15] What is your theory here? Uh,

[00:55:17] Benjamin: so I read a book, a couple of books. One book I read was about the British Raj, and then another book I read was The Decline and Fall of the British Empire. But. In both of them. They mentioned that with the opening of Suez, it changed the Raj, especially the Raj, the early Raj, where the Brits were just sort of out here.

[00:55:37] I don’t know if you’ve ever read the Asia series by James Clavell type in Noble House. Uh, king Rats, the first one. It, it, it sort of covers the original sort of the, when the British first sort of got out here, and in that one they were dealing with Hong Kong and type. But in the bri, in the mo in the book, I read about the British Raj, and this had an impact all across sort of that era of expat dom, if you wanna call it that.

[00:56:03] When the Suez Canal opened what they called the mem sobs, the, the, the fema, the women folk could start coming. Out to the rest of the empire. Right? In great numbers that changed the demography ever after. And there were those, and you can read the, the tales from the time of the, the guys. Oh, this, you know, it’s not the same.

[00:56:24] We, we were having a great time and then the girls came. There is a, and I’m not saying this is the same thing either, and I’m not saying one way or the other, but there was a demographic shift within the old British empire in the aftermath of Suez because of this exact thing. We’re seeing it in the aftermath of COVID.

[00:56:39] I would argue I saw it a little bit last year, but this year, I mean, it used to be, and I’m not saying this in the pejorative, but you never saw Farang female hardlfarangll out here, right? I mean, you saw one walking alone on the street. It was like seeing a wild deer back in Kansas.

[00:56:55] Scott: Everyone swarming.

[00:56:57] Benjamin: Yeah.

[00:56:57] No, well, it wasn’t unheard of, but, but when you saw it, you’d be like, oh wow. There’s a Ong girl. Okay, coofarangAnd then move on the. But now they, they’re, they’re traveling alone. They’re traveling in groups, they’re coming over here. Uh, it looks to me like they’re starting to join the expat community in ways that, frankly, up to now, they really didn’t do in the numbers before.

[00:57:18] This is gonna have a shift, and it’s not gonna shift the way that I think people think. I’m gonna say it’s gonna, it’s, it’s not what I think will happen. Among the Luke Chrome communilook khrueng think like 10, 15 years from now, you will see far more Mom’s Ong Dad’s Thafarangght.

[00:57:38] Yeah. And the minute I saw that I was like, oh wow.

[00:57:41] ’cause look, people that might not know this, but farang girls and Thai are kind of fond of one another. Yeah. They’re, they’re not unfound to one another. And I think we’re, we’re, it’s not gonna be that it’s gonna change the expat community ’cause they’re gonna run out here and I don’t get the impression that most of these females even really care what the foreign guys are doing.

[00:58:01] Right. That’s, that’s really my, that I, I’m just sort of observing them, but I’m sitting there going. Yeah, but I’ve also like the Thai are noticing them as well. Oh yeah. And I think it’s gonna change the expat universe when you start seeing, uh, a larger number of look khrueng kids, especially where mom’s, the farang and dad’s the Thai.

[00:58:23] Scott: Yeah. Very interesting. And I think it’s a very positive leaning indicator to your point of all of this. It’s that it just gives, gives you more credence to your, your theory that things are gonna be better.

[00:58:32] Benjamin: Oh yeah.

[00:58:33] Scott: You know,

[00:58:33] Benjamin: one of the smartest guys I knew, he used to work for the American Embassy over in, in, uh, Cambodia for years.

[00:58:38] He was a very good friend of mine, still a good friend of mine. I’ll remember, I’ll never forget sitting around Riverside with him. This is probably around 2012 or 13 and there was like a gaggle of farang girls who were kind of walking by. And weirdly enough in Pinon Pen at that time, I think especially because of the NGO coverage over there, there were a lot of foreign females over there, like more than you’d think.

[00:58:57] And I remember him just looking at me and he said, well, you know, financially everything’s good in Cambodia. And I said, what do you mean? He said, it’s always financially good in Cambodia if the white girls are around. And I was like, well, I never thought of it that way, but that’s how, I guess that’s our role.

[00:59:09] The um, uh, my, yeah, I think it’s gonna have a demographic impact and I think it’s not gonna change expat in the way I think people think it might, I think. But I think it will have an impact. It’s gonna be interesting to watch.

[00:59:23] Scott: Very interesting. Well, yeah, I’m very positive about it all too. I, I love to hear further reinforcement that, uh, you know, we don’t have to, uh, leave Thailand because things are going crazy.

[00:59:32] Instead, we’re on the up and up and we’re probably in a great position here. Right. So

[00:59:35] Benjamin: yeah, hunkered downtime is over. We’re, we’re, we get like it’s the seven fat years now from here. That’s how I see it. Yeah.

[00:59:43] Scott: I just have a final question for you. Um, so if you were 30 and you were landing today, what would you do if you were starting a business in Thailand or just starting a life in Thailand?

[00:59:53] What would you do now?

[00:59:56] Benjamin: I’d honestly probably be really considering the DTV. It knowing everything I know at this moment now I think the DT v’s gonna go through a reshuffle. They’re going like tweak it and tighten it and do all kinds of things to it. But I would probably be looking at that if I, especially if if, uh, finances were of a concern, I just kind of rushed, excuse me, rushed headlong into Thailand in certain ways it worked, it might not have, you know, so in retrospect, I would probably take my time would be the thing.

[01:00:30] It is. Just take a minute and kind of, you know, I say this a lot to, especially the young retirees. The guys are like just above 50, you know? ’cause they’ll say like, oh, well maybe I wanna set up a company and do all this. And I’m like, look, look, look. That’s a lot of expenses and things that you don’t even know how expense, you know, like, it, it’s, it’s, there’s knock ons and stuff.

[01:00:48] There’s taxes you gotta pay and everything like that. Just get your, get your visa. Come over here, do a year. See what you think and then make a move. That’s probably the best advice for the younger guys too. Although that said, you know, I’ve noticed in my older age I have a tendency to be too complacent where it’s like, yeah, you can just calm down a little bit more and when you’re younger, sometimes it is better to just take the leap and try to do something.

[01:01:12] And I think a lot of these guys are, I’m really, I’m really interested to see how this plays from here because I think what we may have ended up doing is bringing in a lot of tech guys that can kind of work from anywhere and we might end up seeing some of these tech developments benefiting Thailand too, like directly here.

[01:01:34] Be interesting to see my, my best advice to somebody new if I was coming or what I would think of myself as coming in at 30. I would be looking to find a visa that I don’t have to mess around. With a ton of border running, but it’ll allow me to have a year. Now, here’s where the DTV may be problematic, which is you may be stuck with it.

[01:01:51] I talked about this when it first came out, that like once you’re in it, you have it. It’s sort of like elite where it’s like elite’s not work authorized,

[01:02:00] Scott: right?

[01:02:00] Benjamin: And so if you want to get work authorized, you have to lead, you get another visa, you have to have it run parallel, da da da. You could end up putting yourself in a position where it’s like more complicated down the track.

[01:02:12] So if you instantly have what you’re gonna do to do business, yeah, go ahead and do a standard company and get in there and just do it. Yeah. If you really are just looking around, take your time. Take the year. I don’t know. DTV is gonna be an interesting one to watch because I don’t think they’re quite done with it.

[01:02:28] It was, it was like a half done work and they kind of put it through and now we’ll sort of see how they finish it off. Yeah, it’s just sort of round that out. Take your time, get into a visa that’ll allow you to be here for a minimum of a year. A million things that you think, you know, cold coming in are just wrongly.

[01:02:44] Scott: Absolutely.

[01:02:44] Benjamin: You know, so it takes time to learn that stuff. It takes time to learn that stuff.

[01:02:49] Scott: Yeah. And that does remind me, someone actually reached out just in a, in a comment, but he was saying, how do I get a job here? I’m a, you know, experienced software developer, uh, you know, I’m sending all my resume to all these places in Thailand and no one’s accepting me.

[01:03:01] And I was like, well, you’re not here. You’re not here. Really, really hard.

[01:03:04] Benjamin: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:03:05] Scott: Really hard to get. And, and to your point, not a lot existed in terms of something that’s, uh, relatively easy to get Right. And relatively straightforward and gives you a bit of time to get out there and talk to people when you’re here.

[01:03:17] Right. You

[01:03:18] Benjamin: know. Well, and the, and the other thing is to, to that point, you have to be here to realize the jobs that are instantly available. I don’t know how many guys have, you know, they tried shooting resumes through and going through corporate like that. Look, I knew a dude and really smart guy worked for major airlines.

[01:03:34] Uh, then he, he worked in the music industry, but came here and he was always trying to do it that way. He ended up becoming like a, you call it a manager, but it’s more like a Maer d of a really nice restaurant here.

[01:03:48] Scott: Wow.

[01:03:48] Benjamin: And I happen to know, he does actually really, really well. Sometimes you think restaurant in Thailand, probably not the most money, but there’s some places that make a lot of money.

[01:03:58] He told me a million times he was like, I had to be here.

[01:04:01] Scott: Yeah.

[01:04:02] Benjamin: Yeah. I had to to get that job because I was going for something else that really, in a lot of these circumstances, that job isn’t actually even there.

[01:04:08] Scott: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, some people want to get the job that actually is a protected job or that plenty of ties can do.

[01:04:14] Yeah. And then you really, so to your point, you have to play a little bit of an audible and you can’t play an audible from afar. You know? That’s

[01:04:19] Benjamin: well put. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And you, you have to be on the ground to do it. Uh, that, and that’s another big one, is, uh, I look, it took me a long time. I even, my skillset and my background, I had a very limited set of skills for anything anybody wanted to pay for here for, especially like the first 10, 11 years.

[01:04:40] I became Thai, things changed really rapidly from that point because I was able to do a lot more things. But yeah, look, I, that’s a big one to the new guys. E especially if you’re not here yet, you don’t know what you don’t know, especially when it comes to the issue of just how in demand you’re gonna be because you think you’re gonna be a lot more in demand

[01:04:59] Scott: Yes.

[01:05:00] Benjamin: Than you probably are.

[01:05:01] Scott: Yeah. Yeah. I, I’ll share my quick naive story here is that I was, uh, feeling very positive when I left the us uh, with, you know, a lot of offers and, uh, working in consulting and it was one of these things where I was flying high, I was feeling great. I came here, I was like, look at all these consulting firms.

[01:05:17] I can go to my Deloitte, my Accenture, all these other things, and I have all this history. I’ve done so well. And then I got a little bit of the slap in the face to say, oh, it’s not so easy to just transfer and get a good salary from a multinational, because the question is, why should we hire you?

[01:05:30] Benjamin: Yeah.

[01:05:31] Scott: Right. And, and I think we need that slap in the face to say, we. You know, the reality is it’s different here. The needs are sometimes different. If you don’t have skills that, uh, that can’t be easily had either by the local market or by expats that have been waiting in line for years and years to get in and get that job, then you’re, you ain’t all that special.

[01:05:48] Right? Yeah. And, and you gotta be grounded a little bit. And

[01:05:51] Benjamin: yeah, the big one that I think a lot, most foreigners don’t get that when that employer is looking at you, it’s not just your salaries worried about paying, it’s also you gotta have a work permit. And that means depending on what their corporate setup is, they gotta have, they may have to have a ratio of tie employees to you versus your work permit, et cetera.

[01:06:10] So there’s all kinds of hidden sunk costs that go in from the employer side that I think when you’re new especially, and you’re young or just new. That you don’t really see. Ah, because again, it’s just not something that factors into people’s thinking.

[01:06:25] Scott: Well, yeah. And they’re taking a huge risk. We’ve talked a lot about those, those phases that you go through, whether it’s one year, three year, you know, and, and you could very easily burn out.

[01:06:33] And that is a huge loss on them if they’re going through that whole process of the work permits for you, and then you leave after a year.

[01:06:39] Benjamin: That’s what it, it always gets me when people are looking for financing here.

[01:06:42] Scott: Oh yeah.

[01:06:43] Benjamin: And they, and they’re like, what? They’re, they’re just reject ferron outta hand.

[01:06:46] I’m like, if you take a 10 million bot loan from these people and then just get on a plane and leave, there’s virtually nothing they’re ever gonna do about it. Like, I mean, they could try, but it’s not, it’s not, you know, once you get out of the jurisdiction. ’cause it’s just the nature of it here. Thailand has like an old school way of doing things.

[01:07:04] There’s no sort of long arm that gets to come in from anywhere else and pull people outta here legally. But at the same time, it works the other way. That’s why they don’t wanna finance a bunch of farang because you’re not, you’re not tied. They can’t, they can’t track you down, like you say. I mean, if they give you a great job and then you burn out in six months, I mean, that’s a huge cost that’s just gone to waste for them.

[01:07:26] Scott: Absolutely. So, uh, Ben, is there anything that you wish we would have discussed that we didn’t?

[01:07:34] Benjamin: Not really. I’ll probably think of it the minute the camera goes off, but no, none at all. Not at

[01:07:38] all.

[01:07:39] Scott: Alright, well that’s awesome. Uh, what is the best way for individuals to reach you if, ’cause I understand you do a lot of different services, but the question is like, they need some advice.

[01:07:46] They, I, whether that’s setting up a business, whether that’s visas, whatever, it seems like you do consultations on a whole bunch of

[01:07:52] Benjamin: stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah. Anything that’s paying, we’ll talk to you about it. The, uh, no [email protected] is the best way to email us. You can also email [email protected]. It, it’ll come through the same main.

[01:08:05] Email switchboard. Frankly, our email is the best way to get in touch with us. We get a lot of people that say, Hey, your phones are off. They’re not off. We’re using them. It’s just we’re not answering because we’re on them. Uh, the best way to get ahold of us is generally through email. You can also find me also on YouTube, but email [email protected] or [email protected] th

[01:08:26] Scott: Awesome.

[01:08:26] Well, thanks for doing this. Super valuable. Thank you. I really appreciate your time, man.

[01:08:30] Benjamin: No, no. Thank you very much. Thanks to your audience too.