Tag: thailand beach

A Guide to Prepare a Trip and Spend Your Vacation in Thailand

December 26, 2017 by Staff Writer

When I went to Texas almost ten years ago, the people I met loved to ask the same question when they found out I was Thai: “Do Thai people still ride elephants to school?” I was stunned. I really never did expect it before. As a person who was born and grew up in Bangkok, […]

I receive a lot of e-mails asking me to provide helpful recommendations for products, services and companies. I can't answer all of them individually, so I've put together a list of the most important ones below.

Moving

Everything You Need to Know: It's really easy to overpay, miss out, and make other mistakes when moving to Thailand. To help you avoid that, I put everything I wish I knew when I first moved here in the Thailand Starter Kit. Unlike the 'public' articles on the site, it's not just facts and how-tos, but also cool hacks that give you an advantage over others trying to do the same thing.

Quotes: In case you're just looking to get a quote for moving your belongings, you can use this form.

Renting

Agent: Need someone to help you find a place? I've met a ton of real estate agents in Bangkok over the years, and most haven't really lived up to my expectations. In case you want to avoid that trial-and-error experience yourself, you can use this form to let me help you get in touch with an agent who receives consistently great feedback.

Health

I use Bumrungrad Hospital when it comes to healthcare. They offer everything in-house, often with same-day referrals if I need to see another specialist. They’re also considered to be one of the best and most expensive private hospitals in Thailand. But considering the quality of care they give, the hospital offers excellent value for the money. The hospital also comes highly recommended by my US and German doctor friends who use Bumrungrad. You can check out Bumrungrad’s website here.

Health Insurance

I use the French insurance company ACS. They pay with no deductible for all in-patient and out-patient treatments I receive. With a cover limit of $500,000 USD their 'Silver Plan' is one of the few Asia plans with sufficient coverage in in my opinion. Read about the claims I filed with them in my health insurance article.

Banking

Sending Money
I regularly send to Thailand through Xendpay. The fees are among the lowest, saving me about THB 1,500 on a THB 30,000 transfer. My team did a detailed review of their service.

Credit Cards
For local payments I use a Citibank Royal Orchid Plus Credit Card. This Thai credit card makes life a lot easier, saves a lot of fees and earns me 1 mile with Thai Airways for every THB 20 I spend (plus twice a year free lounge access).

Travel

Flights
While I use Google Flights for initial research, I usually end up booking flight tickets through Expedia. This ist mostly due to them having lots of special promotions in the Thai market: My last round-trip to Germany was only USD 480 (incl. fees).

Hotels
Obviously I don't need a hotel in Bangkok, but when family or friends are staying in town temporarily, I usually recommend Airbnb.

Accountant

Accounting: My accountant used to work for the revenue department. She handles all accounting, tax, payroll and social security issues for my companies. You can contact her here.

Lawyer

Legal: Finding an ethical, professional and affordable lawyer is super hard. Here's one I found that meets all three criteria.

Business & Corporate

A lot of factors helped my companies succeed in Thailand. The two factors I get asked about most often are:

Investment Promotions: I received board of investment (BOI) promotions for a software and an e-commerce company. I didn't find any service providers to handle that, so I just did it myself. Feel free to get in touch with questions.

Digital & Content Marketing: My current and prior companies did exceptionally well thanks to an excellent digital marketing team that I had build up. My former marketing manager now went ahead and started an agency to provide that service to other companies. You can get in touch with her here.

Need help with something else for your business? Feel free to get in touch.

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