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Comment by ragle | Hacker News Reader

Off topic, but perhaps of interest to anyone in Thailand who would like to experience similar views firsthand:

https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/thirty-nine-boulevard-execu...

The room my wife and I booked in 2019 offered a panoramic, bird's eye view of Bangkok's skyline from one of the higher floors in the building. Not bad at ~$90 / night at the time.

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Bangkok is absolutely full of view likes this, in no small part due to lax planning regulations. Also there are many tall buildings with bars on the top.

Makes me want to take my few hundred thousands in retirement savings and live like a literal king in the 3rd world.

The dream of a literal gringo.

So do? Plenty of companies hiring remote, and you will be far (far far far) from the first tech worker to move to South East Asia. Bangkok in particular has world class (and affordable) health care, food, and night life, and you’re only ever a couple of hours from the beach

Thailand is fine until you get into trouble which requires authorities of any kind. It is what "3rd world" is all about.

Unlike the US you can pay your way out of most infractions in Thailand for a fair price.

Real troubles start when it is not your fault.

So, like California DMV?

When's the last time you went to one? I had three different reasons to go to one in the last 3 years and each time I was in and out in under 30 minutes with almost no wait time. This meme is garbage.

2012.

I haven't researched much about this but India seems like a better fit for tech workers? There I'll find folks who share my interest and the culture is good too.

What makes you think you won’t find people with shared interests in Thailand? It has a large tech scene.

Heh, Bangalore traffic and Chennai's heat and Delhi's pollution are unbearable.

Thai police can be corrupt sometimes (not always - I've even been busted for pot twice, talked my way out of it both times even though they knew they could have gotten some western cash out of me), but Thai justice system is usually quite fair even for foreigners. There are exceptions of course, but usually you won't get into real trouble unless you are doing something that is obviously illegal (doing drugs, running prostitution ring, something something royal family). Even some my friends have sued and won against a big bank or people hustling money from them.

My wife and I once visited a friend of a friend who was “living like a king” in northern Thailand. He had a walled compound with a Mets baseball theme, a half dozen Burmese slaves, and had recently downsized from multiple wives to 1. He explained that there were three ways people make money in Thailand, drugs, money lending, and prostitution. And that he didn’t touch drugs...

It was one of the saddest and strangest experiences of my life.

But yes. People do this. It is weirder than you think.

Just to tamp down on the hyperbole a little, while Burmese legal refugees and illegal immigrants are mercilessly exploited, slavery (and polygamy for that matter) are illegal in Thailand, and many Western people who think that their money insulates them from the legal system find out the hard way that no, it does not.

This was 13 years ago, so the political situation may have changed. But this guy was very much operating in the open, and definitely breaking all kinds of laws. He’d been doing it for more than a decade, and no jail time yet.

He did also finance construction of an elementary school and some other community improvement stuff. He didn’t explicitly talk about bribes, but I’m sure he was paying people off. At least at the time he seemed to have figured out a way to avoid the law. But maybe corruption is down and it finally caught up with him - I’m definitely out of date here.

I get similar view for $400/month. I really do not get this Stockholm syndrome for expensive cities.

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