Trying to leave Thailand buy may be trapped.
My situation only applies to retirement as if you are young and can figure out a way to work or earn income here the situation may be different plus you potentially still have earning power in your home country or elsewhere should you decide you're not happy here.
Both my Thai wife and myself feel it was a mistake to retire early and move here in the first place as we were both enjoying life much more before the move. That retiring early may have trapped us here though as we sunk the majority of our savings into building a house that went about 50% over budget due to a crooked cowboy builder. It finally sold recently, but took years and we had to lower the price several times by millions of baht. I am doing a lot of research now to try to calculate if we can go back to my home country but a couple of factors may make it impossible (mainly health care and taxes).
If I had worked five more years as was my lifelong plan instead of retiring early and coming here and investing way more than my budget in an unmarketable property we would be much better off with a lot more in savings, I would have a much larger monthly pension income and we would have more choices of places to live in retirement. I know several others who have fallen into the same trap, coming here and then becoming financially trapped into staying.
Just for those who are thinking about it, I wouldn't come here again without 1 million USD (or equivalent) in savings plus a monthly income from pensions or whatever of a minimum of 150k baht per month. Sure, that may sound like a lot, but if you want to enjoy international travel, play golf, hedge against inflation, survive disastrous exchange rate changes, and enjoy your golden years or have options in the future should you tire of Thailand you will need this amount or close to it to insure that you can repatriate/escape.
Another piece of advice is buy the smallest, cheapest property you can live with if you decide you must own. Cheaper ones sell faster and cost much less to maintain, cool, and care for and protect when/if you travel. We are currently renting a property that is about one fourth of the size of the one we sold and are perfectly happy with the size of the home and garden and feel much less stressed with an electric bill that is one forth of the previous average, a water bill that is one sixth of the previous, and no maintenance costs (which were at least 8k per month before in average scheduled maintenance and a minimum of 5k per month in unscheduled maintenance) at all due to renting instead of owning. Don't be trapped into the "building your dream house" scenario. I know another family who built a 30m baht home in an executive area of Hua Hin and then decided they didn't like it here. The guy wasn't willing to wait 6 to 7 years to get out as I have done so he sold that home for 15 million baht, losing half of his investment about a year after completing construction.
I had been coming to Thailand nearly yearly for about 20 years before retiring and loved it, but trust me, a two week to one month holiday, or living part time seasonally here is very different from living here full time and even my (Thai) wife who had had an eight year taste of living in a western country was tired of it after three or four years, yet here we sit, trapped after nearly ten years, trying our best to figure a way out. Be careful what you wish for; the retirement I dreamed of all my working life was ruined by the decision to commit to Thailand, and I can't get those last ten years of my life back.
