if you're not walking around this town with a smile on your face as an expat you probably ought to reconsider some of your life's decisions because it's just a wonderful place meet Bob and Paula originally from the US they've been married for 45 years retired and now choose to spend the bulk of their time right here in Bangkok Thailand they're going to share their experiences with Thailand's Private health care System why they feel the Bangkok is the greatest city in the world and also why is highes they choose the hustle and bustle of the big city over the quietness of the Thai Countryside this is Bob and Paula's Thailand blueprint I'm Adam let's get into it where were you guys when you first decided that you were moving to Thailand that's a tough question cuz I don't know that it was an all of a sudden thing I mean we the first time we were in Thailand was over 30 years ago and as we got older we always kind of thought we'd be somewhere you know in our later years in the winter that wasn't Florida and as things got closer and became more real what we really wanted to do is have a base of operations here in Asia to do traveling from and we had just spent so much time here in Bangkok and the other city that we actually considered was uh Saigon so we were in both right before covid kind of looking around and we got pretty serious here and all of a sudden we got hit with covid so we left stuff in storage here went back back and who knew it' be two years before we could get back but as soon as we got back as soon as we had the opportunity to get back we got on a horn we lined up some real estate people a lot of them as you probably aware aren't that great of hustlers but there was one guy that was and it really got us you know and understood our needs and we um over the phone we took care of all of the preliminaries we got here on a Tuesday I remember it was December 6 December 6th 21 on a Tuesday we flew in we had to go through that quarantine for a night and the next day we looked at a few apartment few condos and the next day we signed a lease on this place Celeste and two days later we moved in why did you guys choose Bangkok over some of the more quiet parts of the country you guys are retirees there's a lot of retirees are looking for peace and quiet we're in the center of the city right now but looking for peace and quiet when they put you in the Box you got a lot of time for peace and quiet we lived in New York City for years you know that was where we uh worked and played yeah worked and played and we just love the uh Vibrance of the city and the uh the hustle and the bustle and you know we just love it and so Bangkok made sense for us that was why it was between Bangkok and Saigon in the beginning and if you looked at both of them objectively Saigon is very it's a lot less than this but it's still a pretty vibrant City um but Bangkok was just so much energy here so much diversity here it's easy it's got great mass transit the food scene here is fantastic the music scene is fantastic the xat scene and the Thai people there's a reason they call us the land of smiles and boy if you don't if you don't pick up on that your eyes aren't open here all of that's available in saon also it was like not quite to the level that it is here so that you know it's kind no mass transit that's true they're they're still working on that but yeah but I mean everything else they have in Saigon but banock just took it to the next level so that was it yeah what sort of visas are you guys each on and then how did you go about getting them we're on a non-immigrant o visa and the reason a couple reasons one is there's no healthc care requirement we'll probably talk about Healthcare um and you know insurance but there's no healthcare insurance requirement which is a biggie um the other thing is is it's about the only reasonable way to do it I mean the Thailand Elite Visa just seems seems a little extortionary I it's almost like 20 grand for the two of us to have a Visa it just doesn't seem to make sense so you know we're on the n imig non-immigrant o and we use a Visa agent it's I mean to go up to Chang watna on your own people do it scary people do it but I just don't have that kind of patience how did you find the Visa agent we actually found him at Chris's Meetup oh we found her at is this is this AI okay I know I know aie she's great yeah but before that we were working with a we were we were going down the path of of an attorney here when we met Audi we just decided to go with her and she walked us through the whole thing and we got the Visa since then for ruls were using grace that Haley had recomm recommended Grace yeah she used her and it was seemless and then in non-technical terms non-immigrant o Visa is just long form for retirement Visa correct right the non immigrant o you've got to be 50 year older right you've got to have 800,000 bot in a Thai bank account I think that was about it yeah it was pretty so there's a few different things at play right now we've talked a bit about condos we've touched about visas I I want to dig into each of those so I can really try to understand the process so you're sitting in New York you had had 30 years of Thailand and Asian travel experience you knew you wanted to get over here you got hooked up with an awesome real estate agent that real estate agent that you trusted connected you with this condo that we're we're here at now right in the Heart of the City you transferred the money to pay the deposit on that condo via wise and then you were able to get a residency certificate once that rental closed from there you use that residency certificate to open up a Thai bank account and then went ahead in country and applied for your retirement visas is that a fair assessment that's yeah that's pretty that pretty good summation I remember off camera we had a discussion about a year ago how you were talking about buying a condo versus renting a condo in Bangkok you actually ran the numbers and opted to rent on uh on a multi-year lease can you kind of share that story what what did you find why did you guys opt to rent well if you look at the money you would have to take to buy a place that's interest you're not going to learn interest in dividends that you're not going to earn having that money in invested the amount of interest and dividends we earn on that money far exceeds the rent we're paying so it just didn't make economic sense I know it'd be more comfortable to own a place but and it's not to say that we won't one day the thing that you don't get is you don't get the option to renovate and you know these this's is a new building it's all furnished it's pretty nice but if if I didn't have if we didn't have a house back home I would probably want to do something a little more custom and in that case I would probably make the poor financial but good personal decision to buy an older building a quality older building in a good location and just gut renovate it and you know make it you know make it ours right and that is still a possibility on the table Yeah but we when we were back there and Co hit and we ended up back in New York for two two years that we didn't expect to be there we were doing a renovation and we did a gut renovation on our home back there and you know we kind of built it from the ground up for two people for us and it's just you know it's it's so comfortable for us so you know hard to walk away from yeah it's difficult I mean we spend most of our time there when we're back in the States because it's kind of crowded where we live and uh you know we don't go out much and there's really no reason to but you know we cook we have uh you know interests and we built the house around it so yeah where in the US West is your guys's house eastampton New York so you guys maintain that place in New York even though you spend most of the year in Bangkok right we're here pretty much nine months and we go back there for rainy season here and summer out in the Hampton and you know like I said we did the renovation during covid and you know not knowing that we were going to move here and spend at first we thought we'd spend you know five six months here and 5 six months back there but enough with the cold we're done with that so yeah 9 months here 3 months there and built the house and it's just so comfortable for us it's really hard to give it up why the nine and three setup why not a six and six or an All or Nothing the the better question would be why not a 12 and zero it's we just we love it here this is and I think as as you know everybody all the expats we meet you know we all we all understand this is a good life over here it's a pretty good setup you get a bit of The Best of Both Worlds I must admit though I could totally see you guys spending all all months of the year here oh absolutely if we hadn't have done the renovation no question did you have furniture Electronics things like this that you had to ship in from the US when you first moved to Bangkok no we um when we were here before covid we knew we were coming back we expected to be back in a few months not 2 years but we left some some clothing here in storage some of the motorcycle stuff here in storage when we came we just had you know excess luggage and we bought you know some more clothes over but pretty much everything else we bought here but the apartment came furnished and um you know we had them like there was no TV in the bedroom so the owner got us a TV for the bedroom uh there was a bed in a tiny bed in the second bedroom which is really small that we use for Bob to edit now and um you know he we had him take the bed out you know yeah what we did what we what we did is we had the owner take the bed out we went over to Ikea we bought a desk and a desk chair and that is our office right you mentioned a motorbike do do you rent one here you bought a motorbike actually bought two um I ride you I've been riding forever I have a b BMW adventure bike back in New York and I had ridden around Thailand a lot on rental bikes I had a connection up in Jang maai I used to rent a BMW up there and I've been you know all over the North and uh in anticipation of coming here we bought a bike from New York on the telephone yeah so so we bought a BMW adventure bike when we got here um you know everything was all ready we just had to pay and that's a very big bike not the best for Bangkok bangkok's pretty crowded you know it's a lot of weaving between the cars and filtering between the cars so the only thing that made sense rather than be stuck in taxis every day was to uh get a little scooter so we went out and bought a Yamaha nmax and it turned out to be one of the best investments we've ever made this is not a place for somebody to learn how to ride this is a tough Place dangerous but as a seasoned Rider it was you know for us it's fine and what it allows us the freedom it allows us some of our best days in Bangkok are the days we get on a bike take Google Maps and just go explore I we get the places so far off the beaten path it's just we can't even find them again sometimes but what was the buying process on the amaha like how how did you do that well fir first it was to decide what kind of bike to buy and you see most people here have got Hondas as I did a lot of research some with the guys from BMW um and then when I had rented scooters I always asked you know the guys because they have to buy and maintain these things as you know what do they consider the best for an automatic you wanted an automatic and the Yamaha nmax floated to the top of the list so went over to Yamaha and it was pretty straightforward you know I I already bought the big bike so I already had you know I already kind of knew the ropes and um you know just signed some paperwork and you know couple day later bed out with a bike any good road trips you recommend in Thailand on the big bike oh yeah oh yeah well you know it depends if you're a seasoned Rider and comfortable um if I were to suggest one if you only had one to take I would do it out of changai I would go to a place called pop motorcycle and rent a bike and you can rent from you know small scooters mid-rise scooters to you know full on large motorcycles and do the May Hong song Loop it is it's pretty t um and it's a well-known well-worn path but you'll be riding in some of the best roads you've ever seen in your life it's just awesome T but a little scary on the back sometimes you ride on the back oh yeah cuz those are twisty roads I'm on the back yeah I got I got the camera I'm on the back you know it's but you know that's the mayong song Loop that's the that's the headline ride in Thailand there are so many other as you head north into the mountains there are so many beautiful roads and great Villages and everywhere the temples here the Watts there you know they're they're throughout the countryside it's truly a wonderful place uh to ride yeah we have a trip planned um either tomorrow or the next day we're going to head up uh towards Nan and you know spend a week or two up there you know it's nice we don't have a schedule we don't have to be back for anything so you know we'll go until doesn't make sense anymore and then we'll turn around and come back what do you guys like to do in Bangkok what are your go-to activities do do you like good Tunes live music are you Foodies you all yes all of the above our our probably largest out of pocket expense is food we go out every night we do we generally do Thai food during the day for lunch but in the evenings we're out mostly International I mean you can get most any kind of food here it's this is a major foodie City one of the best in the world and not just the Thai food so we you know we've got our places around town and we have a handful of like every International dish you could you know any kind of food you want and we have like a restaurant we go for steak Italian Greek uh Chinese crab I me everything so yeah we have a lot of restaurants that we go and you know we frequent them when we're here and you know the the people are so welcoming and they're so happy to see us they always fit Us in you know when we call they'll always find a table for us and they they're like family you know that you get to know them and they become like family the other thing we do quite a bit probably three or four nights a week is we love live music and it's surprising the caliber of uh music Talent there is here in Thailand yeah they're amazing we generally go for either you know blues or jazz or some of the oldies standards kind of music there's a few places we go um place called bud and Pals there's a place called The Golden Giraffe used to be for those of you that know the old applea down inside on soy 11 we go to Fu John's for jazz The Green Room Crimson room for Jazz Room there's there there's just there's there's a lot of opportunity for live music and then we live right near soy cowboy and there's a place called Country Road in there and they have great live bands every night so uh on on the way home from dinner we'll stop there you know grab a drink and listen to some music for an hour or whatever and we know all the people in there also so it's it's a lot of fun so you guys like all types of restaurants in Bangkok the back alley hole in the walls but then also the high-end stuff right I the back alley hole in the walls those are my favorite yeah they're great yeah nothing like a little 50 bot lunch something like that I love it but I will say at the same time there's also nothing like a good Al gouto stake you know oh that's become our yeah that's our stake place the the one thing here in in Bangkok in Thailand is you can live at many different price points yeah and you know we live at a fairly Advanced price point but it would be just as easy to live at a more modest price point and still have a rewarding and fun existence here right that's it's different than in the West at the lower end you're have you have a tough time in America whereas here you could still have a really fulfilling nice life yeah I going to one of these back alley restaurants we walk out of there as satisfied if not more than going to the expensive you know International restaurants so it's not a matter of money yeah what is your guys's cost of living over here that's a that's a tough one because I you know the everything is so comingled but I'm guessing our rent is with utilities is about in US dollars is about 3,000 a month um we're probably 10 12,000 a month could get a little higher you know on on you know months with high medical bills or months with expensive travel right we're probably 10 12,000 a month here so you guys are definitely spending a lot of money as expats in Thailand then there are people that spend more there are people that spend less I mean the the one thing you know kind of my philosophy on retirement is is you work your whole life and you you you create a certain lifestyle for yourself the goal for a good retirement in my view is if you can retire and maintain that lifestyle for the rest of your life that's the time to retire and whatever that lifestyle is it's not that you're going to you know if if you didn't fly first class before you retired you're not going to fly first class after you retired if you FL flew first class before you retired you're going to miss it if you're not doing it after you retire so you know it's it's a pretty simple formula that I would encourage anybody to you know to live by that rule and you'll be just fine Y what did you guys do for work back in the US pre-retirement most of my uh career was on Wall Street um I started back on Wall Street in the 80s and um you know I was one of five women on the or the New York Stock Exchange and it was fun it was a real real good time you know it was um I met a lot of people I met a lot of influential people and uh then um I guess about TW I I used to work actually in the World Trade Center and when 9/11 happened I had left um two years before and moved full-time out to our house CU we bought the house a couple years before that but um I worked with people you know every day that you know did didn't make it through that so that was a real tough time for me and then I moved out to The Hamptons and I started um working for the uh Hampton's International Film Festival um I started my own event company and I would do fundraising out there and charitable events and um and then I did medical billing which I'll talk about when we get to uh you know the healthcare but uh yeah that was pretty much uh my life for me I was um I was always in the big just at the edges of the big corporate world in New York I was you know you know for the big accounting firms I did accounting I did management consulting and then I was also pretty technical so I got into technology sales you know software and then Cloud uh Computing um before I retired and I know the two of you are frequenters of bangkok's international hospitals can you guys talk about what the private healthc care looks like here well It Started from the day a couple of days after we moved here we got this beautiful new apartment I just bought this beautiful new bike we're all excited we're going to go take off on a big motorcycle trip up north and I proceed to stub my toe in the apartment did a real serious break on my toe five weeks before I could put on a shoe that was our first experience um at Boomerang grad since then uh on one of the trips I dropped the bike Paul it came off on her wrist she did a pretty serious break on her wrist so it was a pretty this was not just a break cuz there was some there was some some cartilage damage and it she ended up with pins and she had a pretty serious operation here um we were actually on our way to simui at the time on the motorcycle that's a whole story in itself rting to catch a ferry and um what are some of the other the other major ones I had I had a back procedure I had a radio frequency procedure on my back here knee surgery I had tore my Meniscus last year and I had meniscus you know reconstructive surgery on my knee just a few months ago I had sinus surgery um so we've been uh we've got pretty good experience here at boomr what I will say is the doctors here are comparable with the you know with the top doctors in New York I mean we've dealt with them enough to understand these guys are are trained just as well the equipment is just as good and a lot of them are actually educated in the back in the States so yeah so the standard of care available is very high the cost is pretty reasonable especially compared to the states like the surgeries the the sinus surgery miniscus surgery the the the wrist surgery those are about $10,000 procedures here whereas in the states it would be tens of thousands of dollars yeah many tens of thousands so so there's that the other on the dental side very similar um I've had implants I've had crowns I've had extractions and I've been lucky to have cosmetic veneers so I get the good stuff and again the standard of care is comparable to the best we get in New York if not better the the the one comment I would have and it's it's pretty noticeable is both dentistry and medical here is the doctors practice medicine and they don't you know look over their shoulders at what's the insurance implications of their decisions and that comes through yeah um subliminally but it is definitely noticeable that they're practicing medicine and doing the right thing with only consideration for the medical outcomes not what the finances are for the insurance doctors have a good bedside manner here you know compared to what they have back in the States but um you know I used to do medical billing and um we have uh we have Medicare and a supplemental back of the states Medicare doesn't work internationally you can't they don't do anything but our supplemental insurance does cover you for the first 60 days out of the country and what I learned it's not a matter of having all the work completed in the first 60 days you just have to have it documented within the first 60 days so like with his knee we took him to a hospital on one of our trips up uh where was it R titani I believe we took you to a a clinic up there and he had an MRI and they said it was working so I had the documentation and that was within the first 60 days the surgery didn't happen until 5 months later it was all covered through through our supplemental insurance back from the states and is that a government thing in the US the Medicare is the government part the supplemental you buy to kind of cover the gap right yeah so so Medicare back in the States pays 80% and the supplemental picks up the other 20 what happens when you're oversease is for the first 60 days the the supplemental will cover 80% and then we pick up the 20 but with the exchange rate with the bot to the US dollar we ended up getting the whole thing back so it was kind of like you know but but a lot of people don't know how it works so it's it's it's you know you got to look between the cracks to find it which I was able to do and is that a theme for all of the procedures you guys have had like the vast majority of the work that's been done over here has been covered by your supplemental insurance pretty much but pretty much we've been very lucky because we are self-insured here yeah um medical insurance is a little tough here in Thailand first of all you can only you have to buy an annual and we're not here all year but that's neither here or there but the other thing is there's pretty heavy exclusions on pre-existing conditions by the time you you get to more advanced years camp near everything's a pre-existing condition and the other thing is is it's pretty discriminatory uh in terms of age the costs go up pretty severely as you get older and then there's points where you just can't buy insurance at certain ages so you're limited to what you can buy um and then if you buy you're limited as to what they're going to cover and that just didn't make sense so we're self-insured I mean the thought is if we ever have a catastrophic catastrophic event you know we'd fly back to the States and have it handled now I just had covid recently and the thought did occur to me that if I ended up needing intensive care that could have gotten expensive and you know they the you know the bet would have been against me right but we've been pretty lucky so when you have an operation here that costs $10,000 in Bank Co but in America maybe it's 50 Grand it's about like that who pays for it though that's you just pay for it up front but then you get a certain percentage of that rebated back to you they we pay it up front I make sure I have all the medical records and all the paperwork that I need I fill out all the forms I send it en our supplemental and then you know within a couple of weeks we have a check back for 80% but with the like I said with the exchange rate we're usually getting back we usually end up getting back about 100% but so but if we had and now we're far past the 60 days if something came up now there's no reimbursement it's 10 grand yeah I understand okay that was yeah but what we do do at least to to hedge our bets is like when we go on a motorcycle trip is I'll take out travel insurance and I've used for for decades now World Nomads and I'll take out travel insurance for that period cuz come off the bike that could get and actually they paid 100% of my um wrist surgery in World Nomads did CU bike yeah yeah it's worldnomads.com people could find that oh yeah yeah they're great yeah it's like safety Wings it's they were around before them and it's more of a travel it doesn't have that that that like digital Nomad you know piece to it um but we buy the travel insurance so we're going we're going to non you know this week I'll buy for both of us you know World nomads travel insurance and it covers medical and um it also covers emergency evacuation trffic yeah so yeah I just think that's Prov that was probably the easiest because what you had to do is when it first happened we just had to call and get a documented with them on the phone and then um you know just send them in the bills and uh you know they paid really quick yeah so overall though you're impressed with private healthc care here in Thailand very much so and you guys are well qualified to have that opinion I actually met you the other day at the Bangkok International Dental Hospital yeah is that what it was called and uh that facility was great man they knew you in there you're like you're like the the king of Kensington both of you every anytime I ever hang out with you guys you're like saying hello to everybody well you know it's we have we we we we just love our life here we walk around with a smile and a smile goes a long way especially with the Thai people cuz they are so nice and it's just so much fun to interact with them they they've got great sense of humor and and it's just wherever we go and if you're not walking around this town with a smile on your face as an expat you probably ought to reconsider some of your life's decisions because it's just a wonderful place how have you guys made friends here since being in Bangkok any advice for people that have just moved to this city that are looking to meet other cool expats yeah I mean the one thing is the one thing you've got to realize is virtually any other expat you meet here by definition is somebody you know a like-minded individual I mean we all come here you know for a reason and um so there there's that at the base but like anywhere else it's pursue your interests and you'll meet people that have the same interests you know for instance you know the motorcycle I met a bunch of friends now you know because I ride you know the motorcycle and I got involved with you know some of the folks uh you know through the shop that I bought it from um we go out like every night for live music we met a ton of people that have that same you know passion you know he'll go by himself for a couple of days on the motorcycle trip you know some off-roading which I don't really care to do with him and you know I'll do what girls do you know we'll go and pamper ourselves for like you know three or four days up in the mountains or you know at a resort somewhere and and what's nice is we've got a lot of friends that are expats we've also got a lot of tha local friends and that's a nice balance you know to hang out with just the expat Community I think it's a little limiting you know right you can stay home and hang out with a bunch of people like that but not not that it's not good but it's nice to also have some local friends you just the experience is much richer The Cult exchange what do you guys figure your next 5 10 years look like are you are you here for for a while or are you going to go back to the US do you figure you know I I mean all all all my only goal is pretty simple just to to to age gracefully because the alternative sucks um we don't really have a set plan you know we have we still have the home you know the house back in the States so there is always that option should we need to use that option but we're going to kind of take it as it comes and you know depending on how things go primarily how the health holds out is you know we'll make the right choice for us at that time but until then I don't see much of a change you know it's pretty sweet it's interesting I mean we love it here we don't have much family back in America um you know we don't have parents back there any longer the only the only relative we have we have no children the only relative we have is my sister and her husband and her their two kids and her grandchild and you know it's interesting because I have a 30-year-old niece who came over here a year ago and you know she flew she flew here with some friends they were in business school and she came and spent a couple of days with us in Bangkok and then we took her to Saigon and I spent like we spent like five days with her and that's probably more time than I've spent with Jackie than in her 30 years you know on this Earth in America so you know my sister and her husband travel they've been you know all over the world and you know they're going to plan a trip here hopefully this coming year and um yeah so it's like not that we have family that we have to rush back to or kids that we have to take care of so yeah we're just going to kind of go with it day by day and walk around with a smile on our face and hopefully this is going to be uh you know a good way to uh you know fill in this chapter I don't mean to bring the spirits down but is there any anything you dislike about Thailand you know the hassles that we go through for for things like you know buying bikes you know doing the immigration stuff but I comfort myself in in the thought that however difficult it is for us here as expats if I think about some of my Tha friends coming to America and trying to do what we're doing it would be infinitely more difficult for them so you got to kind of look at it you know and take it all with a grain of salt and just keep smiling your way and working your way through it you'll get through it how about you Paula yeah pretty much the same I mean the air the air The Burning Season you know the air and and the Heat and the humidity and you know but then when I think about the snow back uh in America it's like you know I don't mind the heat and humidity here you know we go out on the motorcycle we come back drenched just take the clothes off throw it in the washing machine and do a little of laundry and you know it's uh yeah I mean I thought the Heat might bother me but not so much you know and I wear a hat so it doesn't really matter so so how many showers a day do you take I'm a two a day kind of guy sometimes I'm four you know I'm like I'm like that's if you're not doing much that day cuz I'm like always running around I'm always running somewhere you know he's editing I'm going out to get lunch I'm going to get my manicure you know whatever whatever I do but yeah so do you guys have any parting words of wisdom for somebody that's similar to you maybe they're sitting back home in America they're sitting in Canada they're sitting in Europe they're looking for a unique retirement they've done well for themselves any words of advice well the first thing I would say is do your homework there I mean broadly speaking the options over here are the mountains up north places like changmai you can go more rural but you know let's consider the the northern mountains the next would be Bangkok and this is a great City but it's not for everybody and the other option are down south in the islands so what I would suggest is come over here spend some time spend at least a week more if you can in each of those three areas and get an idea of you know where you see yourself fitting and and and and and to spend some decent amount of time because what you don't want to just live out of the suitcase come here live out of the suitcase and go home you want to maybe you know have to interact with some of the services and try to some of everyday's life challenges If you experience that just so you have a good idea is this really for you because I suspect most people don't have the wherewithal once they're retired to make big life mistakes and you don't want this to be a big life mistake one of the other things is there's um there's also um a very it's very inexpensive to travel within within Thailand but also within the neighboring countries in Southeast Asia and you know that was a big a big decision on why we actually chose Bangkok because it's so accessible to other parts of you know the world that we want to travel and um yeah the I mean one of the other one of the other pieces of advice I would have and I think I mentioned it before is once you're able to maintain your stop working and maintain your lifestyle that's the time to stop working you know I never I never heard of anybody at the end of the game say I wish I spent more time in the office you know once you're done once you've able to maintain your lifestyle that's the time to consider and boy if you're if if if if if if if you're having struggles in the west um be it the economics or the politics or just playing tired of of of the same lifestyle for you know 50 60 years this is a great option yeah and I I I couldn't encourage you to seize the moment and make that last chapter in life the most fulfilling it can possibly be guys it's been awesome getting to know you over the past couple years thank you for coming on and sharing your Thailand blueprint I really appreciate it some very very good advice here from an inspirational Duo so thanks again cheers guys thank you thank you
