The GReat Thailand Dream...?

[ChristianTroy]

Zombie, I sure will post when I open.

Of course I won't have different coloured tags because I am supposed to believe that the costumer only wants to sit and drink a coffee with her. If he wants to have sex with her it is an arrangement between them

 

Retaining is gonna be a hard job. For the start the quality will be extremely high. I will only be able to keep it that high when the bar is packed with customers and the girls make good money. Others will be keen to work for me! Good thing is that the most girls know me a long time now!

 

I have to check with KS but I was thinking of having some kind of drink voucher posted on the board, exclusively for board members with 100+ posts (to prevent people signing up to get freebies)

[Mekong]

What Dream?

 

To some of us it is not a dream but reality.

More than 2/3 of my income is available at the end of each month (the nest egg) and my outgoings include mortgage on the home in Bangkok and rent on my apartment in ESB, total outgoings probably in the region of 150K / month as mentioned previously.

 

As TH mentioned, Oil n Gas (Black Gold) with a Multinational, I have done Saudi, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, the Stans, Sakhalin and even the fuxin North Sea in my time and now it is payback time, them faceless assholes that used to sit in the Ivory towers engineering shite have now all retired and the field engineer has come home to roost. Even though I have lived in Thailand since 91 and have been fortunate enough to pick up 2-3 contracts here it has only been the last couple of years that I have landed what I can call a permenent job ... which is something somewhat surreal to us contractors (I refer to myself as an Industrial Whore)

 

IMHO I'd stay stick at what you know and what you are good at, it does not matter if you are an Engineer, a Financila Consultant, in F&B, a Teacher or whatever, just stick to your own field of experise to make a success out of it.

 

Even though the company I work for has work up until 2015 at present there is no Guarantee I will be part of their long term plans, Skills Transfer to Local Employee's is part of my job description, Engineering myself out of a position of exclusivity, but what the hell if this bubble bursts I will just pick up a 28/28 in some shitehole to keep it ticking over.

 

Remember a Sucessful Man is one who can earn more money than his wife can spend ... A Sucessful Woman is the one who finds that man.

 

 

[ChristianTroy]

Good post Mekong.

Stick to what you are good at!

Usually people are good in things they really like (make your hobby your profession) Since i can't be a professional whore monger I open this bar. Worked 6 years with models, and have detailed stats from a view million visitors. I studied the scene in Pattaya longer than a year almost everyday and my mentor runs 5 bars.

 

To me success means beeing independend, doing what you like most and pulling a profit from that. Even if I loose money in that project I will not regret it, it won't make me broke!

[Nervous_Dog]

<>

 

Cool CT, so do we get a voucher for every 100 posts ?

 

DOG

[junglesoup]

I think what comes from that Mekong is that you worked hard, and now its paid off. I ve found something I enjoy doing but its taken a while, a few failures and trial and error.

[buffalo_bill]

Would I consider to marry lovely Nok ( which I won't ) and would settle down in Thailand ( which I won't ) or settle down in Thailand for any other reason ( which I won't ) then I would live down South and buy and sell plots and apartments which I would build myself . For this the essentials are capital ,local contacts and no allergy against risky moves .

 

I do not call this business property business, I call it the Illusion business , looked at from the customer side . If the " Great Thailand Dream " includes making lots of money in short time , this might be the way to go . Collaterals see above .

 

BuBi

[Gadfly]

It is possible to make a good living here and some people do become wealthy. I think you could make the same statement about the US. A few comments and observations:

 

1. Over the last five years, the number of work permit holders has nearly doubled. It is now over 70,000, and this doesn't include foreigners working here without work permits. There a definitely more Farangs working here than when I came over 12 years ago. There is obviously very strong demand for foreign workers with the right skill sets.

 

2. Even with the number of work permit holders doubling over the last five years, on a percentage basis the number of foreign workers in Bangkok is very very low by international standards. Assume the population here is 11,000,000 (probably low); this means legitimate foreigner workers are less than 1% of the work force. Even if you double or triple the official figures to account for Farangs working without permits (the officials are pretty aggressive about enforcing work permit laws these days, so I don't know how long you could work here without a permit), the percentage is still extremely low by international standards.

 

3. I work in a bank, and I know we would bring in more foreign staff in a heartbeat if we could. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find enough good people with the right skill sets and education in the local market. The regulators, however, absolutely refuse to allow us to hire more foreigners. It is not even open for discussion - full stop.

 

Because of these restrictions, the organization suffers. We simply are not as good as our 'peers' in Singapore or Hong Kong, and everyone in the industy knows this. I suspect this is true in other service industries where performance requires highly educated and capable staff.

 

4. About a month back, The Economist included an excellent report on international job markets. The demand for highly skillled and educated employees exceeds demand almost everywhere. These people create jobs for other people. They are also the key to the future success and development of economies such as Thailand.

 

Some countries recognize this and are encouraging the highly skilled to relocate to their country, some countries are ambivalent about this and send mixed messages (US?) and some countires put up all sorts of legal barriers. I think we all know where Thailand falls within this spectrum.

 

5. My practical conclusion is this: there are tremendous opportunities here, but you need to be smart about how you identify them and you need to be prepared to deal with tremendous 'transaction costs' (e.g., work permits, visas, all the barriers to foreign ownership of companies, etc.) to take advantge of those opportunitites. When you look at those transaction costs, you might decide to set up business elsewhere (many MNC and smaller businesses obviously do), but if your heart is set on Thailand for other reasons, you can do well here if you have the patience to deal with all the bureaucratic hassles of working and doing business here.

 

Two final comments: first, don't risk trying to fly under the radar; you leave yourself too vulnerable. Business conflicts arise everywhere in the world, and here one of the easiest way to solve a business conflict with an illegal Farang is to send him packing. Second, working here is not the same as partying here on holiday. Because of the readily available diversions here, you need to be more disciplined.

 

[Gadfly]

IMHO I'd stay stick at what you know and what you are good at, it does not matter if you are an Engineer, a Financila Consultant, in F&B, a Teacher or whatever, just stick to your own field of experise to make a success out of it.

 

Excellent point, and I meant to somehow make this same comment in my earlier posts.

 

It is amazing to see guys who are, maybe accountants back home, and decide to become bar owners here, or bakers back home, and decide they can become financial advisors here because they are native English speakers.

 

Making a career change is difficult enough, but making it in entirely different culture where you havenâ??t yet mastered the language or don't know the culture well is an incrediably difficult feat â?? so difficult that you are likely setting yourself up for failure.

[ChristianTroy]

The problem with guys opening a bar ist that they don't know what it takes to do that! They have the money to buy one and sit there for months and hope the girls will come from alone!

 

So many guys go broke because they don't know where to buy the drinks cheap, they don't know anything about marketing and when they realise what rats tail comes with the costs (such as salaries, bribes, protection etc...) it is already too late. Many put all their money into the bar and have nothing left after the first month, in this case he needs to get his bar buzzing from the start. If you can't pay your bills for at least 6 months upfront you better don't even start. You are condemmned to have success from the first day! If you have nothing special to offer and no stunners in the bar, why would anybody want to sit in your bar?

 

I have no experience with a bar, but I do have friends who does and I pay them to help me out the first 6 weeks. I was in advertising for almost a decade and I was 6 years in casting and shooting girls and believe to know what is expected from the mongers. Also have unseen gimmicks and the money for 6 months or longer which gives me the freedom to make mistakes!

[bibblies]

CT, you mention that the furniture's already 2 weeks late. Why let that stop you?

 

Do what the Beatles did when a 'mistake' happened in the recording studio - make a virtue of it. You don't need chairs in a gogo bar. Just as you're doing without the barfines for the first month, open without them and make the no chairs a selling point.

 

Or ... you could employ 'human chairs' and tables.