Transcript of the above video: 

For those who keep up with this channel regularly, I would kind of like to know if YouTube is like intentionally suppressing these videos, but I have been making a lot of videos on the current political situation here in Thailand, because quite frankly as a Thai it concerns me greatly, but that is not the thrust of this video. The thrust of this video is the question posed in the title which is, "is it a good idea to retire in Thailand amidst all of this ostensible political turbulence, if you will?"

The answer to that question is really look, I have always very much likened Thailand, the state that to my mind is most analogous in the United States to Thailand, is Louisiana for a variety of different reasons. One, Louisiana has the Civil Law which so does Thailand. Two, it sits at the delta of a river and if you look at New Orleans and Baton Rouge, I think it's very similar looking to Bangkok and Ayutthaya, where you have got sort of the old city, new city stuff going on. In any event, beyond even that, the politics of the two countries are very similar as well. In fact, l personally think there are a lot of parallels to certain political actors here; I will leave them. nameless for purposes of this video, to for example to Huey Long in the United States, back in the old days of Louisiana not to say how Huey Long ended but sort of the way he came to power up against the sort of the machine in New Orleans. He sort of came down from the North if you will and the way he came in is very similar to the history of Louisiana politics. In any event, the point I am trying to make is understand that much like Louisiana, where the background is all of this crazy stuff that frankly people outside of that state are like what's going on down there, it works. It just goes on. We have all this political chicanery and maybe seemingly chaos going on in the background, but we get on with it. Everything is "sabai, sabai" as they say here in Thailand and at the street level most Thais are getting on with their lives and getting on with business, and yeah, we may see some demonstrations from time to time. Now unfortunately in the past, especially where certain political actors from the sidelines primarily tried to sort of stir up things, we saw things happen to get a little more volatile than we would have otherwise liked. That's very, very rare and frankly, I don't really foresee it happening anytime in the near future; at least I hope it's not going to happen. But from everything I am seeing, it looks to me like this is probably all going to be handled institutionally within Parliament and things. 

That said, again amidst this "turbulence" is it a good idea to “retire” here? I would still say yes especially if you are not planning on retiring in Bangkok and a large number of folks want to retire in Bangkok. There's a good video on Thailand's kind of history and why it has the kind of political volatility it has, and one of the big reasons is, Bangkok acts as sort of an epicentre for politics here in Thailand, and it's very atypical from any other country. Well part of the reason for that is Thailand was never colonized I think, so this is kind of the natural order of things when you have a country that was never colonized from the outside and fundamentally changed. 

That said, going back to retirement here, yeah, I do think it's actually if anything probably a better time than most times to retire here because we are in the middle of a pretty, I hesitate to call it heinous but it is definitely a low, low season at the moment so your patronage at various places here are going to be appreciated at the moment. Yeah admittedly, opening Bank Accounts and getting into Retirement Visa status is a bit tricky. We do assist with that. As we have discussed in other videos, folks that are coming in new may want to contact a legal professional and gain some insight and guidance, but long story short, yeah I do believe overall it is a good idea, or it's not any worse an idea now than it ever was before, to retire in Thailand, because quite frankly these things just sort of happen in the background. If you are a foreigner here you may not even notice it, if you are not really keeping up with the news. So that said, those are my thoughts there. 

Real quick plug. I am continuing to keep up with the paid news service. For those folks who want some more in-depth analysis, please email us at [email protected] for insight regarding the paid news service. Also with respect to the Pancake Palace, as I have discussed in other videos, we have opened a new place here in Bangkok for American diner food and all-day breakfast. Pancake Palace, obviously as the name implies, we've got pancakes, all day breakfast, we have got great chilli, we've got buffalo wings, cheeseburgers and for those who want the American sort of diner experience in downtown Bangkok, please feel free to come by. We are on Soi Anuman Rachadhon, between Surawong and Silom Road: I'll put a link in the description below. Thanks very much for watching.