Transcript of the above video:

A recent article came to my attention and there was some information in it that I thought was rather interesting. This is an article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Grimaces replace smiles for retirees. Throughout this article they do a Q&A with the Immigration Bureau Deputy Commander, Police Major General Achayan Kraithong. It is rather interesting but this I thought obviously for purposes of this video, I thought this was interesting because it immediately popped into my head, hey if the retiree number has significantly decreased here in Thailand, and quoting directly: "How many foreign nationals have been granted visas?" This is the Bangkok Post asking. And, "what are the top three nationalities?" and we won't get to the nationalities thing but just going back. Quoting this: "How many foreign nationals have been granted Retirement Visas?" Answer: "A total of 35,846 foreigners have obtained Retirement Visas with the top three nationalities being British, Germans and Americans." So that was kind of interesting British, Germans and Americans but not really the thrust of this video. 

That number, 35,846, I seem to recall statistics going back into 2018 I think it was a UN document I remember reading at the time. I think we even did a video on this and I need to go in and pick it up. Now I am just bringing this up off the top of my head, I just read this article right before we got to filming so I will do some further digging for those that are interested in this if there are any and if there are, go ahead and let us know in the comments. As I recall going back not 5 years ago, the numbers for retirees in Thailand, folks in Thailand on a Retirement Visa were somewhere up around 80,000 people; that was a recollection I had. Now I could be way off, my memory could be wrong on that and there have been a ton of different circumstances that have come down. Again I believe that was from '18 so it was even looking backwards at like '17 or even 16's numbers at that time. Well as we know, a lot changed in ‘17 and ‘18 with respect to Retirement Visas. Things like the end of the Income affidavits came down the pike; then we saw a "Big Joke" with all of the heavy, strict requirements associated with retirement income and retirement financial documentation associated with extension, all of this came down right around that time. So, it wouldn't shock me tremendously if we have seen a decrease in numbers of retirees overall. Now add COVID to the mix and the overall situation associated with that and all the restrictions associated with travel and I suspect yeah, we probably are down overall, but 35,000 people almost 36,000 retirees in Thailand, that is still a substantial number and quite frankly I suspect as 2022 rolls on, that number will probably increase.