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You’ve been warned. Don’t invest in land on Phuket Island. Even if you’re a sad Brit married to a lonely Thai bride, you’re going to get… um… you know.
You don’t know? Here’s what has been happening. Sad men, mostly Brits and Irish, marry their Thai brides, have kids, and invest their life’s saving in land and homes on beautiful Phuket Island where the sands are so white and so pristine you can’t even bare to piss on them. Seriously, you’d rather pee on the floor of your half million dollar home than disturb those sands.
But, you, as a foreigner can’t really buy property there unless you’re given a special designation from being married to a Thai national. And even then, you can build a home but you can only lease the property. But the island is so freaking beautiful, as is your wife, and your kiddoes are telling you “Daddy, we want to fish and play in the sand and X-Box in the den while you and mommy are making more siblings in the breezy master bedroom… forever!”
That’s where they get you. You end up saying “Suck it, I’ll live on Phuket.” 100,000 foreigners have bought this Phuket dream, a scam called the “Thailand Elite” and many of those bitterly regret it. Some have lost all their savings and are struggling in Bangkok. OMG, the irony, thinking you’ll be happily fucking on Phuket only to be ripped off and then having to bang your cock against a rock in … you know where.
One such Brit, Ian Rance, thought he bought the Thailandish Thailand Elite dream by settling on Phuket, buying two houses, a restaurant and two more pieces of land only to find his rights as a foreigner married to a national was never ratified by the government. So he had to transfer the property to be totally either in his wife’s name or in his company’s name. Later on he found that his wife had transferred the company totally to her name and then left him. When he refused to leave his kids or his house, four men with guns forced him to. Oh, another thing, just because an island is called Phuket doesn’t mean a lot of gun crime doesn’t happen there. And, if you think you’re going to get your property back through the Thai court system, ha. I’ve got a curry farm you might wish to buy. There’s a good chance, almost a certainty, the lawyer you hire will be working for the other side… the unscrupulous land dealers and the Thai nationals who are in on the scam.
So there you go. It’s a bad deal, sad men. Even if you’re a sad man with money, you’ll lose it. In Ian Rance’s case, he had millions of pounds, enough to spend half a million pounds on lawyer fees but is now penniless. He does have his kids, a new wife, and his old wife is in jail. But, as far as his property, let’s just repeat the name of the island.