Legal issues

If you want to buy a bar or whatever business in Thailand, you have to take several specific issues into account.

First of all, you cannot work without a work permit. Secondly, if you are not able to neither speak nor read in Thai, you need a local partner.

Typical business for farang involves two persons: the farang himself and his wife/girlfriend. Furthermore, officially all the business has to be made on his spouse’s name.

So we did. For me personally the guarantee was our marriage. If you are not married with your business partner, the risk is much higher indeed.

Buying (handling the key money) involved a correct document made by the seller and approved by the land lord.

The next act was registering our business at local authorities in Banglamung. Required licenses include license for selling alcohol etc. They asked even for insurances for all the staff, but somehow we could ignore that. The paperwork took some month or so. The last license came after four months from starting. The total sum of fees exceeded up to 20 thousand baht.

As mentioned above, all the documents were in Thai and the authorities spoke only Thai.

All the licenses are valid for one year. It means we will renew these again and again.

Actually we started without any licenses. This is Thailand and here is nothing to worry about too much.