I lived in Thailand for 16 years. We had a successful 3D animation studio in Osaka that had lot's of business but our expenses were so high that we weren't mak

I lived in Thailand for 16 years. We had a successful 3D animation studio in Osaka that had lot's of business but our expenses were so high that we weren't making a profit. We thought that moving to Thailand would save us money, and we wouldn't have to live in a damp shoebox smelling of stale cigarettes (actually I loved Japan, but it's just too damn expensive). At that time (in the 90's) it was still a pain in the ass to get a work visa and run your own business, but it could be done with a bit of money paid in the right places. But as the years passed by, the government kept changing immigration rules almost every other month. The amount of paperwork needed to renew visas increased dramatically. You have to have a map showing where you live. You have to show photos of you working in your office, photos of you and all of your staff outside your office. We had an application turned down one time because I wasn't wearing the same color shirt as the staff in the photo. Then they came down hard and changed ownership laws so that foreigners can't own 51% of a Thai company and closed the common loophole of using proxy shareholders. Meanwhile we had been having a terrible time with Thai staff. Cambodian and Laos workers don't know how to learn but they try very hard to learn, and put real effort into learning english (which we need in order to deal with our customers around Asia). We are primarily a Unix and Linux shop (back then we were using SGI workstations for animation, modeling and rendering). But we had a difficult time finding staff who could even be bothered to learn different systems. So it finally got to the point where we closed up shop, and I continued to live in Thailand, but ran my business out of Hong Kong (where I lived for 10 years before Osaka). But in the end, the cost of living in Thailand had grown so high, and immigration had become such a pain in the ass that I finally gave up even living there. We've now consolidated all of our business and are headquartered in Phnom Penh and it's been, all in all a very good experience. In thailand, expats spend 15-20% of all conversations talking about visas (even if you have a work/marriage/retirement visa). In the past year in Cambodia I don't think the subject has come up more than a couple of times). I love Thailand in many ways, but the governments xenophobia, and the tendency for girls there to treat you as an ATM card with no pin number just wore me down.