i plan to spend a couple of months along the same circuit as you (+China and Vietnam)- not for another 6 months though. curious what your connectivity strategy will be; as that's my major concern. @ home, i don't jsut have redundancy, i have 4 ways to connect to the internet (cable, dsl, 3g and dial up) plus an APC power backup. haven't really figured out how give myself that warm fuzzy that i;ll be covered on the trip. i trade the HSI, so a few minutes can be lethal. not so worried about SIN, but my experience in Thailand a couple years ago was jammed cell phone circuits and fairly common internet outages both where we were staying (Marriott) and the surrounding internet cafes- scary prospect whilst in a trade.... anyway, i'm sure you've thought this thru also- what have you come up with?
I lived and worked in Thailand for 8 years and although the locals are friendly you are always a farang, the language is difficult to learn and not much use except in Thailand. I also tried trading during the night, it did not suit me. If you are single, give it a try but if you are married with children there are distractions that are not conducive to family life. I found Panama just as cheap, better trading hours and the lifestyle more to my taste.
Gangof, if you havent already been to Viet Nam, you are going to enjoy your trip. Nha Trang and Da Lat are two of my personal favorites.
I live/trade in thailand since quite a few years and its a good place to be. Whats an issue (still) is the lack of really good and reliable internet connection. If not married to US markets only you can basically trade asian, european markets in daytime and US markets in the night, currencies all day long if this suits you.
I have tangled with HSI before myself, you definately don't want to have positions while you're disconnected. I'll be trading pretty lightly while over there. I'll be on Skype with a buddy of mine back home. If I drop my connection he'll know it and log in for me and handle my position. It's not ideal and hopefully things have improved enough that that won't be needed.
Internet is MUCH MUCH WORSE than it was 2 years ago, more users, no increase in international bandwidth. Blocking of ports, constand dropping of connections - you would be better off trying to trade from Cuba or Zimbabwe. I have dropped all leveraged intraday stuff and now just trade in the daily timeframe.
I lived in Thailand for a couple of years. I found the G3 connection from your cell phone to be pretty reliable. If you have the proper type of phone you can connect it to your USB and use it as a backup (I had a Nokia N70). All you need to do is pick up a SIM card for about 7 dollars and internet is about 50 cents per hour, or you can get deals like 6 dollars per month for 200 hours of use. You can get about 25 kb/s which is about half of what G3 is capable of. The ADSL is laggy and sometimes goes out for hours. I wouldn't scalp with it. I used to play poker and I would get disconnected often because of a timeout. Cost me so much money over the long haul =/ Hope to move back there in the very near future. It's a great way to spend ones 20s =)
thanks for all the input, everyone. disappointing to hear connection issues are actually worse in LOS- sounds typical "TiT" reality. this may change my plans considerably. i had planned to use SIN and BKK as my stable trading 'bases' from which to go off to other areas. if BKK can't meet that need, i can't imagine spending all that time in SIN. can't go 2 months without income either. ehh...
How do you guys stay in Thailand (unless you have a Thai passport). Is there any way to get a Visa or even residence permit relatively easily (e.g. through bribing)? I read you can just stay for 90 days as a tourist and then have to leave the country.
I use a non immigrant multi-o visa, this lets me enter/exit the country for upto 90 days at a time as many times as I wish over the course of the year.... You need to contact a "friendly" Thai consulate in your country to get the Non Imm-O... Currently I just make a trip to Cambodia in my car every 90 days, get my passport stamped and straight back... For info on all the various types check out http://www.thaivisa.com/visa/non-immigrant-visa.html Getting PR is nigh on impossible from all accounts, would just scrap thoughts of that unless you really want to make the effort to live here the rest of your life. I live outside of Pattaya, about 2 hours from Bangkok, most of the time net access is fine but in 1 year it has gone down many times more than the previous 6 years in the UK...As a swing trader however this is not such a big concern for me, instant rapid execution is not a big deal for me, and hell, who wants to sit in front of a computer screen all night long when your living here?! I know several people living here who trade, but none are daytraders all have accounts ranging from mid 6 figures to high 7 figures, all hold trades for days-weeks..sometimes months, key for us lot is trading to earn money and enjoy life, not getting sun burnt from a monitor.