James Laid
Thailand Secrets
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James Laid Thailand Secrets

Thailand has spent sixty years learning exactly how foreigners think.

There is a polite, smiling, extremely well-practised industry built around separating them from their money — and it works because almost nobody has read the script. This book is the script, written out in full: every scam, every shortcut, and every place worth your time.

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90
Chapters
7
Parts
149
Pages
James Laid

"The taxi driver who tells you the Grand Palace is closed today. None of these people are monsters. They are running a script, and the script works because almost nobody has read it."

Before You Begin
The Thailand Bible — First Edition
I · The Book

The Thailand Bible

I am not going to tell you Thailand changed my life. Every third video on the internet says that, and it is the kind of sentence that sells a fantasy instead of a plane ticket.

What I will tell you is this. Thailand is one of the few countries left where an ordinary person on an ordinary budget can live extraordinarily well, eat like a king for pocket change, and be treated with warmth by strangers who owe them nothing. That part is true. It has been true a long time and it is still true today.

What is also true is the other half. The gem shop that only appears after a friendly stranger points you toward it. The scooter rental that finds a scratch on the bike you never made. The ฿220 charge on every single ATM withdrawal that almost nobody knows how to stop paying. Not a criminal underworld — an industry, and a very well-practised one.

"Advice without limits is just confidence, and confidence is the most expensive thing you can pack."

So that is what this book is. Ninety chapters in seven parts, in the order a trip actually happens: the decisions you make at home, then money, then the scams, then getting around, then eating, then where to go, then what changes if you stay.

Every chapter is short on purpose — you should be able to read one while you wait for a plate of rice and act on it before the plate is empty. And every chapter closes with a section called The Limits: where the advice stops working, what it does not cover, and where I might be wrong. Most travel writing has no such section, and I have come to believe that is exactly why so much of it is useless.

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II · The Difference

Most Thailand content sells you a fantasy. Almost none of it sells you the script.

Nobody gets robbed in Thailand. They get charged — politely, cheerfully, and about forty times over three weeks. Here is what actually changes.

How the first two weeks usually go
  • Overthink the visa, then get the one part that matters backwards
  • Pay ฿220 on every ATM withdrawal and never know why
  • Press yes when the card machine offers to charge you in dollars
  • Get told the Grand Palace is closed today, and believe it
  • Hand a passport to a scooter shop as a deposit
  • Take the taxi with the broken meter from the airport rank
  • Eat in the air-conditioned restaurant because it looks safer
  • Book eleven nights before landing and get stuck in the wrong town
  • Try to see the whole country in ten days and see none of it
How this book has you travel
  • Answer one honest question — how long am I staying? — and the visa follows
  • The specific ways to stop paying that withdrawal fee, chapter 14
  • Dynamic currency conversion: always press no
  • Know the script before it is read to you — all fourteen of them
  • Never the passport: what to hand over instead, and what to photograph first
  • Meter, Grab, or the rail link, and what each one should cost
  • The street stall is safer, and chapter 52 explains exactly why
  • Three nights booked, not the fourth — leave yourself the exit
  • Pick a handful of things, and build the itinerary that actually works
III · What's Inside

Ninety chapters, seven parts, in the order a trip actually happens

Every chapter ends with The Limits. Read them. It is the most valuable part of every chapter — most of the money wasted in Thailand is wasted by people who read the advice and skipped the limits.

Part One

Before You Land

Chapters 01–13
  • The only visa question that actually matters
  • When to come, and the month nobody warns you about
  • What to pack, and the four things to leave at home
  • Travel insurance: what to buy and what is theatre
  • Your phone: the SIM decision, made simply
  • The documents to carry, copy, and never hand over
  • Learn these twenty words, skip the course
Part Two

Money

Chapters 14–25
  • The ฿220 charge on every withdrawal, and how to stop paying it
  • Dynamic currency conversion: always press no
  • Where to change cash, and the booth worth crossing town for
  • How to haggle without being the worst person there
  • Tipping: the short, clear answer
  • Dual pricing: when foreigners pay more, and when to object
  • A real daily budget at three levels
Part Three

The Scams

Chapters 26–39
  • "The Grand Palace is closed today"
  • The gem shop, and why it is not about gems
  • The jet ski damage claim
  • The scooter scratch and the passport drawer
  • "Meter broken, sir" — the taxi fare game
  • The free show upstairs and the bill that follows
  • The new ones: what has changed in the last few years
Part Four

Getting Around

Chapters 40–51
  • Bangkok above and below: the BTS and MRT
  • Grab, and the motorbike taxi
  • The red trucks: how songthaews actually work
  • The overnight train, and why it beats flying
  • Renting a scooter: the version that does not end badly
  • Reading a Thai address without getting lost
  • Ferries, speedboats, and the last boat of the day
Part Five

Eating

Chapters 52–64
  • Why the street stall is safer than the restaurant
  • Ordering when there is no menu
  • "Mai phet" and what it actually gets you
  • The twenty dishes to know
  • The four Thailands on a plate
  • The four pots on the table
  • 7-Eleven is better than you think
Part Six

Where To Go

Chapters 65–78
  • Bangkok in three days, done properly
  • The temples worth your time
  • Chiang Mai: what it is good for
  • Isaan: the Thailand nobody visits
  • Choosing an island without regretting it
  • The beach towns without the backpackers
  • Building an itinerary that actually works
Part Seven

Staying

Chapters 79–90
  • The long-stay visa landscape
  • The ninety-day report and the TM.30
  • Renting an apartment
  • Banking as a resident
  • Healthcare: genuinely good, and not free
  • Making friends, and the expat trap
  • Knowing when to go home
In Every Chapter

The Limits

Ninety of them
  • Where the advice stops working
  • What the chapter does not cover
  • Where the author might be wrong
  • What changes without notice, and what to confirm yourself
  • When you want a lawyer, a doctor, or a local instead of a book
  • Which other chapters this one depends on
And at the back
  • Appendix A: The Thirty Phrases That Matter
  • Appendix B: What Things Should Cost
  • A Short Glossary of every Thai term used
  • A Last Word
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IV · Reader Results

From the first readers

What people write in after their first trip with the book on their phone.

★★★★★

"Chapter 14 paid for the book twice over before I left the airport. Fourteen withdrawals over a month and I would have handed over three thousand baht in fees without ever knowing there was a choice."

Dave R. · First trip, three weeks
★★★★★

"A man told me the Grand Palace was closed and I heard James in my head saying it never is. Walked straight past him. Then it happened twice more that week, almost word for word, exactly as it is written."

Marisa T. · Bangkok and the north
★★★★★

"I have been coming here eleven years and I still learned things. The TM.30, the extension I never knew existed, the chapter on reading an address. I had been flying to Malaysia for something I could do in a morning."

Graham W. · Long-stay, Chiang Mai
James Laid
V · About

I came for two weeks. That was a long time ago.

I am James Laid. I run Thailand Secrets, where I talk about this country the way I would talk about it to a friend who had just told me they booked a flight — which is to say honestly, and in both directions.

I am not going to be precious about Thailand and I am not going to run it down either. It is a real country with real problems, a real bureaucracy, real corruption in places, real heat, and real traffic. It is also, on most days, an easier and kinder place to be alive than wherever you are reading this. Both things fit in the same book. Anyone who tells you only the first half is selling something. Anyone who tells you only the second half has not been here long.

Some of what is in the book comes from the videos. Most of it goes considerably further, because a video has to end and a book does not. The rest is everything I wish somebody had told me before my first flight in, and everything I have since watched other people learn the expensive way.

Take one thing from ninety chapters and let it be this: the people who do best here are not the ones who learn the most tricks. They are the ones who stop needing to win.

James Laid
Bangkok · First Edition, 2026
VI · Order

The Thailand Bible — First Edition

One file. Ninety chapters. Yours the moment you pay.

Launch Promo · First Edition

Every scam, every shortcut, and every place worth your time

  • The complete 149-page illustrated PDF
  • 90 chapters across seven parts
  • The Limits section closing every chapter
  • Appendix A: The Thirty Phrases That Matter
  • Appendix B: What Things Should Cost — the price sanity-check
  • A Short Glossary of every Thai term used
  • Reads on phone, tablet, laptop, or printed for the bag
  • Free updates to the First Edition
$47 $27
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VII · Questions

Before you buy

Are the scams real, or is this another "Thailand changed my life" book?

They are real, and they are the ordinary ones — the tuk-tuk detour, the gem shop, the jet ski, the broken meter, the suit that must be finished tonight. Fourteen chapters of them, written out as scripts, because that is what they are. None of it is a horror story and none of it is meant to frighten you off. The scam chapters exist so you can stop thinking about scams, not so you can start.

Your videos are free — why would I buy this?

The videos are one idea at a time, in whatever order I filmed them that month. The book is all ninety in the order a trip actually happens, with the reasoning underneath each one and The Limits at the end of every chapter. Most of it goes considerably further than the videos do, because a video has to end and a book does not.

Why only $27?

Because the people I want reading this are the ones still working out whether the flight is affordable. $27 is the launch price against $47. It is less than one airport taxi you did not need to take, and a fraction of what chapter 14 alone will save you over a month of ATM withdrawals.

What format is it, and how do I get it?

A single illustrated PDF, 149 pages, delivered by Gumroad the moment you pay. It opens on a phone on a boat with no signal if you download it first, on a tablet, on a laptop, or you can print it and carry it in the bag. No app, no login to remember, no subscription.

I am only going for two weeks. Is this too much book?

Read it in any order — it is built for that. Skip to the scams if you fly next week. Skip to the food if you are hungry, which you will be. Parts One through Six are the whole of a normal trip; Part Seven is only for people thinking about staying, and you can ignore it entirely until the day you are not.

How current is it? Thai rules change constantly.

Everything in it was accurate as of 2026, and prices are given in baht with a rough dollar figure alongside. Food and transport prices are fairly stable. Government fees and visa rules are not, and the book says so plainly — every chapter that touches an immigration office or a border tells you to confirm the current answer with the Thai embassy for your own nationality before you fly. Never plan a trip around a rule you read in a book, including this one. Updates to the First Edition are free.

Does it cover actually living there, not just visiting?

Part Seven is twelve chapters on exactly that: the long-stay visa landscape, the ninety-day report and the TM.30, renting an apartment, utilities and the small print, banking as a resident, healthcare, working here legally, learning Thai properly, the expat trap, relationships honestly, emergencies and the numbers to know, and knowing when to go home. It will not make you an immigration lawyer. It will tell you which questions to bring to one.

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The Thailand Bible
Wait — one thing

Less than one airport taxi you did not need to take.

Ninety chapters on every scam, every shortcut, and every place worth your time — $27 during launch instead of $47. They are running a script. This is the script, written out in full.

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