When you are a long term cruiser, and regularly find yourself in a new country, with a language you don’t understand and cultures, habits, politics and religions different from your own and previous countries you have visited, it is likely that, sooner or later, you will make a fool of yourself when it comes to money stuff – no matter how smart you try to be.
This has happened to me many times in many countries. We have now been visiting more than 80 countries on our yacht during 20 years. Each time I get screwed, I tell myself: OK, they will not get me on this scam next time. And of course they won’t, because I have learned from my mistake. Problem is; there will be a new plot next time in the next country.
Last month, here in Thailand, I decided to send my old wind generator on a factory over haul to England. I was advised, by a local contractor (in good faith as far as I can determine) to use a shipping agent and go for a “repair and return” procedure. Doing so I would only have to pay import charges, on the return, based on the cost of the repair plus return shipping costs.
At the end the project turned out to be a big mistake, something that the agent must have realized from the start and she should have advised me to just ship the unit in a regular way without the “repair and return” hassle.
First, I ended up paying, in government charges and the agent’s fees an amount equal to about 130% of the value (on the repair plus TNT return shipping). I would call this confiscation!
Second, the return shipment took more than two weeks as there was so much paper work included AND the package had to be routed via Bangkok (because of the “repair and return” scheme). When I received the invoice there were 22 attachments stapled to it!
In comparison: I have ordered marine products four times to be sent here to Thailand (from both the EU and the USA), deck hardware, winches, electronics, and they arrived directly to Phuket within 3 working days and generated only 10-15% import charges.
This is only a fragment of the sad story about the wind generator in question. The whole picture will be revealed in a later story called: The World’s Most Expensive Electricity. Stay tuned.
