The Visitor

Some of you probably would know that we are in Thailand and that we are going to be here for some time. We arrived on a tourist visa with the plan to switch it to a retirement Visa. This is the tried and tested method but little did we know just as we arrived things changed.

I was supposed to be application process you need to prove that you have 800,000 in the bank and they’re in lies the problem. The government changed the rules just as we arrived to stop people on tourist visas opening bank accounts. Only those with a full Visa could open a bank account and therein lies the catch 22 situation.

Locally one of the agencies in the town we are staying in could still open a bank account. But only one of the banks here would and not the normal suspect of Bangkok Bank. We ended up in a smaller Thai Bank who was still allowing tourists, as we were at that point, to open a bank accounts.

Of course because it had become more difficult it also became more expensive for us as the agent had put their price up for everything pretty much and we were already using one of the more expensive agents town.

I did do a quick YouTube video on the initial process but I will explain it here.

We arrived on a 60-day visa on arrival or VISA exemption which is applicable to citizens of the UK this would allow you to stay 60 days and renew once for 30 days at the immigration office. You need approximately 30 days remaining to apply for the Visa so we had time.

First you need a mobile phone which if you go for the now mandatory tourist sim on a prepay package you need to first go to a main branch for the mobile company and top up with 50 Baht. You do this because you need a full receipt with your name and address on it. You can at this point to use the address of the accommodation you are staying in, probably temporarily.

Armed with this receipt from the mobile company the agent can take you to the bank to open the bank account as without a mobile number you cannot open a bank account at all, crazy thing now mobiles are all it seems. Topping up with the 50 baht gets you a full invoice with your name and address this is what the bank needs.

Once you have the bank account open you deposit 500 baht.  The agent deposits 800,000 baht and pays the bank to give you a proof letter that the money is in your account. They then immediately withdraw the money and transfer it to the next applicant, which in my case was jelly and then after her to the next guy and so on until everybody has the letter and the 800,000 baht proof at which point did they put the money back into their own account. So I just had 500 in mine after I was rich for a few minutes.

This is of course utter lunacy in more ways than one.  Once you have the Visa and after the initial 15 months you need to renew and you still need 800,000 baht in your account. This is the very money they insist you have to support yourself yet you are not allowed to spend it. Plus for two people that would equal 1.6 million baht which is way more than anybody would spend living here unless you are an absolute lunatic. Thailand does not allowed joint bank accounts. You really can’t make this stuff up but somebody thinks it’s a good idea.

Once we both have the bank accounts open and our proof of funds letters we went to immigration. Also as part of this process you need to have a rental contract for a condominium, apartment or house. Of course nobody in their right mind would sign up to be a tenant without proof that the Visa is in hand so yet another fix from the agent who give you a dummy accommodation contract. This of course costs money again.

At this point you are armed with a dummy rental contract an empty bank account and a mobile phone invoice and now you can apply for your non-resident O Visa.

All this has become slightly easier as Thailand now have a reasonable EVisa platform.  Before you leave the UK you can apply for a retirement Visa which is only valid for 90 days and then you can open the bank account here using this Visa and then go and apply for the extension but of course you need the money in your account. However in the case of the EVisa the money can remain in the United Kingdom for initial application but doesn’t need to be here in Thailand for the extension which is 12 months. The way we did it meant that we got a tourist visa for 60 days that was canceled on the application date and given the 90 day non-resident O Visa and this was automatically extended for the first 12 months so we received 15 months in all.

Oh very complicated and boring don’t you think. Bull that you have it that’s what we have to go through and it cost each of us about a thousand UK pounds.

Armed with the VISA we then got ourselves an apartment.