Can I enter Thailand on a visa exempt and validate my Non-O visa later without returning to France?

Enter as a tourist, when you have the visa email, leave Thailand and do a trip to one of the neighboring countries, and then return to activate your non-O. However, you need to plan a little as your initial non-O will only be valid for 90 days and you can only file the 1 year extension if you have 30 days left on your original non-O. And you need to plan about a month processing time for the one year extension as this is when you need to submit substantial paperwork.

tou need your passport stamped from the emnassy in that country

If you receive your Non-O Visa by Email, after you came to Thailand on a visa exempt, you don't need to go back to France but you must leave Thailand to a neighboring country and enter the kingdom again with this valid Visa in your hands. As a French citizen you don't need a Thai bank account, you only need an affidavit letter to confirm your income in the year 2023 from a French Embassy or a French Consulate. Follow the advices of Jan Kenneth Nesland. His advices are the best.

Kay Rush . . You can surely do the “Change of Visa Type” from a visa-exempt to a “90-days Non-Imm-O retirement Visa” on Immigration. But that means that you need to open a bank account ASAP after you entered.

It would be easier to go the route via a 60-days single entry Tourist Visa from a Royal Thai Embassy. You enter Thailand, get 60 days stay permit stamped. However it can be executed straight from the 30 days admitted stay of a visa-exempt entry, if you can get your ducks in a row.

Right after you entered, you need to open a bank account and transfer from abroad a minimum of 800.000.- THB. For the application to the “change”, there is no seasoning needed, yet

On a visa-exempt, you will definitely need to pay an agent service to open a bank account for you, don’t waste any time trying to do it by yourself

You also got the option of obtaining an "income affidavit" from your Embassy in Bangkok, confirming a monthly income of no less than 65.000.- THB

Visit your Immigration and apply for the "change" to a "90 days Non-Imm-O Retirement Visa". It will be issued 15 days “under consideration”. That’s why you need a minimum of 15 days left on your stay permit. After these 15 days, visit immigration and pick up the visa stamp.

The 90 days visa will start on the day you initially applied for the change.

Beginning from up of 30 days before the 90 days stay permit will expire, as soon as the 800.000.- THB deposit has been sitting in your Thai bank account for 2 months, you can apply for the "1-year extension of stay permit based on retirement".

READ the below instructions carefully. The “retirement” option is number 9. Click onto it, a .pdf document from Immigration will open. Carefully go through it as it lists the requirements.

If you want to play ultra safe, visit Immigration within the first 60 days of the 90 days stay permit and ask them for the requirements for a “change”, because some Immigrations apply their own rules which might differ slightly from the police order.

Thai embassy in France is crap. I submitted everything and in good time. I was sent repeated emails asking for this ,that and the other. In UK. It was approved instantly

BTW the Non-O is your Retirement Visa which gives you 90 days on entry then, in Thailand, you apply for a 12 month Extension of Stay.

That probably won't work for your plan as there are many reports that if the embassy takes longer than the plane ticket you submitted and that date passes, they will cancel your application instead of sending you the visa.

If they did send it to you, you would not have to go back to France, you would just need to leave Thailand and re-enter to activate your visa.

But based on the reports from the Paris embassy you might be better off traveling visa exempt and just attempting to convert directly to the non-O visa from Thailand. It may be difficult to open a bank account without the Non-O visa though and you will likely need to use an agent to get that part done.