Can I secure a bank account and get an O visa to apply for an OA visa in Chiang Mai?

The non-O is the 90-day retirement visa that most people use to get started. Very very light requirements outside of the financial ones.

The non-OA is a 1-year multiple entry retirement visa that can ONLY be obtained in your home country. It has much higher requirements including mandatory insurance, criminal records check, health check and whatever else your embassy wants to add. If you start on this visa, you'll have to keep the insurance forever.

You cannot get a non-O visa and then apply for the non-OA, and especially not while you're already in Thailand.

You need to apply for the non-O visa from your Thai embassy using the e-visa system before you leave for Thailand. This visa will allow you to open the required bank account. If you're going to be arriving in Thailand next month, you can apply for the visa already since you can use it to enter Thailand for 90 days and you're already in that window.



Once you arrive in Thailand you will want to open a bank account ASAP using your visa and possibly you'll need a certificate of residence (COR) from immigration. You'll have less than a month to get your bank account opened and the money transferred, as it needs to be in your account for 2 full months already when you apply for your 1-year extension. Since you'll only have 90 days to get this all done, you can see how tight the timeline is.