Is it easier to obtain an OA visa in Thailand if I come on an initial Non-O retirement visa?

David Broadfoot. It's surprising how many people (even many who have an OA visa) don't know how to "work" it to its optimum advantage (which is one day short of two years).

David Broadfoot which if he uses that visa correctly won't be for almost 2 years, so I'd say he has some time to sort it out 😉 :

Graham Mayger. Next time you're in Aus, get the OX visa from Sydney Consulate and get stamped in for five years, extendable a further five years.

Non O-A visa requires health insurance to match the validity of the visa. For example I was able to get stamped until 31 March 2023 which is when my insurance runs out for the initial 12 month period.

Heres what you need for an O. See point 5.if you get an income verification from an embassy you don't need transfer $800,000 baht and you would then only require insurance for your initial sixty day visa if you went that route. Far cheaper. But not all embassies still provide this service.

@Tod ********

you don't need the $800,000 if you provide an embassy income verification correct?

@Tod ********

This is what I did in Phetchabun, fairly easy and straight forward but as with all things in Thailand lots of signed copies of documents required and a map of how to get to our house from the immigration office for a O retirement visa. Strange.

@Bobby *******

As long as your home country insurance will cover you in Thailand. This can be tricky. Some insurance does, some doesn't and some only provides limited (e.g. 60 days) coverage.

@Tod ********

This is exactly what we did in January, as our previous visas/extensions expired during Covid. 90 day O eVisa based on retirement, (UK residents, UK passport and wife German passport). eVisa applied for Sunday evening, a query received Monday and answered, and eVisas issued Tuesday. All very painless. 43 days before expiry of the 90 day, went along to Phuket Immigration and applied for, and both received, an annual extension. Straight in and out; no queue and processed together in about 15 minutes. Next day at 1pm collected our passports and another 30 minutes to get a multi-reentry stamp. In our case, we used Thai bank accounts that we already had for both the 90 day and the subsequent annual extension.

@Tod ********

I've noticed that the Thai embassy in UK seems to have very "relaxed" requirements for the non-immigrant O based on retirement as opposed to Dutch and (even more so) Belgian Thai embassy.

So I understand that opposed to a tourist visa which in general has rather uniform rules between many Thai embassies, the non-immigrant O retirement has a lot more specific requirements on your place of residency where you have to apply ?

@Tod ********

couldn't you show an income of at least 65,000 baht per month instead of 0 in the bank?

ok as he is in the UK I thought I'd just point him in the right direction re; police.

Think you also may need a police clearance certificate from the Metropolitan Police as well. This may take 6 weeks. Can be from anywhere in the greater London area. I used Feltham as it is on the outskirts and not busy. Personally I'd go for the non-O as future extensions don't require health insurance.