DTV Approved at HCM Vietnam

via Issa Compass under Soft Power @ Arun Thai Cooking School, Bangkok.

I would like to thank the School and the Agency for their highly efficient coordination and solid reliability. And a big thanks to the wonderful people of this community whose posts helped me make up my mind on how to do this, and kept me informed on what is to be expected.

I had previously held Non-IB visa for ~1yr, and two visa-exempt entries + 2 extensions. One of those was a border bounce. Also have a Thai bank account and condo rental for 1 year from my time working for a Thai company previously under the non-IB.

Timeline of the process (8 Working Days since application) -

Reached Da Nang 5th July

Document Setup 7th July

Applied 8th July to HCM

* Thai Bank Account 6-month statement with balance maintained > 500k THB, significant activity.

* Condo Rental Agreement

* Cooking school papers provided by Arun Thai School, Bangkok

* All Passport Stamps for Thailand

* Passport Bio Page

* Da Nang entry stamp

* Hotel Booking in Da Nang (Agoda)

Document Request 9th July

* All pages of passport including blanks - For this I took photograph side-by-side with my phone showing Vietnamese phone service and current date & time as proof. Additionally I took a photo of myself holding my passport bio page open in front of the hotel's signboard - after reading in the community that someone else did the same.

* Means to sustain yourself during stay - I read that you could resubmit the same 500k account statement for this, but I chose to include my bank account from my home country which also had 500k+ THB equivalent. However I did not share 6-months statement for this bank, only the last statement showing balance. Both bank accounts are in my name, and are savings accounts.

Pending Approval 10th July.

Approved on 17th July.

Questions are welcome :)

How many days did it take for your DTV visa application to be accepted after submission? Also, on what day did you typically have to submit any additional documents, if required? Thank you in advance.

Got my DTV approved today. It went as follows:

-Applied 9th of july to Thai embassy (Sweden) as a remote worker (workcation category)

-I filled in all the information they asked, but I also added my latest payslip + a written explanation that my work is 100 % remote, and what I do at my job.

-My application changed status to "Pending approval" on the 15th of july

-Approved on the 16th of July 2025. In total the process took 7 days, including the weekend.

Feels absolutely amazing!

We were approved in Washington, DC for the Discover Thai Nature seminars!

June 11- submitted my husband's application

June 26 - Husband approved

June 27 - submitted a spouse application for me

July 10 - Mine approved

Thanks for all information everyone has shared!

Approved in Hanoi for Workcation (4 Business Days)

I applied for the Workcation category on Saturday 5 July 2025. My status changed to “Pending Approval” on Monday 7 July, and I was officially approved on Thursday 11 July.

No additional documents were requested during the process.

Before applying, I had been living in Thailand on ED visas for four years.

Here is exactly what I submitted, grouped into three sections.

⸻

1. Work Documents

I am a teacher on italki.

Submitted:

• italki Statement of Activity (The statement includes a clear disclaimer stating that italki is not my employer, that I work independently, and that they do not control my work or clients.)

• Previous 6 months of calendar screenshots (completed lessons)

• Screenshot of upcoming booked lessons

• Screenshot of active packages (pre-paid, ongoing lessons)

• Screenshot of my italki profile and reviews

• TEFL certificate

Cover Letter 1: Portfolio Letter

Explains each document, confirms I do not teach Thai students, and shows I have consistent work and returning students.

⸻

2. Financial Documents

Savings (Revolut):

• 6 months of bank statements showing over 500,000 THB

• A current balance screenshot from the Revolut app

Freelance Income (italki to Payoneer):

• 6 months of italki payout screenshots

• 6 months of Payoneer receipts

Cover Letter 2: Financial Letter

Explains how I receive my income, how withdrawals are made, and clarifies the fee deductions and payout timeline. It also confirms my income and savings are separate and meet visa requirements.

⸻

3. Location Documents

To prove I was outside Thailand at the time of applying:

Submitted:

• Full passport scan (all pages), taken before entering Vietnam

• Photo of Vietnam entry stamp (since it was not visible in the scan)

• Photo of visa cancellation stamp showing cancellation of my ED visa

• Boarding pass from my flight to Vietnam

• Two photos taken of myself on 5 July 2025:

• Holding cancelled Thai visa, Vietnam stamp, and boarding pass

• Holding passport photo page and boarding pass

• Photo of myself with a white background

Cover Letter 3: Location Letter

Explains what each image shows and confirms I am currently in Vietnam.

I used ChatGPT to stitch all of my pdfs together and pdf24 to compress them to 3MB or lower.

Thanks to everyone in this group for the advice and for sharing your experiences, it really helped.

Update : I received Approval email on 8 July( today )

I applied for a DTV visa on 30 June in Hanoi and received "pending approval" status on 1 July. I haven’t received any updates since then.

My question is:

has anyone received DTV visa approval in Hanoi today (7 July 2025)? How long will it take?

🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳DTV visa approved in 3 biz days for soft power Muay thai school in Bangkok. Applied online in Hanoi on 6/11/25; 10pmish. Received approval email 6/16/25 ; 4:22pm🎉🎉🎉🎉

*Thanks to some info from this page*

So please keep sharing your experiences it is helpful!

HANOI, VIETNAM 🇻🇳

This is the application for my wife. Dependent DTV visa

I applied for the main applicant on June 2nd and here was my timeline main applicant

•2June 2025 submitted application (in the evening on a Monday)

•Embassy closed for the Queen’s birthday Monday and Tuesday

•5June 2025 Document requested “blurry photo” on Thursday (submitted document within an hour of request) changing status to pending approval

•8 June 2025 (on a Sunday!) DTV approval granted!

3 Business days (2 holidays in between and a blurry photo) it could have been faster

I made another post with what i sent with my application check it up if you want to take the business owner route . It will help you secure your application

Now the timeline and documents submitted for my wife dependent dtv

10 June 2025 submitted application (in the evening on a Tuesday)

11 June 2025 Application went into Pending Approval no further documents were requested

16 June 2025 (on a Monday!) DTV approval granted!

3 business days

We ended up with 4 folders

Location Folder

Vietnam Visa

§ Boarding Pass and Passport Stamp

§ Airbnb Reservation in Hanoi

§ Long Term Lease Thailand ( This is not a requirement but i added it in case they might wanted to have an interview)

Marriage certificate folder

&Marriage Certificate

§ Marriage Certificate’s Apostille

Main Applicant Visa Holder folder

$DTV of the Visa Holder

§ Approval for the DTV of the Visa Holder ( email)

§ Passport of the DTV Visa Holder

Dependent Visa Applicant financials

§ Cover Letter “ why you qualify for this visa , what you plan on doing in thailand include you will not seel local employment and your source of income comes from seasonal sources 6 month and the money comes from outside Thailand balance over 1 million bath

§ Recommendation Letter I did this visa as a business owner so i sent a letter of recommendation from My own business.

§ Sponsor Letter This i did a personal sponsor letter where i said i was responaable for her financially.

§ Bank Statements (Bank of America. You need 6 months some people have been able to do with just 3 but again you only get one shot. Balance over a million bath . No refunds if you dont convice them you can sustain yourself with your financials. Just to give you an example 500k comes at about 17000 usd /1825 days ( 5 years) put it on a calculator comes at about 9 usd per day 🤣 not enough

*update Approvals are granted over the weekends here at Hanoi.

Check your information at least 5 times before you submit the application. We spent one hour before we submitted it. Do not trust the passport reader. Check each number one by one . When they ask you for where your passport was issued put the country of issuance. I worked many years ago as an intern on an embassy . The consulate/ embassy you applied that piece of land is considered part of that country. If your passport is American and you got it at the american embassy in Hanoi or Bangkok put United States

On the first application i was told i was Lucky this second one confirms im not lucky i just spent enough most time putting the info together and thus the results

Good luck everyone!

Visa approved - Thai Embassy in Vienna - Austria

Soft Power Route with Muay Thai (6-month course)

Documents submitted (on Sunday and paid immediately)

• 3-month bank statements from my savings account with far more than the required 500k.

• Documents provided by the Muay Thai Center (a reputable company with hundreds of DTV visa graduates)

• Passport + photo

• Current telephone billing

After 9 business days, on a Friday, further document requests arrived:

• Hometown Registration form (just the telephone billing was obviously not enough; I hadn't thought of that at first)

• Muay Thai course syllabus

• Thai company business establishment document (Thai DBD issued within 6 months)

The Thai DBD was initially included, but dated August 2024.

I immediately contacted the Muay Thai Center, and they helped me immediately and promised quick assistance. The very next day, I had the course syllabus and the DBD document.

8 business days later, the status changed from document review to pending approval.

1 business day later, at 4:00 p.m., I received the visa.

So, in total, it took 18 business days.

I would like to thank everyone; the group is very helpful and also helps me be patient and get a little familiar with the process without getting nervous.

See you in Thailand 🙂

Hey everyone!

Is anyone in Hanoi at the moment? I’m here solo and would love to meet up for a drink or even a bit of a party this weekend if you’re around!

I just got approved for the workcation!

I applied last Saturday and got the green light today (Friday). The status changed to ‘Pending approval’ on Tuesday, so it all went through pretty quickly.

For the application, I submitted proof of my self-employment from the UK, six months of bank statements and invoices, a letter explaining what I do, why I want to stay in Thailand, and that I won’t be working with any Thai clients. I also included a letter from my main client confirming what I do, that I’ll continue working with him, and that remote work is totally fine.

I had 500k baht in my main account for the past three months, and I also added proof that I’m currently in Vietnam, along with some examples from my work portfolio.

The biggest struggle was making sure all the PDFs were small enough - under 3MB. I actually used ChatGPT to help me sort everything out and even create the PDFs, but I still had to adjust and compress everything properly in Adobe Acrobat. If you're adding screenshots or scans, make sure to keep them as small as possible!

The only thing I was unsure about was the ‘Place of issue’ field — my Polish passport doesn’t have that, just an ‘authority’ field, and it was issued in Jakarta. I just copied exactly what was written there and it worked fine.

Really happy it’s all sorted! Thanks for all your posts here, they were super helpful :)