Hi everyone, I need some help regarding the DTV Soft Power visa (Cooking category).

We are a group of seven friends from Serbia, and we’re all planning to move to Bangkok.

On July 1st, each of us deposited 500,000 THB into our personal bank accounts, to meet the 3-month financial requirement for the DTV visa.

We plan to fly to Bangkok on October 15th, and were originally thinking of applying for the DTV visa on October 1st at the Thai embassy in Athens, Greece.

Now here’s our concern:

• If we apply on October 1st, we only have 15 days before our flight.

• We’re not sure if that’s enough time for the visa to be processed.

• If it gets delayed or rejected, we might waste the application fee and miss our flight plan.

So our question is:

👉 Is it too risky to apply for the visa in Athens just 15 days before our trip?

👉 Would it be a better option to just fly to Bangkok on a tourist exemption, and then do a visa run to Laos to apply for the DTV visa from there?

Any advice or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!