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expat experience in thailand

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This page displays all the results for the Expat Experience in Thailand tag, sorted by the most recent activity. There are a total of 12 questions that have been tagged with Expat Experience in Thailand. Explore the questions to find discussions and information relevant to this topic.
Mar 29, 2026
a month ago
Thaila******
ORIGINAL POSTER
Hi all! I'd be grateful for some urgent advice 🙌

I'll try to keep this as clear as possible:

November 2025: accepted a job as a teacher at a school in Thailand with a start date of January 2026.

December 2025: applied for and received a Thai Non-B 90 day visa by the Embassy in London.

January 2026:

- entered Thailand on Jan 1st and had the non-B visa stamped in my passport (valid for 90 days).

- started the job on January 5th. Was told by my employer that they were in the process of applying for my work permit.

- by my second week working there I had realised the job was completely not as described, management were verbally abusing me, and still no work permit (they then told me that they would wait until my probation was finished to apply for the work permit. Probation was 2 months. I knew this was illegal).

- I quit at the end of my third week there due to the lack of work permit, the not as described job, and the horrendous abuse. My resignation (with immediate effect) was followed by a week of abusive emails from management and them refusing to pay me for the time I had worked.

February 2026:

- they eventually paid me and the abuse/all contact stopped.

- I called immigration 5 times and was told each time that I was allowed to stay in Thailand until my 90 day non-B visa expired. They said it didn't matter that I wasn't working - I was still allowed to stay until the visa date in my passport.

March 2026:

I'm now a few days away from the Non-B visa expiring. I have a flight out of Thailand tomorrow. I'm very worried about the following:

1. I worked for 3 weeks without a work permit. Will I get in trouble for this tomorrow when I'm at the airport?

OR

2. My former employer did secretly have a work permit for me (without my knowledge) and I've therefore over stayed by around 60 days because I didn't leave when they cancelled it when I quit. Surely they couldn't have obtained a permit for me though without me knowing?!

Also, I plan to re-enter Thailand as a tourist 4 days after my non-B expires. I will stay for 2 weeks and then leave for good. Will I have difficulties trying to enter Thailand so soon after non-B expiring?

🙃

Would massively appreciate any help! Thank you
41 comments
Jan 28, 2026
3 months ago
Hello everyone,

Hope you are all well,

Had a tough time so far applying for a DTV workation. Been rejected twice now from Jakarta while staying in Bali.

1st application (sent 19th of Nov, rejected 1st of December) -

Self admittedly this was my fault, my documents sent were sloppy and probably hard to read through and lacked enough detail to show I was fully committed to the application. I rushed it and I can’t blame them for rejecting it.

I hold my hands up lesson learnt I moved on.

2nd application (sent 8th of January, rejected 28th of January) -

After consulting with a friend that was approved for a workation dtv by the embassy in Jakarta and research via this group, I tried to cover all bases:

Employment contracts, payslips, over 500,000 Baht in a Halifax account seasoned for 3 months, my separate bank account i use for day to day spending, cover letter showing my intent and reason for wanting to live and work in Thailand, a formal letter from my company ensuring I am not working for any Thai based customers/ business entities, all pages of my passport, a company letter confirming their agreement of my working location and it being a fully remote role.

I received a additional documents request ‘‘Please upload one bank statement showing an amount of no less that 500,000 THB’’, although I had already provided them 3 months worth of statements, I sent 3 statements again with the January statement now being updated to the current date, highlighted the end of month amount and the period dates, the next day it was sent for approval.

All of this was formatted and sent correctly from my knowledge (i scanned and read all the information over and over again), the cover letter explained the bank accounts (one bank account with the seasoned money never below their requirements and then a separate account with a smaller sum of money being used for day to day.).

It’s hard to look back now and find the mistake or reason for this second rejection as I simply don’t know what I’m missing or what they dislike about the application.

I could fly and try a different embassy but if my application is rejected here in theory it would be rejected everywhere. so many people have had a positive experience with Jakarta and I was so sure I’d get it this time.

Feeling rather stuck, don’t know where to go and I don’t know what to fix hahaha.
16 comments
Jun 13, 2025
a year ago
Matt ****************
ORIGINAL POSTER
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 :)
3 comments
Mar 15, 2025
a year ago
Kareemah ************
ORIGINAL POSTER
Approved! In Hanoi

I want to thanks everyone in this group for all informations and sharing experience, that super helpful. And thanks to Fight EVO360 Thailand - Thepprasit Boxing Stadium for preparing the documentation Muay Thai courses🙏🏾

Applied 9 March at night. The status change immediately after payment to pending document check to pending approval.

Approved on 14 March 5.25pm after I email for case update at 4.50pm

-I provided 6 months bank statements not less than 500,000 Baht

-Picture of passport entry stamp

-Hotel booking

-Picture of boarding pass

-Documentation from Fight EVO 360

Ps. -Don't trust the automated passport details filling

-Check every letter multiple times.

-Place of issue of passport is your country. peried

-I applied for my us boyfriend,

Good luck everyone 🙏🏾
2 comments
Mar 3, 2025
a year ago
Brett *******
ORIGINAL POSTER
Question

If you get a non o in country from an agent, in the following 12 months do you need to bring in the 65,000 THB a month thing, or will the agent sort something out when the renewal is due?
25 comments
Oct 9, 2024
2 years ago
DTV REJECTED in Tel Aviv

Reason: Thai culinary course is not enough for DTV. They suggested a 3 months ED visa instead

I told them this course is qualified and I have all the documents required. They told me I'm correct but they can still refuse the visa based on their discretion.

Where should I apply instead?
34 comments
Sep 7, 2024
2 years ago
Lili ********
ORIGINAL POSTER
I use chrome book n was able to change password n submit both documents n were accepted n given a number but there is no data n cannot proceed to payment. Maybe I already paid earlier.
19 comments
Dec 31, 2020
5 years ago
Happy ********
ORIGINAL POSTER
TR Visa and PCR test issued in Sweden review: application was smooth at the Thai embassy in Gothenburg and application for COE had a fast response from Stockholm. I was rejected 2 times for COE but they (Thai embassy Stockholm) managed to respond to me twice a day during Christmas. Response was very good from the embassy. Getting PCR test was simple, online booking and then result within same day and fit to fly certificate issued in 5 minutes. 👍👌
2 comments
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