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 :)

Has anyone here successfully applied for the DTV Soft Power visa through the Thai embassy in London?

I’m considering enrolling with Arun Thai Cooking School, which offers:

* 6-Month Program (8 Classes) – 18,900 THB

* Visa Support Package (Optional) – 18,000 THB

The visa support package includes the official embassy visa fee (13,000–14,000 THB) and claims to cover full application submission and embassy coordination. They also say there’s a money-back guarantee if the visa gets rejected.

I’m wondering if it’s smarter to go directly through them, or if it’s better to just take the course and use a more well-known visa agent like Issa Composs?

Has anyone here gone through either route? Would love to hear real experiences — success stories or warnings welcome.