Extending my annual Retirement O Visa based upon 12 monthly international transfers .

Big Shock: Or how to get caught with my pants down , doing everything right without an income letter from my Embassy.

If you make monthly international transfers to your Thai Bank Account ( My bank is Bangkok Bank), the minimum international transfers must be 65,000 every month for 12 months. So I grudgingly complied.

I discovered a potential problem for the extension to my Retirement O Visa extension today.

To avoid my issue please Update your Account Pass Book regularly. I have been lazy but thought it was time to update my Pass Book .

I was horrified ! Most of my transactions including my international transfers were not show. I panicked and went to get help from my bank manager.

Helpfully he pointed out that after a period of non updates all transactions are consolidated into a single balance.

The solution, he said, is to request a bank statement before going to Immigraiton. However, it takes 2 weeks to get a full 12 month Statement. No delays for the previous 6 months transactions.

So if like me you are a little lax, do not leave it to the last minute to get your printed Statement. No idea why it should take as long as 2 weeks.

So now I’ll probably be given a hard time explaining to the Immigraiton officer why my Account Pass Book appears to have big gaps.

From now on I’ll be updating my Account Pass Book every month and I’ll be getting my Bank Statement 3 weeks early to be on the safe side and I’ll present the bank statement to Immigration in hopes that is an acceptable backup together with my Pass Book with its missing information.

Any further advice?