DTV Soft Power - Muay Thai Approved in Hanoi
Applied Thursday March 12
Approved Tuesday March 17 (~3 business days)
No additional documents.
I'm very grateful to this group and the detailed recommendations and accounts of so many members. Specifically, I followed these three posts and found them extraordinarily detailed and helpful:
[members only]/
[members only]/
[members only]/
so an additional thanks to Ire Ne, Pedro Carvalho, and whoever the third anonymous participant is. Though it will overlap significantly, there were a few pieces of my application that were specific to my circumstance, and may help others in the future, so I'll detail below what I included.
*Financial Evidence Documents *
* Cover letter - professional, concise, and deferential. Purpose, source of income, and a summary of the financial documents that would follow. I had more than 500K in my Wise account since January, so less than 3 months. This probably would have been fine, but just in case, I included a statement from my Korean bank from which I transferred that money, and in which I had more than 500K for several months. I highlighted and labeled the corresponding transfers so it was easy to track the movement of the funds, and confirm I had held 500K+ for more than 5 months. I explained all of this, and also that my Korean bank couldn't give me an English statement, so I translated key terms myself. Probably overkill, but I didn't want to leave any stone unturned. [Signed digitally]
* Table of contents
* Currency conversion proof (from xe.com screenshots of 500K THB to USD, and 500K THB to KRW) [Signed digitally]
* Wise proof of account ownership
* Wise statement (3 months + 5 days, with incoming transfers from my Korean bank labeled and highlighted)
* Korean bank proof of account ownership
* Korean bank statement (3 months, with outgoing transfers to my Wise account labeled and highlighted)
* An isolated chart showing each corresponding transfer. Again, probably overkill, but it was a complicated situation and I wanted to make the information as easily comprehensible as possible [Signed digitally]
*Muay Thai Course Documents - Bangkok Fight Lab*
* Cover letter - Very brief, just stating my intentions behind training, a sentence about the reputation of the gym, etc. The rest is of course documents provided by the gym. [Signed digitally]
* Table of contents
* Letter of invitation
* Payment invoice for the course
* Company affadavit (in Thai)
* Sports authority license
* Owner's passport and visa (he is American)
* Owner's work permit
* Owner's Thai wife's identification card (I guess this is required since he's American)
*Proof of Location*
* Cover letter - Also brief, just reiterating my itinerary, accommodation address, check-in/check-out, and clarifying I can/will extend my stay as long as necessary to wait for the outcome of the application (thankfully, wasn't necessary - I booked for 10 days, and tbh Hanoi is not an easy city to spend that much time in, personally).
* Table of contents
* Passport biodata page scan [Signed digitally]
* Passport Vietnam entry stamp page [Signed digitally]
* Boarding pass picture [Signed digitally]
* Picture of me in front of accommodation, with date/time/Apple Maps pin from the "info" button in Photos on my iPhone [Signed digitally]
* Picture of a receipt from a store in Hanoi, date and time highlighted, next to a picture of me holding said receipt in front of said store [Signed digitally]
* Vietnam e-visa
* Flight & accommodation confirmation
Like everyone else, I used ilovepdf to merge, page number, and compress (under 3mb each!!) each PDF. Each page that I added (for example cover letters, table of contents, etc) had a uniform header with my full name, passport number, and address in Hanoi.
Overall very straightforward. Again, many have already laid out flawless directions, but I'm happy to answer any questions that may apply to my situation. Thanks again everyone and don't sweat it, it pretty much seems like as long as you prepare properly, double check everything, are professional and deferential in your writing, and slap some digital signatures on everything, you'll be good.