Hi all! Any Canadians in the room? I'm a retired man from Montreal now living in Thailand but still on visa exemptions because filling the form is complicated, more than I thought.

Last week, I was in Laos, in order to get the 3 month retirement visa. After weeks of gathering all the documents, I felt it would go smoothly.

I had the photos, I had proof of health insurance, and certifications about my retirement incomes, both from my personnal pension plan (the canadian embassy in Thailand does no longer provide proof of income) and also from the Québec pension plan. I am above the required 65 000 bahts monthly.

I had a big surprise though : I needed to get a criminal record clearance from the RCMP. Never had I heard about such a requirement for the thai visa. Afterall, my finger prints were taken each time I arrived at Suvarnabhumi airport and I never had a problem there.

So here I was in Vientiane, stuck with this obstacle. How do I get such a clearance? I learned that I needed my fingerprints taken by the local police, send them to Canada for an RCMP approved firm to digitalize them and transfer the results to the RCMP. This process would take weeks, especially since the postal service is not at full gear in Canada.

The thing is that the way the questionnaire is built, you don't know all the requirements in advance because if you are missing a document, you cannot move forward to the next page. So I am wondering what the next surprise will be.

Seriously considering hiring an agency to get the visa quickly but finding one at a decent price is quite a challenge. It would cost somewhere between 50 and 60 k$.

Any brilliant advice would be greatly appreciated at this point.

Thanks in advance folks.