Education visa can get you 2-3 years but you have to be careful where you get them from.

Legally you’re supposed to actually go to school for a certain number of hours per week.

If you have the time that’s the cheapest route unless you’re married to a Thai, have a kid with a Thai or are retirement age.

If you have $17k you can get an elite visa.

Wouldn’t do that until you’ve spent at least a couple of years in Thailand and are sure you want to stay at least another 5 years.

You can start with a multi entry tourist visa which, with extensions and doing a one day trip to a neighboring country, you can get 9 months out of, then more by doing additional trips to neighboring countries.

Can’t do that forever but it’s fine to spend your first 12-14 months in Thailand to see if it’s really somewhere you want to be long term.

Volunteer visas are still available through some agents but they’re going to cause you problems in the future and will be on your permanent immigration record.

Not worth it.

@Darren *******************

They ask up front about whether or not you’ve had a volunteer visa or more than 2 overstays.

Supposedly they only care about these things for the last 3 years so unless things change (and they always do), you could probably apply again after that volunteer visa ending is 3 years in your past.

@Arnold ****

If no helmet or sometimes just at random they will. When the Thais get stopped they often get searched and their bike searched as well looking for guns, drugs, whatever

But unless you’re living very inexpensively, I’d think that you and your wife would probably spend the lion’s share of that 800k in your last year in Thailand, then transfer or just exchange and carry out in cash what’s left.

If you did have to move back to the US suddenly you can always bring more than $10k with you, you just have to declare it and if you have bank statements and visa documentation showing how it was sent into Thailand and for what purpose, shouldn’t have any issue carrying it back with you

You have to do an FBAR report when you file your tax return if your total out of the US account(s) reach over $10,000 in value.

Doesn’t impact your taxes unless you earned income on those foreign accounts and even then you’d have to earn more than the foreign earned income exclusion and deductions allow you (assuming you meet the criteria for having your tax home outside the US).

If you’re just holding 800k baht in a Thai account for visa purposes, it’s not going to impact your taxes other than having to do the FBAR report each year.

I know when you buy property with income brought into Thailand then later sell it, that income has to be properly noted by the receiving bank as coming form a foreign source so you can transfer the proceeds of the sale back out of Thailand.

Not sure if anything similar has to be done with the 800k in this situation.

It’s much easier to transfer larger sums of money into Thailand than back out.

Be sure to do more research on that.

Lots of Russians plus high season. Will get worse once Chinese airlines add more capacity next month.

Seeing a lot of Russians pop up in other FB groups all of a sudden asking about education visas or desperate to find any kind of job to stay longer.

The cheap border run minibuses are now more Russian than the usual Lao/Cambo/Burmese.

@Natalie *******

A good deal. RIP the ROI on $500k invested properly lol

@Cliff ********

You also have to pay for the visa, work permit, to set up the company and you have to show a long term lease for an office or retail space.

You can also use a house you live in if there’s room enough to set up an office for 4 workers.

Oh and you’ll need to find 4 people to pose as employees for when immigration comes around to inspect the place, take photos and they could decide to come back for a surprises inspection at any time.

Thailand elite visa is cheaper if you don’t need the work permit and if you can get a retirement visa and have the monthly 65k baht to transfer in or have a Thai child or wife, that’s even cheaper visa wise.

@Jyrki ********

So the countless ATM machines and currency exchange shops are there for the Thais?

Go out to the bars, clubs and gogos. Everyone is paying in cash.

Go to the restaurants at the malls. How many Chinese/Indians/Russians you see paying with credit cards?

I’m out at these places 3-4 days/nights a week for years and it’s mostly cash outside of paying for hotels or eating at restaurants in your hotel or some tourist trap bar like the Hilton Rooftop.

Plus most credit cards have a bad exchange rate plus international transaction fees so why use them.

Even when I use my Schwab or Amex platinum which don’t have international fees, the exchange rate isn’t worth it vs cash unless it’s a small purchase.

Even iBar, Insomnia and Myst charge like 5% to pay by bank transfer and it doesn’t even cost them anything to accept that lol

@Ken ******

Ok. Yeah I hear getting the K1 first is the simpler route.

No idea why they would deny a tourist visa for people married in Thailand for 5, 10, 20 years.

Just makes no sense. Nobody’s staying married for 20 years in a fake marriage just to get a green card.

But I see people saying they got denied a tourist visa after being married that long and having multiple kids in Thailand with their wife.