In order to get permanent residency I believe you must be married, speak, read and write Thai and other additional requirements. Also, (again I believe) there are additional requirements and an extremely low “quota” of people allowed to be accepted.

@Ph**

that’s right. I think it was calendar day before or something like that. Luckily for her the flight was late night. She went that afternoon to a clinic. 20 minutes later she’s all good with a negative test and certificate.

Just fyi… unless your transit country or airline requires it a PCR is not required. It’s only ATK. My wife flew recently BKK, to Doha and on to DFW and only needed ATK within 24 hours. A lot cheaper and faster.

Please let me know how this works out. I have a Non O visa and full insurance. However my insurance does not do specific letters to say they cover covid. I am going to the states soon for a month and I really don’t want to buy 8-9 months of insurance (until the expiration of my extension) I’d never use.

@Je**

yeah, and the worst part was the lady doing it was literally doing nothing when I walked in.

When I returned an hour later to give her the 1000 baht she was still doing nothing.

As you would expect it’s just a form letter where they fill in the details of an individual. Might take all of a minute or two to do.

I got my letter in BKK (MTT). It was going to be two weeks and it had to be mailed. I forget the price.

OR, if I wanted it in one hour it was 1,000฿.

In Pattaya I just paid and agent. 1500฿

People much smarter than me will answer with good information but the first thing that will come up is “it would help if we knew where you’re from because the rules are different based on your passport.”

It’s easy to switch. Literally just change the reason from retirement to marriage to a Thai. Just that simple. I did the opposite this year. No questions asked.

The down side is the MASSIVE increase in paperwork, proof of relationship, home visit to verify your relationship, etc etc.

I’ve met people that are married 20+ years, renewing at the same office with the same people that whole time and every year being treated like it’s the first time they did it.

That’s the reason I switched from marriage to retirement. Last year in BKK it took 5-6 trips to CW to get it sorted. I said never again.

I shipped a bunch of stuff from Saudi to here. We put it in the wife’s name. She was able to show her passport and prove she was there with me and this was just our shit and we avoided a bunch of “tax”. We had to pick up the boxes near the airport cargo area. It was a nightmare.