Warning: long and fairly dull post.

Definitely,

@Al**

. I went with a Thai policy but you're basically paying for the certificate since pre-existing conditions are not covered and even fairly common ones are extrapolated to exclude other conditions down the line. We decided to get that policy, get a couple of months' travel insurance and look for more affordable and flexible options once we've settled. A lot of people recommend getting the minimum for the visa and self-insuring, going to local hospitals if necessary.

If you're still at the stage of gathering documents, I'd recommend starting as soon as you can, anticipate barriers, local and Thai holidays, when the consulate closes, and the unexpected. Getting HSBC to supply 3 months of bank statements in the way required took ages, multiple phone calls and eventually a branch visit and refusing to leave without what I needed. That came as no surprise and was one of the please resubmit requests. Just when we thought we'd got everything, we got a request to submit an attested translated copy of our marriage certificate, which was something I'd never come across outside cases where the partner is Thai. My wife is Japanese and I immediately submitted an attested copy we had done in 2011, when I moved companies. A long weekend (Eid) passed and I got a message from an attestation company. The law in the UAE had changed the year before, making attestation over 10 years old invalid, so we had to start again. It had to go to London, be attested by the UAE embassy there, return to Dubai for stamping at the MOFA and finally be translated (another long weekend). I asked a Thai friend to check the translation and she found that Bachelor, my marital status on the certificate, had been translated as undergraduate, so that had to be changed. Our flights to Bangkok were at 2.50am on July 2nd. My wife's visa arrived at 11am on June 30th and mine 24 hours later, 12 hours before we left for the airport and an hour before we postponed flights, lengthened local accommodation, rebooked the cats etc. Stressful? A tad, yes. And I'd started the process in late April. Final warning, only start completing the online form once you have all the documents ready to upload. It automatically disappears after 14 days and some things, such as insurance, can take longer than that to sort out.

They didn't ask,

@Al**

. We're in a 4-week Airbnb while we look for long-term accommodation and used that address for the time being.

Yes,

@Al**

. Wife and I both on non-immigrant OA visas, obtained where we were last resident.

Hi Alex, we just arrived recently and wanted to open accounts. We went, randomly, into Emquartier for something else but saw that there were several banks, and we had our passports with us, so thought, why not?

The first we came to, Bangkok Bank, is the one everyone had said would be easiest (subject to the local rules mentioned by an earlier respondent). A rather snooty lady took my passport, confided with her colleagues and came back to ask me if I had the title deeds of a property in Thailand, to which the answer was no.

Next door was Krungsri. Similar approach but this time multiple letters from the embassy confirming this and that, so we moved on.

We ignored a couple of banks and went into SCB, whose ATMs I’ve been using for 20-odd years because they’re purple and I grew up in the 70s.

After a little wait, we went to the assistant and within 20 minutes, I had an account, a savings book and a debit card. They weren’t sure about my passport but an image of my UK driving license sealed the deal.

SCB in Emquartier worked for me. Good luck!

Congratulations,

@Mi**

!

What I hadn't reckoned with was being asked for an attested marriage certificate, which subsequently had to be translated into Thai. My wife is Japanese, not Thai, so it was a bit of a surprise and took getting on for 3 weeks. We'd had our certificate attested in 2011 so I thought we were lucky until they announced that the UAE brought in a 10-year shelf life last year. So maybe it was closer to 7 weeks in total. I thought I'd left plenty of time but it went up to the wire.

About 5 or 6 weeks,

@S**

, but there were several UAE and Thai holidays during that period. The insurance took the longest to sort out, and forgive me if everybody knows, but it's best to get all the documents such as air ticket, police clearance, evidence of accommodation etc ready to upload because if you get stuck for 14 days, you slide down the snake, your application is deleted from the system and you have to start again.

Thanks,

@A**

. See you there.

Done this morning,

@Wann****

.

@Jan *****************

🙏