@Jeff ********

reminded me of this

Everyone’s learning approach is different, so check out a few different teachers and methods. I’m just starting and trying out Stuart Jay Raj “Cracking Thai Fundamentals.” Theres a book and also online content, can check him out on YouTube and see what you think, or at jcademy.com

Unless you look like a broke ass foreigner that is going to overstay and beg for money to cover their $5 hostel, should be ok.

If you cannot easily access 20k baht or about $700 us, you may run into issues if they do question you. In the past 4 trips in 3 years, never came ups.

@Ross *******

exactly my point. Someone who has a good job or their own small business, owns land and has family ties and other reasons to come back they still tend to refuse. I don’t actually have first hand knowledge of anyone getting approved. I’d love to see the financials and other info of someone who did.

We were just trying to get her here for a visit to meet my family before we got married; unfortunately that wasn’t possible, and we started the K1. By the time that was approved it was already too late for her to meet my father, who passed a few months before her arrival.

Unfortunately people abuse the system, and the people who pay for that are the people who try to work within it.

From my looking into it in the past (for a USA visit), I can say the approval statistics are so bad that it sometimes seems like more of a money grab than a visa. Unless the Thai national has significant assets in and ties to Thailand, they are very unlikely to get approved. If they own a home and some land and have a good mid level job, that’s rarely enough to make the powers that be believe they will not overstay or otherwise violate the intent of the visa. The visa agents know this and make a fair amount of money off the fact that it’s so difficult to get approved. It’s almost like it exists to generate income and not provide a means of traveling to other places.

@Paulo ********

#14 should be #1 🙂

@Greg *******

cannot go into that bank to set up an account per se, it’s not even a bank branch it’s offices on an upper floor.

I only know this because I already tried to open an account with them 🙂.

This is their page about sending money to Thailand through them:

@Shane *******

just double checked, even with letting the home bank do the conversion, I was coming out a bit ahead transferring the money even with the fees refunded, but I will definitely double check the numbers when I’m changing within Thailand. Passing the info on to a friend arriving in the kingdom tomorrow as well.

@Shane *******

good to know. Was able to get a Thai bank account set up this trip so it’s moot at this point, but I’ll pass that on to friends that still use other methods.

@Shane *******

rates at the ATM from usd were between 1 and 2 baht to the dollar below what I was getting from wise, depending which institutions I was dealing with, wise was consistently beating the rates at the atm and the money changer when I was there.