These days people generally recommend an O over an OA because there is no insurance requirement to extend an O.

@Jimmy ******

The branch I have an account with is on Sukhumvit next to W District. I hear that the branch in EmQuartier, Phrom Phong, is easy for expats to work with.

@Bosco ******

LTR - Long Term Resident visa offered by the Thailand Board of Investment. There are several categories of the visa. I have the pensioner LTR which requires a passive income of $80,000/yr and health insurance. 50,000 fee baht for 10 years. Google LTR Thailand BOI for the website

@Stuart **********

I think it is true with all the banks but I wasn’t sure.

@Jimmy ******

I believe the 50,000 baht limit has something to do with Wise transfers. If you do a traditional wire transfer you can wire just about any amount. I wired transferred over a million baht to Kasikorn in order buy a car last year and similar amounts while building a house.

If your goal is to never put money into a Thai bank then you will have to return to your home country every 1-2 years to apply for a new OA visa. This plan works for some people.

I bank with Kasikorn. If you use cardless withdrawal then there are no ATM fees throughout Thailand.

Another thing to note is that the OA visa requires health insurance both to get the visa and to extend the visa. The non-O does not require insurance for one year extensions. I had an OA for 6 years and now I would recommend the O visa. I got a 10 year LTR in January and I would recommend looking into that as well.

Let me add that learning standard Thai is not all there is to speaking Thai. Most people in any language speak in colloquialisms and slang which is much more difficult to learn and to know how to use respectfully. Where I am living now, Sisaket province, most people converse in a mixture of standard Thai, Isaan, and Cambodian. I don’t even try to follow local conversations while I struggle with standard Thai.

Many people are just not good at languages and more than that many people were just not studiers in school anyway. So I’m not going to be judging people, particularly retirees, that won’t put the effort into what the US State department considers a medium difficult language. And usually those that say they don’t know the language actually do speak a little to get by in a market, restaurant, or taxi.

I’m pretty good at math, studied physics & engineering, and had a 30 year engineering career. I’m just not good at languages. I wasn’t good at French and German when I was in high school & college. I studied Thai for 5 months at Duke Language school, 10 weeks with a private tutor, and over a year with an online group during Covid. I can get by but I am in no way conversational.

Fortunately, as English speakers, we can get by in most of the rest of the world with just English. At least give people some credit for taking that leap to move to a foreign country in the first place. Yes there are some A-hole farangs out there (and not all of them are Americans) and those that can’t speak Thai that much are not necessarily doing it out of disrespect and they are well aware that they are missing out some by not having fluency with Thai.