The people I have talked to, with actual experience, say the retirement visa is much better than the marriage visa.

When I have talked to agents, they want to charge 30-60,000 to do a marriage visa but only 10- for a retirement visa.

METV gets you 9 months. You can apply online and its done in a week or two. The downside is its a tourist visa making somethings difficult (banking mostly). You would still have to bounce/extend every 60-90 days.

You can also get your marriage visa online. Its just as easy. However, you will need to extend that (which is the complicated pain in the arse). How near to 50 are you?

I always knew bosses don't actually "work", thank you for confirming for me.

Thanks for sharing. I find that Pattaya's immigration office is crooked and I always use the agent if I have to deal with them. You are better off to spend 2k and have a nice lunch than sitting around waiting for your queue.

@Rob ******

For some, our time is worth more than 2000 baht

If you are from the north pole you can get one of Santa's helpers to deliver it. If you live on the moon you can get the Indians to bring it back for you when they go to visit.

I guess it matters where you live.

I am from the US and I use a service US Global Mail. Because I am from the US I can do that and I don't have to rely on Santa's helpers.

I use Trasferwise (Wise). I think they're one of the best exchange rates. Transfers happen quickly (within 24 hours). When using Wise you can transfer the money directly as spendable cash or you code it as an international transfer. It seems when coding as international it takes a bit longer. More accurately, when I was transferring as spendable cash I was getting my transfers within minutes.

If you need to show immigration anything financial, you will most likely need to show the origin is from a foreign source. This is also applicable for the local land office. Hence, if you intend to buy property or apply for retirement visa (or any other visa that has financial requirements) you will need to indicate in Wise the purpose of the transfer is "Longer term living in Thailand". Those transactions, it seems to me, take a about a day.

Another thing to note about Wise, they usually conclude transactions quickly. Rarely but sometimes, they can take a week or more. So you want to plan for that.

Bank accounts are funny here. If you have a long-term visa you should be able to walk into any bank and get a bank account, but you can't. You will likely need to go to a few branches and get told "no" a couple of times before you get a yes. The trick is to ask this group "I am in [your semi permanent location] and I need to open a bank account, does anybody have a recommendation".

You should be aware that opening account at one branch does not necessarily mean other branches can provide you the paperwork you may need. When doing immigration paperwork you may need to show account history. You will need to go to the branch where you opened the account to get that certified history. This means if you open an account in BKK but decide to live in Phuket you will need to travel to BKK or open a new account in Phuket. This is a problem if you need to show your account balances over time.

@Kami *****

There can be some very expensive schools but also reasonably priced schools.. The more reasonably priced schools are likely difficult to find as they probably don't have a budget for Internet marketing.

@Kami *****

Are you kids going to go to school here? I think they could get a ed visa. I have a friend that will be coming to Thailand to live, he will be bringing is 8 year old son. From what I understand there is a bit of loop-hole when it comes to youngsters, in that they can not be penalized for overstay... But that creates a problem if you want to leave/return with them.

@Kami *****

Pretty much.

You don't really extend visa, you extend the stamp (permission to stay).

Near the last day of the visa you will do a border bounce. This will get you stamped in for another 60 days and you can extend that 30 more days given you 9 months.

Border Bounce - go to Lao, Cambodia or Malaysia for lunch come right back. My last border bounce taken 8 hours all in.

In the past when I was doing the multiple METV's I would travel to another place for only 2 weeks. You don't have to stay a full month... Bali is definitely a place that is easy to stay for a month so good planning on your part.