HCMC immigration lines: very surprising. I had to fly to Hanoi a couple of times in the recent months and never spent more than 10 min in the line

@Jj ***

US visas are piece of cake compared to Schengen ones. Speaking of "their rules" - in my experience about a third of Thai-produced papers I get have serious typos and still get mai-pen-rai'ed through. Most recent examples: a school letter required to transfer Non-ED and -O had my name prefixed with "Mrs" and my daughter's name misspelled - the school refused to re-do the letter and was absolutely right as the immigration couldn't care less and accepted the letter as is; another one is a building ownership title from the land office: for some unknown reason they dropped the mooban number from the address, making it ambiguous (we have 4 moobans in our tambon) - the lawyer says it's obviously wrong, but as long as the paper was issued by the land office itself, it's sort of ok

Just go to Thailand on visa-exempt and re-enter after once your DTV is ready

The only good thing about condos is foreign freehold. Maybe there’s one out there not in ruins after 5-10y and the managing company still doing great job, but it’s very rare

@Michael ******

it is their bank. All Thai banks charge ~500 baht fee on incoming international transfers

@Wannikea ********

not at all, in my experience - depends on the country. F.e. US visas are usually valid for 3y, could be way past the passport’s expiration date, while Schengen ones are usually issued with the expiration date not exceeding the passport’s

@Urs *******

quite often they issue visas with expiration date aligned with the passport one, but it’s not always the case

@Urs *******

I’ve been using visas in expired passports for decades. You have to transfer Thai visas like Non-O/B/PE/SE to new passports, but it doesn’t affect validity. With DTV which is most times is stickerless, you won’t have to do anything, most likely

You can keep your old passport and use visas in it

Absolutely. Can be done even with visa-exempt stamp