jacobus

14 minutes ago, DrJack54 said:

You have a few options. 

Personally I would even consider arriving visa exempt. Then obtain 30 day extension. 

Then look at situation with current 60 day covid extensions.

Entry visa exempt or with tourist visa enables you to obtain non O visa inside Thailand.

You can even obtain that after a covid extension.

You could obtain an extension to the non O however it's a 12 month extension and really depends on situation in Philippines.

Also you can use an agent. That comes at a cost but does not require you to import money to Thailand.

 

Thank you again, DrJack, 

Please explain what is "entry visa exempt" and how do I claim that?

25 minutes ago, DrJack54 said:

No. USA along with couple of others stopped with issuing the "income letters".

That has restricted your options.

You could look at obtaining the non O-A in the states or the non O option obtained in USA or inside Thailand.

More to the point is How long do you want to stay in Thailand.

DrJack, I want to stay in Thailand until they reopen the Philippines, which currently does not allow tourists to enter their country.  Once I leave, I have to stay out until they re-open for tourists because my girl and I are not married.  I'm thinking that this will be anywhere from 3 months to 9 months.  They are already starting to mention in the press that the gov't is concerned about the loss of tourist revenues.  Maybe it will only be a couple of months. 

5 minutes ago, DrJack54 said:

Obtaining a non O visa in Thailand based on retirement is straight forward. However it does require a bank balance of 800k baht in a Thai bank in your name on the day you apply.

The other alternative is to use an agent. 

Also an agent can help open a bank account. 

Depends how long you wish to remain in Thailand.

I won't comment on options for your lady as not familiar with that for Phil national.

 

Ok, thank you DrJack. It's all coming back to me now. 

When I did this before I was staying in Chiang Rai and I just went to the US consulate in Chiang Mai and signed an affidavit which said that I had 2,500 USD income per month to live on.  That was accepted in lieu of the 800k THB in a Thai bank.

So, is that potentially an option anymore? 

20 minutes ago, DrJack54 said:

You need to start again.

Options. 

Obtain a non O-A in your country 

Or Non O either in own country or inside Thailand.

With non O you will obtain an extension in Thailand.

 

Thank you very much, DrJack. 

I actually had my original retirement visa way back in 2008.  Then I stayed in Thailand for several years.  In 2013 I moved to the Philippines for a few years and found my long-term partner whom I am still with (she adores me -- miracles never cease).  ????

In 2018, I returned to LOS with my Ruby and I was able to renew my retirement visa without any resistance that I can recall. Maybe I did just start over.  I just remember that it was very simple and there were no difficult issues to deal with. 

I guess my question is -- is it likely to be fairly straightforward for me to get a non-O visa from within Thailand in these crazy times?

Second question -- if I bring my Ruby with me, what is she going to have to do to get a non-O visa or, failing that, how does one deal with extensions on an ASEAN tourist visa-free entry?  Will she have to do border runs and does one have to quarantine these days after a border run?  How does that work? 

Hello everyone!  I've been out of the country for a couple of years and am now planning to return. 

After quarantining for 10 days, I plan to ask for a renewal of my retirement visa which I had in 2019. 

Has anyone tried to renew a retirement visa recently? 

What is entailed? 

Any suggestions are welcome. 

On 1/19/2019 at 7:13 PM, BritTim said:

I would look into her getting a Non Ed to study English. Since English, I assume, is not her native language, this should be allowed. Chinese is another possibility.

 

I have only found one language school here in Chiang Rai, which will support an application for ED visa for studying English -- Seal Language School.  It's pretty far from where we live though.  

Does anyone know of another school in Chiang Rai or an online school which might support an ED visa for studying English?  

55 minutes ago, BritTim said:

I would look into her getting a Non Ed to study English. Since English, I assume, is not her native language, this should be allowed. Chinese is another possibility.

 

If you go the tourist visa route, and want it to be feasible long term, great care is needed. Although Vientiane will work fine to apply for 2-4 tourist visas, it is wasteful to start there. Start with locations that are liable to be problematic when you have a few previous tourist visas, but which will not affect applications in Vientiane later. In particular, consulates which can only conveniently be reached by air (Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur, for instance) should be used early. This is because entering Thailand by air becomes risky once you can be viewed as living in Thailand on tourist visas.

 

A marriage of convenience would make visas much easier, but I assume you are aware of that, and the possible drawbacks.

 

If money is no object, consider a Thailand Elite visa.

Thank you, BritTim.  I love the way that you laid out several different options for me.  That's very helpful, indeed.  

Now a follow up question if anyone knows about this.  I actually may decide to marry my Filipina gf.  Does anyone know if I can marry a Filipina here in Thailand?  If I'm going to marry her, I would prefer to marry her here in Thailand.  If we were in the U.S., we could just go to a justice of the peace and get married.  Do they have some such functionary here in the LOS?  

12 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

It should not be a problem for her to get 3 tourist visa in Vientiane. She can apply for a 30 day extension for each 60 day entry. After 3 it would be best to go to another embassy or consulate for one.

Thank you, ubonjoe.  

Okay, so that would account for 9 months.  

How many 30-day-on-arrival stamps can she get in one year, in addition to the 3 visas and extensions from Laos?  

I have a retirement visa, but my girlfriend is on a one-year Ed visa, which expires in April.  

She hasn't really learned any Thai to speak of, so she probably cannot get a 2nd year Ed visa.  

I'm thinking of taking her to Vientiane to get a 60-day tourist visa or having her apply for a 60-day tourist visa when she visits her family in Cebu next month.  I don't know the current scene re: Laos tourist visas.  I believe it used to be possible to go to Laos and get a 60-day tourist visa and then before that visa lapses, get a one-month extension at local immig. office.  Also is it possible to repeat the above every three months and get permission to stay for the whole year in this fashion?  

Thank you in advance for any info on this.

I purchased Benjawan Poomsan's "Thai for Intermediate Learners" book, including 2 CDs about ten years ago.  I went through it many times and listened to the CDs many, many, many times.  Then I lived in Thailand for 5 years and I got to be a pretty good intermediate speaker.  After that I lived in the Philippines for 5 years and forgot a lot of the Thai that I had learned.  

Now I'm staying in Thailand again and I would like to review all of the materials that I used to use.  Unfortunately, I have lost Disk 2 of the "Thai for Intermediate Learners".  I still have the book and Disk 1.  I even have "Thai for Advanced Readers" and the CDs for that, although, I must admit, I never got all the way through that one.  

Can anyone provide me with mp3's for Disk Two (Intermediate)?  Pretty please?

I understand. 

Thank you very much to all who responded.  

I have searched ThaiVisa for any recent posts about immigration offices at Central Plaza in Mueang Chiang Rai.  

The only posts that I saw are from back in 2012.  

Since I've been away from TH for several years, I want to confirm that they still have immigration officials at Central Plaza all day on the first Saturday of each month -- which, this month would be this Saturday.  

Old John D. Rockefeller used to say, "Competition is a sin."

Soros, at the bidding of his masters (int'l banking / mega-corporations cartel -- Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Warburgs and other crony families), did his job very efficiently and crashed the Thai Baht.  

As they have done for more than a century, they have continued playing their financial games globally (LIBOR scandal, precious metals manipulation -- just to name a couple).  

I agree with Connda, it's a house of cards now and is likely to end in a very big global mess in the near future.  

Has anyone tried a Thai language school in the Chiang Rai area?  

I'm interested in getting a non-imm Ed Thai visa for my girl friend.  

2 hours ago, tropo said:

No, you will have more chance of getting her through when you're with her. If you are in a genuine relationship, it shouldn't be too hard to convince them it's real. It's would be a good idea to make sure she's got a bank account with a decent balance. That shows commitment. You could buy her a nice ring and say you're engaged to get married, at least then she can say you're her fiance.

I guess my concern is because I am more than 40 years her senior and she is only 19.  That may make it harder to convince them that we are in a committed relationship even though we truly are.  I am blessed because she worships the ground that I walk on.  We are very deeply committed to each other, but it's hard to convince others of that because of the extreme age difference.  That's why I came up with the idea of checking in separately.  

1 hour ago, BritTim said:

I really think you should consider marriage, given that you seem comfortable that she is your one and only. That will provide you with cheap options. The alternatives are

• Non Ed (education) visa and extensions for a year or so. This may make sense as she will probably find it easier to adapt to Thailand if she can speak the language.
• Buy her a Thailand Elite visa. This is a great solution, except for the sticker shock.

Thank you for your suggestions.  

The elite visa sounds great, but, yeah, the price is a bit too steep for me.  We're not even sure how long she is going to be able to bear being away from her family.  

I think the Non Ed visa might be the most appropriate one for us, to begin with.  I'm not sure why it is called "Non Ed".  Isn't it for people who are studying in Thailand.  She does need to start learning the language.  Can we apply for that after we arrive in Thailand?  

I guess the first question I should have asked is, can citizens of ASEAN countries get a visa-exempt 30 day approval upon arrival?  If not, how can we apply for the "Non Ed" visa while we are still in the Philippines?  

5 minutes ago, tropo said:

You (and she) have to convince the Immigration Officers at NAIA that you're in a genuine relationship. They can even take you into an interview room, in which case they will speak to her in Tagalog. Sometimes they will just ask her questions in Tagalog as she's standing next to you. As you probably know, de facto relationships are frowned upon in the Philippines. You'll be amazed at how much better they treat the both of you if you're married. I'll put money down that's what she wants.

Haha, yes, and you would win that bet.  Ladies always want the official marriage.  That's another story for another time.  

My plan is to give her money to book and buy her own ticket separately from my booking.  She and I show up at the check-in counter separately and if she is questioned, she will say that she is going to visit a relative who stays in Thailand.    

I will give her the address and phone number of a lady friend in TH, who will back up her story if they contact her.  

Does that seem more likely of success than us showing up as a couple?

17 minutes ago, PoorSucker said:

First of all the Philippines might not let her leave as they are reluctant to let unmarried women leave in fear of human traffic.
 

Thank you.  I had heard something about this also.  Any ideas on how to "work around" or avoid these difficulties? 

I stayed in Thailand for about 5 years on a retirement visa, from 2009 through 2014.  

For the last 3 years I have been staying in the Philippines and I met the girl of my dreams here.  :)

Now, we are planning to go back to Chiang Rai, which I love much more than any place that I have been in the PH.  

My plan is to reactivate my retirement visa and I expect that my common-law wife can easily get a tourist visa as a citizen of an ASEAN country.  

Does anyone have any advice for me?  My main concern is how to get extensions for her, since we would like to stay in TH long-term.  

Without any investigation, much less corroboration, the idiot puppet president trump goes and pokes the Russian bear by attacking Syria.  

https://wearechange.org/breaking-need-know-trumps-latest-disastrous-action-video/

Trump is just another puppet president.  The big bankers and weapons manufacturers (Boeing,  etc.) want more and more and bigger and bigger wars.  Trump is not going to rock that boat.  

He is now exhibiting that he is just as trigger-happy as the witch, Killary, would have been.  In spite of his promises to his constituents that he would rather make peace with the Russians, he is now poking the bear much harder than Obomber ever dared to.  

The globalists and neocons want their world war III, and Trump is obviously not going to interfere with their plans.  

http://www.activistpost.com/2017/04/u-s-launches-tomahawk-missiles-against-syrian-government.html

I tried to search this forum for realtors, but came up empty.

So, would anyone like to refer me to a realtor for selling a house?

The Thai men who read this article must be laughing themselves silly over it. No self-respecting Thai man would let his lady that he just married and paid the "bride price" for tell him that she is "not ready". I think that in the west many men have lost their way after too many "sensitivity classes" put on by the human resource dept of the multi-gazillion dollar corporation that they worked for.

Maybe this girl just wanted her man to demonstrate that he was really a man or that he at least, knew how to act like a man. I had a similar situation myself where I paid 250,000 baht bride price for a sweet young thing. The first night she came to bed with 3 pairs of pants on and made a show of fighting me off. Of course, I ripped all 3 pairs of pants off her and took what I was due. The second night she only had 2 pairs of pants on and we went through the same routine. After a few nights she came to bed with no pants on, at all, and I did not have to fight for what I wanted.

Within a couple of weeks, she couldn't get enough. She wouldn't let me sleep.

Just sayin'.

With the EU teetering on the brink of total economic collapse, it's ironic that so many TV posters are cheerleaders for the AEC (globalist claptrap). Remember that the EU monstrosity started out innocently enough as an "economic community". Rest assured that the agenda here is the same -- start out with very little power and harmless and gradually morph into a huge tax-gobbling bureaucracy, spawning inflation, etc.

I think Obama has done a great job! He was handed a terrible situation and he stopped it form getting worse and is making it better. I don't care if people don't want to hear what a bad situation he was handed. If they want to pretend everything was perfect when he started then that's ok. It's their fantasy. I don't think anyone could have done any more than he has done. He's earned 4 more years.

While it is true that he was handed a terrible situation, he has not made things better at all. He has continued the reckless government borrowing and spending, pushing us closer and closer to the fiscal cliff. Even before (just before) he was elected he showed his true colors by lobbying hard for the bailout of the big banks. And he continues to this day to carry water for Goldman-Sachs et al.

Romney is no better than Obama and, quite possibly worse. Like one previous poster already posited, the USA needs someone like Ron Paul to turn the ship around and avert disaster. By the way, 30 states have agreed to count write-in votes, so Dr. Paul still has a chance to be elected. Okay, a remote chance at best, but people need to step out of the trap of always voting for the lesser of two evils. When you vote the lesser of two evils, you are partly responsible for every evil deed (drones killing innocent people, bank bailouts, people being jailed for possession of a small amount of marijuana, etc.) that is perpetrated by that candidate, if elected.

Have some integrity! Refuse to support evil of any kind. Write in the honorable Ron Paul for president.