BritTim

If you can show an unbroken history of 40k+ baht deposited in your account every month, this can be used as the financial proof. This assumes that you are not from a country where the embassy still provides income letters.

If you have a genuinely pressing need to do an annual retirement extension early (for instance an appointment and air ticket to receive medical treatment abroad) many offices will agree to process the extension early. This is always at their discretion. However, more often than not, they will be sympathetic if your reasoning is convincing enough. "I would like to go on holiday then" will not be sufficient.

OP indicated that he wants the thread CLOSED

For a retirement visa, you must have 800k baht in the bank for two months before and three months after the application. You need to keep half in the bank for the remainder of the year.

At one time, it was available in Penang, but required financial proof. It is unclear if they still do them.

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It has been my belief that any permission to stay can be protected with a re-entry permit. However, a couple of unreliable sources claim that a re-entry permit cannot be given for the permission to stay from a visa exempt entry or an entry with a visa on arrival. The official immigration sources are silent on this. I have tried to contact Immigration in writing to get an official word on the matter, but have received no reply. I would suggest you visit your local immigration office in person, explain the situation, and see what they say. If you do, please report back on what they say about a re-entry permit from a visa exempt entry.

The 7 days to leave the country is final. It is not an extension in the normal sense. Once you have an order to leave the country within 7 days, you must always comply. However, assuming you are eligible for visa exempt entry into Thailand, you can just do a same day border bounce at most land crossings for a 30-day visa exempt entry.

It seems very unlikely that you would qualify for LTR visas or anything other than an Elite membership or an investment visa (which I consider a bad idea). If confident that you want to stay long term in Thailand, go for a Thailand Elite membership.

You might well be questioned, but I do not think you would be denied entry.

Important note: Thai Visa Service will no longer accept people on their runs to Savannakhet who have the intention of applying for a tourist visa. The reason is frequent denials.

The Thai embassy in Vientiane does not normally require a flight booking out of Thailand for a tourist visa application. If you have one, it would not hurt to provide it.

As the OP has indicated that he considers the thread concluded, it is now CLOSED

The 60-day extension to visit your wife exists for every kind of permission to stay with very few exceptions. The most important restriction is that you are only allowed one such extension since the last time you entered Thailand with a visa or visa exempt (entry with a re-entry permit does not entitle you to an additional one if you already used your single allowed one since last entering with a visa).

$5 x (a few hundred a day) x (365 days a year) mounts up. For a Myanmar immigration official on a salary of probably about $300 per month, this amounts to way more than his official salary.

Departing with a four-day overstay will mean a 2,000 baht fine (500 baht per day) and an overstay on your immigration history which, while not a big immediate problem, could be held against you in the future. You do have the option of applying for a second extension of your visa exempt entry (paying 1,900 baht) which will be denied, but you are given seven days to leave the country. That can be useful, on occasion, but there ought to be better alternatives with forward planning.

Most likely, even if the official in the local office wants to help, they will be unable to offer any guarantees. The application requires sign off at Division headquarters that operates on its own schedule.

You need an appointment to apply for a visa, but that does not mean you need to be a month in Kuala Lumpur to get the visa. Once you submit the application, I believe the visa is placed in your passport and returned to you the following day in the afternoon. I have seen no recent reports from those applying for tourist visas in KL. At last report, they were being strict in their requirements, and liable to deny an application for a tourist visa if you have spent long periods in Thailand as a tourist.

Non-RE has nothing to do with retirement. It just states that the entry for made using a re-entry permit that protects an existing Non Immigrant permission to stay. You will see the same annotation if, for instance, you return with a re-entry permit that protects a permission to stay based on marriage to a Thai. In many countries, the terms "visa" and "permission to stay" are synonymous. That is not the case in Thailand, and a failure to understand that can lead to various serious problems.

According to the letter of the law, that is correct. However, the Thai authorities at the highest levels have long decided to make it hugely different in terms of enforcement. If you are not competing with Thais for customers or jobs, the fact that you are working as a digital nomad is 100% tolerated.

It is the norm. Such companies are an option but IMHO very much a last resort. As a digital nomad with no Thai customers, I would never consider them. I do understand the problems people can have with their corporate lawyers, though.

Others have the same views I have. On a point of information, If you have a re-entry permit that still has months to run, your application for a new visa will almost certainly be denied. The embassy does not like you to have two valid alternatives for entering Thailand.

If you have no other tourist visas for Thailand in your passport, your tourist visa application in Phnom Penh should be successful. In the unlikely event that your visa application is denied, flying in for a visa exemption should be OK. You could also enter by land, but under no circumstances risk trying to enter via the Poipet/Aranyaprathet crossing.

I will just say that lawyers tend to be extremely risk averse, and they will usually declare grey areas to be illegal, even when it is quite certain that the activity is tolerated in practice. The Labour Department has tried hard to provide guidelines on what can be done without work permits. However, the very existence of the UWP (Urgent Work Permit) intended for those working for a maximum of 15 days and usually less, indicates that even short work assignments in Thailand are often not legal without the Labour Department's permission.

If you have an actual tourist visa, entering via one of the Bangkok airports ought to be OK. However, the officials there have been known to go rogue occasionally in the past. Using an airport (such as Chiang Mai) that has no history of refusing to honour tourist visas might be safer.