Just be prepared for additional information. I changed from marriage to retirement extension about three years ago in Chiang Mai, and they required me to bring my wife and a copy of my marriage documents.

6 hours ago, timendres said:

This became a major discussion, and I was never able to resolve it. I had to wait for the spouse visa to expire, then do the retirement visa. So, be sure to look into all of the details, and ask what is required, because they can throw up absurd road blocks sometimes.

The problem was that you apparently were not near the date your extension of stay based upon marriage was ending. You can only do it then unless you can show a valid reason to cancel your current extension so that you can apply for new one.

11 hours ago, connda said:

I'm not a Brit.  I'm from the US.  And considering I have 800K in the bank as of today, I'm not going the income letter route.  But, good info for other Brits. 

sorry,  missed the US bit 

7 hours ago, ubonjoe said:

The problem was that you apparently were not near the date your extension of stay based upon marriage was ending. You can only do it then unless you can show a valid reason to cancel your current extension so that you can apply for new one.

Yes, that was exactly the case. It was 4 or 5 months before the extension expired. It just surprised me that there was no provision to simply cancel an existing extension to change it to a different one. That seems like an entirely reasonable thing to want to do. I just wanted to point out that the immigration here can be very picky and inflexible at times. So one should double check every detail, and ask many questions to be as prepared as possible.

"You offer to raise the level of education in a rural setting for free, and there is absolutely no interest."

 

I had exactly the opposite, in the early days I was approached regularly for various reasons English related but always declined. I was once offered a job for a week teaching English, turned out that it was to lecture police officers, about 200 at a time.

 

On 14/12/2017 at 9:43 PM, connda said:

Yeah, but I offered to pay for the cost of the WP.  The only analogy I can come up with is this is like throwing a drowning person a life preserver and then watching them push it away as they go under. 

They have no idea how to process a WP. They do not wish to make the effort to discover and learn. They do not wish to deal with Thai bureaucracy even though they are Thai. It all sounds like too much effort.

 

In summary, they have very quickly decided to prioritise short-term convenience, expedience and, dare I say it, laziness, over the potential for a long-term gain. You will find this pattern of behaviour over and over again in Thailand. Examples include driving the wrong way on a dual carriageway, throwing litter, lying to avoid telling someone something they don't want to hear, etc.

On 12/14/2017 at 4:06 PM, Dan5 said:

You only need a letter from the bank if you are using the 800K Baht in the bank to prove income.

I would have thought this is obvious.

On 12/15/2017 at 7:37 AM, FredLee said:

Just be prepared for additional information. I changed from marriage to retirement extension about three years ago in Chiang Mai, and they required me to bring my wife and a copy of my marriage documents.

I changed from marriage extensions (issued when we lived in Udon) to retirement extensions when I moved to Pattaya with the family. As ubonjoe intimated, the only change was the reason for requesting the extension on the application form, no need for Mrs NL to tag along and whole lot less paperwork. Back then it was a same-day service too!

 

For the guy wanting to change to from retirement extension to marriage extension, assuming you're not into self-flagellation and your bank account is healthy... that job offer better be worth it!

So, the only necessity will be to fill out a TM7 indicating an extension based on retirement, a bank letter with an updated bank book with 800K, and copies of my passport and all the above docs in duplicate.  This that it? 

4 minutes ago, connda said:

So, the only necessity will be to fill out a TM7 indicating an extension based on retirement, a bank letter with an updated bank book with 800K, and copies of my passport and all the above docs in duplicate.  This that it? 

Only one TM7 form and copies or originals is needed to apply for an extension based upon retirement.

That is about it at most offices.

On 12/22/2017 at 4:15 PM, ubonjoe said:

Only one TM7 form and copies or originals is needed to apply for an extension based upon retirement.

That is about it at most offices.

OK.  Will be doing that in April.  I'll bookmark this and report on how it worked out.  Three months and change.