Chiang Mai Immigration Q & A - Info and reports. (2020)

[Greenside]

On 12/15/2021 at 3:04 PM, NancyL said:

Did you actually receive an approval for your 90 day report or just an approval for your use of the new 90 day reporting system?  I received approval to use the new system lightening fast on 8 December, but my application for a 90 day report has been shown as "pending" since then.

It was an email in (mostly) Thai saying the application was approved with a link to the check status page.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Greenside

[Dante99]

On 12/15/2021 at 3:04 PM, NancyL said:

Did you actually receive an approval for your 90 day report or just an approval for your use of the new 90 day reporting system?  I received approval to use the new system lightening fast on 8 December, but my application for a 90 day report has been shown as "pending" since then.

Did my report 7:30am and received approval and the half sheet to put in pp with new report date about 10:00am.  Half sheet was attached to email advising approved.  So they are processing.

 

Hope yours gets resolved soon or has been already.  

[NancyL]

Yes, finally received approval day before due date.

[Badger18]

Are they still doing under consideration stamps for covid extensions in CM? I heard some immigration offices are just giving you the extension there and then.

 

Also, do they run the 60 days from the date of the application or the expiry date of your current permission to stay?

[JomtienEats]

And where do you do Visa Waiver/Covid extensions now - is it the Airport or Promenada?

 

Bonus question - are they still looking for TM30s in CM?

[CMBob]

11 hours ago, JomtienEats said:

.....Bonus question - are they still looking for TM30s in CM?

Somewhat off topic.....but just a week ago CM Immigration required a copy of the TM30 when friends got a 30-day extension to a visa exempt entry.  I personally was required to produce a copy when obtaining an annual extension based on retirement earlier this month.  Don't know whether its required for a covid extension but I'd guess it is required.

[JomtienEats]

9 minutes ago, CMBob said:

Somewhat off topic.....but just a week ago CM Immigration required a copy of the TM30 when friends got a 30-day extension to a visa exempt entry.  I personally was required to produce a copy when obtaining an annual extension based on retirement earlier this month.  Don't know whether its required for a covid extension but I'd guess it is required.

I think you're on-topic. Sounds like I'll need to sort out a TM30. Where did your friends get the extension btw - airport or promenada?

[CMBob]

1 hour ago, JomtienEats said:

I think you're on-topic. Sounds like I'll need to sort out a TM30. Where did your friends get the extension btw - airport or promenada?

Both I and friends got our extensions at the Immigration Office near the airport.  I have no clue if the satellite office at Promenada does any extensions (haven't been out there in years).  

[JomtienEats]

10 hours ago, CMBob said:

Both I and friends got our extensions at the Immigration Office near the airport.  I have no clue if the satellite office at Promenada does any extensions (haven't been out there in years).  

Good! I always found the Promenada location awkward to get to. 

[deej]

To morning, at 8.30 AM opening  time ,arrived at C/ Mai  Immgr dept  Drive Inn 90 day report,  3 cars  were in front of me,plus one bike, and one walk inn.

Done and dusted in approx 20 mins,.excellent service  was again provided only docoments handed over to the Immgr Dept Officer,was passport, filled in  TM 47,and  present 90 day notification paper,

Nice work CMaiI Immgration  Dept????

[Marcous]

On 12/27/2021 at 12:01 AM, CMBob said:

Both I and friends got our extensions at the Immigration Office near the airport.  I have no clue if the satellite office at Promenada does any extensions (haven't been out there in years).  

I went to Promenada today, they don't do covid extensions there unfortunately. 

[GregTN]

What are the current requirements for the background color of the photo used for an extension of stay at Chiang Mai immigration?

[Kiniyeow]

Anyone know how many days prior to the expiration of the retirement extension you can renew it?  15 days?

 

[Alotoftravel]

45 days

[Kiniyeow]

Ahh, thanks.

[grin]

I went to Chiang Mai Immigration near the airport to try and get a 60 day extension for my 90 day Non-O visa for visiting my spouse. I had my wife with me and had a TM7 filled out, had copies of my appropriate passport pages, her house book, her ID card, and our marriage certificate.

 

We were directed to the tent in front of the building on the left side and they kept asking for the usual documents for the one year extension. My wife kept repeating that I wanted a 60 day extension, hok sip wan, to no avail.

 

Were we directed to the right place? Have the requirements for a 60 day Non-O extension changed? Is it even still available? Has anyone done this recently in Chiang Mai?

 

Also curious what reason people might give at the bottom of the TM7 form.

[Raindancer]

Why ask people on this forum?  These are all questions you could surely have asked whilst you were at immigration.

Don't see the point of your post.

[itsari]

16 hours ago, grin said:

I went to Chiang Mai Immigration near the airport to try and get a 60 day extension for my 90 day Non-O visa for visiting my spouse. I had my wife with me and had a TM7 filled out, had copies of my appropriate passport pages, her house book, her ID card, and our marriage certificate.

 

We were directed to the tent in front of the building on the left side and they kept asking for the usual documents for the one year extension. My wife kept repeating that I wanted a 60 day extension, hok sip wan, to no avail.

 

Were we directed to the right place? Have the requirements for a 60 day Non-O extension changed? Is it even still available? Has anyone done this recently in Chiang Mai?

 

Also curious what reason people might give at the bottom of the TM7 form.

I have read that only tourists can ask for the 60 day covid extension .

[grin]

Just to clarify, we asked every person we could find in the tent about the 60 day Non-O extension but no one seemed to know about it as all answers we got pertained to the one year extension. This is not a COVID extension being referred to here either.

 

We showed up around 2:00 PM the next day and this time waited for our queue number to be called in the tent. The guy checked our documents and asked about banking details, map, etc that are not required for the Non-O 60 day extension. I managed to convince him that these were not required for a 60 day Non-O extension and he sent us into the building to the information window.

 

At the information window the young woman did not understand the Non-O 60 day extension either but a man that was probably her supervisor took over and explained to her how the Non-O 60 day extension worked. Basically there was very little time spent at this window and all they did was re-order our documents and staple them together with a new queue number slip on top. Our queue number was TF18 and it was 2:30 PM when we left that window.

 

They were processing queue number TF12 at that time and only window 6 was processing TF (Thai Family) queue numbers. I'm guessing that most of these were one year marriage extensions as they seemed to take at least a half hour to process. However, they did seem to be processing them in parallel. Several couples were sent away to get more documents or copies. That seemed strange as I thought the people in the tent outside would have caught this. Our number was called up at 4:10 PM.

 

The interesting thing is that the woman at window 6 assumed that the reason for wanting the 60 day extension was to season 400,000 Baht in the bank prior to applying for a one year extension and warned us that we had less than a week to get the money in the bank and that it could not be a joint account. We did not disillusion her and it only took about 5 minutes to get the extension approved and stamped in my passport.

 

As our intent was not to season money but to just get a 60 day extension it got me wondering if seasoning money is the normal purpose of the Non-O 60 day extension. It makes sense in that only one 60 day extension is allowed. Maybe using the extension for another purpose is a loophole.

 

Edited February 11, 2022 by grin
Formating

[EricTh]

On 2/8/2022 at 6:03 AM, Raindancer said:

Why ask people on this forum?  These are all questions you could surely have asked whilst you were at immigration.

Don't see the point of your post.

That's because of several issues.

 

I had several past encounters where the volunteers outside told me different answers from the officers inside. So I won't rely on information from the volunteers anymore. They are sometimes not reliable.

 

If you notice, the officers inside are not willing to explain much and their English is very limited. Many language miscommunication have occurred in the past.

 

It's best to ask fellow foreigners who went through the same process before and low chances of miscommunication due to lack of fluency in English.

 

Edited February 14, 2022 by EricTh

[EricTh]

On 2/7/2022 at 1:57 PM, grin said:

 

Were we directed to the right place? Have the requirements for a 60 day Non-O extension changed? Is it even still available? Has anyone done this recently in Chiang Mai?

 

It is possible to get a 60 day extension on a Non-O 90 day visa? I've never heard of that.

 

The tent at left is manned by mostly foreigners (volunteers) from Phillipines, Malaysia, Northeast India. Most are not Thai citizens and they are on volunteer visa or similar. Thai citizens usually don't speak English as good as them.  These volunteers don't usually give the correct answers which I found out several times.

 

I think there might be a miscommunication there. What the volunteer said is that you must do a 1 year extension and there might not be a 60 day extension. You have to leave Thailand and reapply.

 

All Thai citizens know what is 60 days in English, you don't have to say 'hok sip wan'. It's you who might not understand what the volunteer said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dante99]

3 hours ago, EricTh said:

What the volunteer said is that you must do a 1 year extension and there might not be a 60 day extension.

How do you know what the volunteer told somebody else?  

[grin]

Note my followup post. I was able to get the Non-O 60 day extension the following day in about two and a half hours. Just had to get past the volunteer and information window person who were not aware of the extension.

[EricTh]

21 hours ago, grin said:

Note my followup post. I was able to get the Non-O 60 day extension the following day in about two and a half hours. Just had to get past the volunteer and information window person who were not aware of the extension.

 

Going past the volunteers is a good move, they only know the most common procedures for first timers to Thailand like tourist extension, non-O 90 days application, where the photocopying shop, where is 90 days reporting, where is the toilet, where the TM30 place is, where to apply for the residence cert etc.

 

For the other more complicated visa extensions, it's better to go straight to the counter inside. 

 

That said, it's rather chaotic nowadays. We didn't have to go through the volunteers section in the past few years.

Edited February 15, 2022 by EricTh

[Bill97]

I have found the people in the tent to be quite pleasant and helpful but I don’t really know much about it as I have only been going to CM Immigration for thirty three years.

[EricTh]

18 hours ago, Bill97 said:

I have found the people in the tent to be quite pleasant and helpful but I don’t really know much about it as I have only been going to CM Immigration for thirty three years.

 

No doubt the volunteers outside are much more friendly and helpful than the 'inside staff' but they sometimes give wrong and conflicting information.

 

This is from my own experience and also other people's experience if you were to stand/sit near the inside counter and listen to other people's complaints that what they were told outside isn't what is told inside.

 

You wasted your thirty three years there by not being observant enough.

Edited February 16, 2022 by EricTh

[Bill97]

7 hours ago, EricTh said:

You wasted your thirty three years there by not being observant enough.

You have no idea what I did here but I have wasted time talking with you,  but that is certainly not 33 years.  Bye bye Mr Presumptuous  Judgmental.

[milldav]

Hi, I arrived in Thailand on 27th Feb on a 60 day tourist visa. My intention is to get a 30 day extension and then swap to an o-a retirement visa in Chiang Mai (I'm 63 years old).

 

I've had problems opening a Thai bank account. I've only just found a condo to live in and the banks I've tried are asking for a certificate of residence. I'm planning on going to immigration tomorrow morning to apply for this but I've read it may take several weeks. If this is the case then by the time I manage to open a bank account and move in the 800k required for the retirement visa the money won't be in the account for the required 2 months before I apply for the retirement visa.

 

Any ideas as to what I can do? Would an option be to go to a neighbouring country and get a new tourist visa then apply for the retirement visa by which time the money will have been in the bank for long enough?

[EricTh]

13 minutes ago, milldav said:

Hi, I arrived in Thailand on 27th Feb on a 60 day tourist visa. My intention is to get a 30 day extension and then swap to an o-a retirement visa in Chiang Mai (I'm 63 years old).

 

I've had problems opening a Thai bank account. I've only just found a condo to live in and the banks I've tried are asking for a certificate of residence. I'm planning on going to immigration tomorrow morning to apply for this but I've read it may take several weeks. If this is the case then by the time I manage to open a bank account and move in the 800k required for the retirement visa the money won't be in the account for the required 2 months before I apply for the retirement visa.

 

Any ideas as to what I can do? Would an option be to go to a neighbouring country and get a new tourist visa then apply for the retirement visa by which time the money will have been in the bank for long enough?

You can get your residence cert in one day if you pay a certain sum of money (last time I checked was 500 baht) to the girl issuing the cert. 

 

Go to Bangkok Bank at Kad Suan Kaew branch, they have handled many retiree cases like yours. I am not sure whether they can accept your rental agreement without residence cert but you can try first.

 

Explain to them the purpose of you opening a bank account for retirement extension and they should approve it.

 

If the staff prove to be difficult, ask to talk to the branch manager.

Edited March 20, 2022 by EricTh

[milldav]

Thanks Eric, good to know about the 500b to speed things up. If I can get an account opened and the money deposited by next weekend I'll be ok.

I was using the Bangkok Bank branch in Airport Plaza, they were very helpful but insisted on the certificate of residence.