I am currently on a 5 year Thai Elite Visa but have now been married to a Thai lady for about 1 year. 

 

Due to the COVID situation everywhere I am wondering if there is anyway to switch from the Thai Elite Visa (when it expires) to a Thai marriage visa/extension? 

 

Normally I believe the process would be leaving the country going to Laos or some Thai embassy and applying for the NON O visa based on marriage. 

 

Since travel to the nearby countries is out due to covid is there anyway to do this while staying inside Thailand?

 

Has anybody done this recently? Thanks!

A Thai Elite PE visa cannot be changed to different category of visa at immigration. It can only be done with a tourist visa or visa exempt entry.

People have tried by using an agent as last resort and they said it could not be done.

During this C19 2020 and now C19 2021, if I was you I'd  go to your local immigration and seen what they say,  you never know you might get lucky seeing as the world is in a kinda no go anywhere. 

It looks like my options would be paying for more time with Thailand Elite which I don't want to do. Now that is 600K baht! Or go back to the home country and deal with all the expenses and hassle of that and then try to return. Seems totally ridiculous that there isn't another work around option since I am already here.

If you are a European first try to change your visa in immigration only. It was easy if you didn't have to quarantine if you leave Thailand. You could just make a quick flight to any nearby counties and when return you get a month visa. You could change that to non O visa and do on

30 minutes ago, mrfaroukh said:

If you are a European first try to change your visa in immigration only. It was easy if you didn't have to quarantine if you leave Thailand.

Immigration will not do one if a person has a Thai Elite visa as I wrote before.

A PE visa is not a tourist visa or a non immigrant visa. It is in category of its own.