Ed visa vs volunteer visa

[Badger18]

So I extended my tourist visa this morning because I couldn't be totally sure it would still be possible next month. The announcement has been made now, but with people saying the requirements might be stricter I could do with a plan B, and I have 60 days to put it together. Barring elite I think it's got to be either an ed visa or a volunteer visa.

 

I know you need about 50 days left on your tourist visa to convert to an ed visa, but can anyone tell me how long you need to allow for a volunteer visa, and how many hours volunteering you need to do?

[ubonjoe]

You only need 15 days remaining on your permit to stay from the visa or the extension of it to apply for any non immigrant visa that immigration issues.

I don't recall there being any minimum number of hours of hours for volunteer visas or extension of stay.

[Badger18]

34 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

You only need 15 days remaining on your permit to stay from the visa or the extension of it to apply for any non immigrant visa that immigration issues.

Yes, but before you can apply at immigration you need a letter of approval from the Ministry of Education, which takes up to 5 weeks to get (about a week for the school to make the application on your behalf, up to 4 weeks for the MoE to issue the letter). That takes you to about 50 days in total. It's good to know that the 15 days is the same for a volunteer visa, but I'm not sure how long the whole process takes.

40 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

I don't recall there being any minimum number of hours of hours for volunteer visas or extension of stay.

Well that's good news. I'm quite interested in studying Thai but the ed visa programs do seem pretty intense...

[Zikomat]

There is nothing about the "stricter requirements" in the announcement. 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2021 by Zikomat

[ubonjoe]

21 minutes ago, Badger18 said:

Yes, but before you can apply at immigration you need a letter of approval from the Ministry of Education, which takes up to 5 weeks to get (about a week for the school to make the application on your behalf, up to 4 weeks for the MoE to issue the letter).

I was only referring to the visa application. I did not include the amount of time needed to get the supporting documents for it.

[Badger18]

2 minutes ago, Zikomat said:

Nothing about the "stricter requirements" in the announcement. 

Yeah, hopefully they will just carry on as before but if you look at the "Ability to extend..." thread it seems to be pretty credible.

[Zikomat]

4 minutes ago, Badger18 said:

Yeah, hopefully they will just carry on as before but if you look at the "Ability to extend..." thread it seems to be pretty credible.

I have read that same thread exactly and the final post from Ubonjoe there confirms that there was nothing new in this announcement compared to the previous one.

 

 

Edited March 30, 2021 by Zikomat

[Jack1988]

I have studied Thai language for one year(Ed visa) but now am on marriage visa as I am married with a Thai lady. I can tell you that study Thai has been interesting and now I can speak a good Thai( my wife teach me a lot ????) but has been also a bit stressed. By the way it depends on you if you are interested in learning an Asian language you could try or just apply for one year volunteer visa without doing nothing. Keep in mind that both visas are very expensive while one year marriage visa can be just applied for 1900 bath at immigration if you have 400,000 bath in your Thai bank account

[moldresistant]

I would recommend the Elite Visa if you're not of retirement age or married to a Thai person. I love mine, it saves me time and frustration.

 

Actually I was paying more overall doing back-to-back tourist visas when you figure in the related travel expenses.

Edited March 31, 2021 by moldresistant

[Badger18]

22 hours ago, moldresistant said:

I would recommend the Elite Visa if you're not of retirement age or married to a Thai person. I love mine, it saves me time and frustration.

Yeah, I've looked at that a few times but never really been able to justify it. I don't live in Thailand and don't normally spend more than maybe 4 months a year here. This year's different for obvious reasons, and maybe next year will be too. The trouble is they will probably keep going with the covid extensions, which means if you stump up for the elite or commit yourself to 100 hrs a month of class time (or even get married...) you are probably doing it unnecessarily - but if you leave it until you know for sure whether it's necessary, you might find you don't have time to switch and end up having to go back to covid-land, where you may be stuck for who knows how long.

 

The elite takes about 7 weeks from start to finish, so about the same as the ed visa. I'd just be paying an extra 400k or so to get out of lessons. I don't hate lessons that much (I just think 100 hrs a month is too much to take in). I'd be able to travel around with the elite so I guess that's a plus.

 

I can give it a week to see if there's anything to the rumours that covid extensions will be harder to get in future. As others have pointed out, the wording of the announcement is the same, so hopefully not.