i am in the united states. my best friend here is dating a woman from thailand and i have met (through email) her sister. i have made a documentary that will be shown in festivals all over the world. some are in asia and south american countries that don't seem to require a visa for a thai citizen )jakarta, singapore, hong kong, and a few others). but i have quite a few showings that will happen in europe. i have heard about the schengen visa that is good for multiple countries. the woman i am interested in meeting owns a small shop/store and works at a real estate company part-time. she does not have a university degree but has very good use of english as a second language. is there a "best" way to go about helping her attain a visa (of any kind not just the schegen). i have a showings coming up in both florence and in monaco. i would like her to be able to meet me in italy. should she go directly to the italian consulate? is there an expiditing service for first time applicates? she has money in her bank account and a young son to come back to in thailand. what can i do to help?

thanks from a newbie

My wife got a schengen visa about 2 months ago so the process we went through may be slightly informativel in helping you figure out how to go about it. My wife has a Thai passport (also a US green card) so we went to the Austrian embassy here in the US (normally it is best to you apply at the embassy of the country where you plan to visit although you can also apply to the embassy of the country that is point of entry). Some of the items that they required were evidence of her reservation for airline tickets showing exact dates into and out of the country. They also required confirmed reservations for the dates that she planned to be in that particular country (Austria in her case) and just a tentative itinerary of her travel in the other schengen countries. We went into the embassy in person and everything went very smoothly and she was mailed the schengen visa about one week later.

I cannot say if anything would be different since your friend will be handling it in Thailand or what her chances are of getting a shengen visa but I am sure other members of the forum are much more experienced with this than I am and will be very helpful on filling you in with the details. Good luck........