We are planning on travelling to Egypt, Italy and the UK at the beginning of July and have just got all the documents ready to submit the applications. It only occurred to me today that if we have to leave the passport in each embassy while they process the application then we haven't actually left enough time.

I wondered a) if you do actually have to leave your passport at the embassy and if anyone has experience of how long it typically takes for UK, Egypt and Italian embassies to process tourist visa applications for Thai nationals.

Many thanks

My initial reaction is that you have left it rather late. Have you not read how difficult it is for Thais to get a visa for UK? I have no idea about Egypt or Italy. I doubt that getting one for Italy is easy though. Let us know how you get on.

Under normal circumstances a UK tourist visit visa will be processed quite rapidly (generally a few days) but with the unrest in Bangkok this may be taking longer. We always had ours within a 3-5 days of application.

I would suspect that once you have a UK visit visa the others will not take long but as posted above you may have left it a little late.

You will have to leave your passports with the embassies as they need to have them to enter the visas. Be prepared to move paperwork from one embassy to another!

Good luck

One other question - do you have to have bank statements translated? Obviously the numbers speak for themselves but the account name at the top is in Thai. Hope not - ready to go tomorrow and that would delay it by a day.

Under normal circumstances a UK tourist visit visa will be processed quite rapidly (generally a few days) but with the unrest in Bangkok this may be taking longer. We always had ours within a 3-5 days of application.

I would suspect that once you have a UK visit visa the others will not take long but as posted above you may have left it a little late.

You will have to leave your passports with the embassies as they need to have them to enter the visas. Be prepared to move paperwork from one embassy to another!

Good luck

My gf went to VFS today (UK). They told her to expect a 7-10 day wait.

RAZZ

One other question - do you have to have bank statements translated? Obviously the numbers speak for themselves but the account name at the top is in Thai. Hope not - ready to go tomorrow and that would delay it by a day.

No need for translations, they have Thai staff who can translate if necessary.

Make sure they know you want the original documents back as you are applying for further visas, maybe a good idea to enclose copies in case they need to keep them