Last week I went to the Thai Consulate in Rada Street Manila to get a tourist visa to come back to Thailand. In past trips it had been a case of just filling out the forms, 2 photos, the fee, and picking it up 2 days later. Imagine my surprise when I was asked to provide 1. A copy of my thai bank accounts. 2. A copy of my VISA credit card. 3. A copy of my ATM card. 4. Copies of the title deeds of my properties in Thailand. 5. A plane ticket in AND out of Thailand (which I never have since I have lived here 30 years and buy all my tickets here), and 6. A hand written letter detailing why I wanted to go to Thailand. Excuse me, but am I missing something here ? Would you give copies of your ATM and VISA cards to anyone in S.E.Asia ? or anyone else for that matter ? To anyone wishing to exit the country to obtain a thai visa, I would strongly advise against going to the Philippines, where incidentally a half decent breakfast, if you can find one, is going to cost you 4 times what it costs here. I hear they are giving FREE tourist visas to Thailand in Penang, which I wish I had known about before I wasted a trip to PI.

Been living in Thailand for 30 years...........on a tourist visa?

If you had done a search on T-V before your trip, you would have found out that the Thai embassy in Manila IS NOT the place to go for any kind of visa. Experiences exactly like yours have been posted here in the past...including mine of several years ago

Not really anything to do with Pattaya.

Moved to Visa forum.

good to know..

if i find myself in that situation.. i'll go to KL first..

oh, and they aren't free anymore. that was a promotion that got extended a couple times.

they are 1000 baht again. since april this year.

Tourist visas have not been free since the start of the month. Indeed Manila has been a less than pleasant experience for many, if not most, visa seekers for many, many years.

yeah i had to provide a letter from work no prove i had a job.....I wont go back there, I did get the visa...but it wasn't a real pleasant experience. But Manila is fun

Asking an applicant for a tourist visa for copies of his Thai bank accounts seems exaggerated. phantomfiddler, I wonder, in the visa application form, did you write an address in Thailand as your permanent address?

yeah i had to provide a letter from work no prove i had a job.....I wont go back there, I did get the visa...but it wasn't a real pleasant experience. But Manila is fun

The ironic thing is that you can enter the Philippines with a 21 days free stamp and extend for 2 years without leaving the country and not even a photo is required.

My theory is that they made these very strict rules to make it more difficult for Filipinos to go to Thailand and foreigners are just caught in the same trap. They have their rule book and that is that.