A couple of years ago I was talking to a young woman from USA who had a 3 year visa which had been granted to her on the grounds that she was looking for business opportunities in Thailand. I didn't take much notice at the time, but now I wish I had. We are 12 months away from qualifying for a retirement visa. We were going to travel around for 9 months, but are now thinking we'd rather stay put. Our current visa is non-immigration 'O' from Hull which will expire in October and is no longer so straight forward to obtain. Also, as we were planning on being out of Thailand until next July we didn't apply for any other kind of visa when we were in UK last month. I remembered this 'looking for something to invest in' conversation, but I'm a little sceptical about it. Surely it can't be so easy or everybody would be doing it. I don't want to go down the tourist visa route in case we get a red stamp; our passports are 9 years old and we have been in and out of Thailand 16 times on tourist visas (genuine tourists whilst we were still working) in addition to our current 12 month one. We aren't looking to pull a quick one - we intend to stay in Thailand for the rest of our days and want to do everything legally. We both want to do a Thai language course, but have quite a few other things on at the moment so would rather do it late next year if there is any other way we can get a visa to tide us over until my husband is 50.

Has anyone heard of this kind of visa? To me it sounds a bit too good to be true, but we would rather not commit ourselves to an educational visa if we don't have to as we'll have a lot of distractions in the coming months and I don't want to waste money.

Any help will be much appreciated.

There was a 3-year multiple non-B visa for business purposes, no WP permit was allowed on this.

The visa was designed to big multinational companies with daughter companies in Thailand.

The 3-year non-B visa is scrapped now.

The three-year non-immigrant "B" visa is still listed on the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Ask your local Royal Thai Embassy or Consulate if they will issue such a visa. Of course you must qualify for the visa and the fee is 10,000 Baht.

2 year and 3 year non-B's are not easy to get and I would forget about it in your situation.

You say you only need to bridge a 12 month period, till one of you qualifies for an extension of stay based on retirement. The tourist visa is a good option for you, you can get a double enty tourist visa which will see you through for 179 days and than should be able to get another double entry tourist visa or get an ED-visa. Vientiane or Phnom Phen should give you a double entry.

The red stamp only has bearing at that particulair consulate, other will still issue despite the stamp and that is if you get a red stamp.

"...our passports are 9 years old..."

I assume that sometime soon you'll be getting new passports. That should eliminate some of the worry about a 'red stamp'.

How to make a small fortune in Thailand.

Start with a large one!

How to make a small fortune in Thailand.

Start with a large one!