Anyone have any recent experience of processing times in Canberra (or Sydney) for Non-Imm 'O' visa applications.

I suggest you use one of the honorary consulates to get you visa. They normally give faster service than embassies and official consulates (Sydney is one).

Contact info for honorary consulates can be found here. http://canberra.thaiembassy.org/consulate.html

Edited March 21, 201313 yr by ubonjoe

I suggest you use one of the honorary consulates to get you visa. They normally give faster service than embassies and official consulates (Sydney is one).

Contact info for honorary consulates can be found here. http://canberra.thaiembassy.org/consulate.html

UJ, that is a great help, thanks.

This is for a friend who is going back to Perth for 6 weeks in May. Hopefully, the new office will be up and running AND issuing visas. If not he may need to deal by post with, say, Sydney. Do you know what timescale he could expect ? He is concerned about the visa not being issued in the 6 weeks he is back home.

Six weeks is plenty of time to get the visa.

I suggest he do a mail in to Brisbane instead of Sydney.

Also make him aware he does not want to get visa to early because the validity period of visa starts on date of issue.

Edited March 21, 201313 yr by ubonjoe

Six weeks is plenty of time to get the visa.

I suggest he do a mail in to Brisbane instead of Sydney.

Also make him aware he does not want to get visa to early because the validity period of visa starts on date of issue.

Thanks.

He will apply for a retirement extension once he gets back to Thailand.

Failed to mention it before but primary reason for not getting visa from the embassy or Syndey is that they will not issue a non-o for retirement because they will only do the OA visa.