It's nice that there are different entry/immigration choices available to those who qualify for a retirement stay in Thailand. Then folks can weigh the alternatives and pick the one that suits their preferences the best.

For me, I preferred the other visa en route to retirement extensions of stay over the O-A visa.

If I had a choice, and I did, I didn't want to mess with getting a police report from the big city where I lived, didn't want to pay for a doctor's visit to get a medical certificate and didn't want to jump thru the Thai consulates' hoops on getting bunches of documents notarized.

As long as you deal properly with the financial requirement in one way or another, getting a retirement-based extension of stay from Thai Immigration is about as easy as anything's likely to get in Thailand.

And most retirees are going to end up on extension of stay anyway...unless they plan on going back to the U.S. approx. every two years and staying there long enough to re-apply for and obtain a new O-A visa.

The notary thing is solved by signing each copy and dating it, that will be sufficient. It is the same at immigration here in CM sign each copy

Moe, are you saying the LA Consulate won't require a notary public stamp, which normally you have to pay per document to obtain in the U.S., on the various submitted application documents?

Because their rules clearly say that notarized documents are required. And you or me (Joe Citizen) signing copies isn't the same as having them legally notarized.

At Thai Immigration, on the other hand, nothing needs to be notarized because there's barely any semblance of legal notaries here.

BTW, I'm talking about needing to have the original copies of your submission notarized.... NOT having all the required additional copies separately notarized.

I don't see in this thread where the notary was the problem. Sounds like she is saying it cost more to get it done in the US, which could be the case for some, but not for all.

Perhaps the most salient part of NancyL's post that LSM linked above was the following:

Recently, I wrote an essay for my Thai language class detailing the process of getting an O-A visa. I'd never calculated this before, but that visa and all the associated B-S cost us 15,000 baht per person more than if we'd just applied for an O and extended it for 12-months due to retirement once we were in Thailand.

I know in my case, as far as the medical is concerned:

If I had sought the med certificate while I was still working and covered by my employer's health insurance, the insurance wouldn't have covered it, because I wasn't sick, and my work insurance didn't pay for preventive checkups or stuff like that.

And without insurance, where I lived, just walking in a private doctor's doorstep was likely to cost you $75 or more... and that's without them doing a single test, just the office visit. And that was 5 plus years ago.