How To Tranfer Money For My Visa?

[OneFrog]

Hi there

Great place to find usefull infos. Thanks to you all.

I'm French 45 years old with a life pension because of a working accident 25 years ago.

I never bothered doing more than a tourist visa or border runs to get "entry permit" just because I'm living so close to the cambodian border.

Now with the new rules, I gotta get serious and will marry my girlfriend from 7 years.

Unfortunaly I'm not old enough to get a "pension visa" and my pension is only about 35000 bths.

A little bit short in both category, so marriage seems to be the right option..and it will make her so happy too..she said

"it's like marrying james Bond" (love is blind...and that is a good thing. lol)

My ambassy is making the papers ok, she is now getting her papers form the "ambun" at her bith place.

Everything seems to be loking fine so far.

My problem is how to get my 400.000 bhts here in such a way immigration will accept it as a "came from overseas..got for visa".

I got an account with Siam City bank and one with Bank of Ayudhya.

Bank of Ayudhya just gave me a little paper with their SWIFT code and said just use this to transfer the money and everything will be fine.

Riiiiight. Can anyone confirm or not if it the right way to bring money in for visa purpose.

If not please will you be kind enought to guide me in the right way.

Thanks in advance for your time

Regards

OneFrog

[lopburi3]

Sorry to give you this information but it is too late for 400k bank deposits. Only those already in the system have that option. The only choice of extension of stay now is 40k family income.

You should be able to find a way to make that work for you if you already have the 35k all your wife will require is 5k more to meet the requirement. So once you find her a job and she has a record of 3 months tax payments you will be able to apply.

So how/if you get the money here is not that important now. SWIFT transfer is the normal method.

[OneFrog]

Thanks a lot for you prompt reply.

A bit depressing though as I'm now on a 2 months tourist visa + one month extention.

As usual I'm sitting betwenn 2 chairs. too young for this too old for that.

I was wondering if there is a way to deposit the "few missing K to a bank" to componsate the short pension.

It's no problem for me to bring 400 k here to show imigration that we will have enough bths to live on.

Any chances of that happening ?

[Krub]

Thanks a lot for you prompt reply.

A bit depressing though as I'm now on a 2 months tourist visa + one month extention.

As usual I'm sitting betwenn 2 chairs. too young for this too old for that.

I was wondering if there is a way to deposit the "few missing K to a bank" to componsate the short pension.

It's no problem for me to bring 400 k here to show imigration that we will have enough bths to live on.

Any chances of that happening ?

If you can show income from fixed bank deposit or other financial products, the French Embassy should be able to add it up to your 35.000.

The income does not have to be exclusively 'pension'

[lopburi3]

There is no provision for bank offset so either the wife works (at least on paper) or your monthly pension/income will have to be 40k or higher.

Once you obtain the marriage certificate you should be able to obtain a non immigrant O visa to allow a 90 day stay. If you transfer 400k into a Thai bank account believe immigration will still accept that to convert your tourist visa (although it can not be used for further extension of stay and should be with 21 days remaining). But a short trip to a Consulate can be used to obtain the visa if required.

[OneFrog]

Thanks for the all the infos. Some interesting options there; "the wife works (at least on paper)"

Sorry for the late reply but my adsl was down.

Maybe after going again to the ambassy to collect my papers we should have a trip to room 101.

See if there is any "nam jay" flowing over there as I'm not even sure they will be interesting in my pension as I'm still too young for a "classic pension visa"; you gotta be 50 years old.

Actually I was more enclined into putting a 40k or more into an account to get the "married visa" and leave the pension out of the loop or just show it as a plus.

I have some other extra incomes (6k$/month) from freelance SEO (search engine optimization) work on the net...but I'm afraid it will just complicate things if I tell them that.

It's no problem for me to go out again to the Phnom Phen consulate, actually the woman there told me that if we come back with the marriage certificate she will give me a "O" visa. I'm just trying to make sense of it all.

There is an 'visa, mariage, etc" compagny now here in Koh Chang, some friends of mine used it and told me only good thing about them. We will go and see them and see what they can do for us.

I miss my border trips already

Again guys, let me thank you for the help in finding a path through this paper jungle.

Regards

OneFrog

[Lite Beer]

I think you will find that you have to prove a monthly income of 40,000 Baht by obtaining a letter from your embassy. If you cannot make 40,000 your wife can make up the difference by showing her tax papers.

Hopefully Lopbury will come back and confirm this.

[lopburi3]

The money can be his, hers, or both as long as the amount is 40k per month.