The following is an account of the good and bad of applying for a retirement visa in Australia or your home country. I posted it on another site and received lots of replies, most good, some bad and some quite abusive comments.. After making many trips to Thailand on a Thai 60 + 30 day Thai Tourist Visa and extending it for the available 30 day to be a now 90 days tourist visa, I decided to go through with this complicated application for a Thai Tourist Visa issued in my own country (Australia). Once I achieved my retirement visa with all its pedantic bit and pieces it did not seem to bad... You do have to have written proof that you have equal to Bht 800,000 in an Australian Bank or Bht 65,000 from a pension fund to show you can support for 12 months in Thailand. Centrelink or bank documents only will be accepted. Â
After reading this you may give up applying for a retirement visa in your home country or you may be happy as I was as I did arrive in Thailand with all my papers in order and will be able to stay up to nearly 2 years with only a brief overseas trip from Thailand, plus the required 90 day reporting. My visa is a multi entry type as I stay up till now 3 month on and 3 month off in Thailand hence the multi entry visa (costs a bit more)...that may change when I'm ready.
Red tape for visa applications from your home country...1st posted in 2017
I have just received my retirement visa from the Thai Embassy in Australia...thank you, I do love Thailand and it's people I will be arriving soon. The cost of this visa this was quite OK .  This was Aus$275 application fee + passport photos.  2...$75 for a doctors certificate showing that I don't have leprosy, TB, elephantiasis, not hooked on drugs and finally I don't have syphilis. I'm happy to say that I am free of all these afflictions (phewww!!). especially the last one!!!  3...$55 for a statement from and signed by West Australian State Police Commissioner (Highest ranking officer) that I have no outstanding criminal matters. 4...A separate form in addition to the applications form with information about my intended arrival in Thailand i.e. arrival date, hotel booking etc.  5...Copy of my information page of my Australian Passport. 6...My Australian passport. 7...A letter from my bank retirement fund that I have the required funds of Bt 800,000 available. All OK.
All of the documents in this application which amount to 6 pages + passport need 2 copies and made into 3 lots of 6 pages and bound together. Now this is where it all gets tricky. It is required that all 3 the copies of all 6 pages are signed by a Justice of the Peace (JP), that is each page all 18 pages ...In Western Australia we have CD's Commissioner of Declarations and JP's.. CDs are voluntry citizens (teachers, police, doctors, politicians etc.etc.) of standing who sign mostly Statutory Declarations (Stat dec.) attesting that you are the person who signed a document(s) this is similar for JPs.  JPs are often involved in more complex legal matters, issuing warrants, affidavit and sometimes sit in judgment in a court if required it's a voluntary position ( no payment is made). It is not the duty of a JP to vouch for any information contained in the documents. A JP's duty is to say that he saw you sign the document. There is no fee for this service from a JP or CD. it is a voluntary position. Advice from Western Australia State Atorney General (Top law officer) is not to engage JPs in frivolous matters when requesting witnessing of legal documents as they offer there services free of charge. The Thai retirement visa application requires all documents including copies to be signed by a JP. That is clearly frivolous.
It is not the duty in Australia of a JP to sign each page of 18 pages of any application for anything. Some documents may 500 pages. In my case as I new the JP personally he reluctantly signed all the documents. He reminded me that his duty was only to witness that I am the person signing and that the information in the document I have shown him is true and that he saw you/me sign that declaration, you can go to jail if you make a false declaration (the information in the document the JP likely knows nothing about, not his job to know).  This would/could make my application for a Thai retirement visa 36 pages (18 pages of application and 18 pages of stat dec's) The JP reminded that my request was far above what his voluntary service is for. He suggested that Thailand's request that he sign a document from West Australia highest ranking police officer and a medical certificate from a doctors that they were telling the truth was in his opinion an "abuse of request." If requests like this were replicated in Australia or any western country where every page of a legal document had to be signed by a JP the legal system in those countries would simply collapse..
I am very happy to have received my visa and I thank the Thai people for having me perhaps for a long time. (maybe not after reading this?)
Thailand needs to do something about the un-required red tape in visa applications, they are just frivolous
