Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Thai O-A Retirement Visa, so let me be clear we are talking about the O-A here not the O Visa - sometimes referred to only as an extension - and then there are those out in the ether of the internet that say "visas aren't the same as extensions.” They are all visas, they are all visas.  A Visa is a word like passport; it is a thing in and of itself, a Visa. Now that said, there are different parameters with different types of Retirement Visa. The O for example, the O Retirement Visa Extension has certain parameters as does the O-A Retirement Visa.

For those who are unaware, the O-A Retirement Visa is issued at Embassies and Consulates abroad. It can be extended here in Thailand but in order to create one if you will, it has to be created at an Embassy abroad before coming to Thailand. So there is a difference between the O and the O-A on many fundamental levels. Now that said, I did a recent video, actually we put up a recent short which was discussing re-entry permits in the context of Retirement Visas and in that I was talking about O Retirement Visa extensions and Re-entry Permits associated therewith. O-A Visas are multi-entry visas that are issued from abroad generally with a one-year validity and the person using that Visa can come and go - and hold on just a second - there was a comment on that Short, quoting directly: "So with O-A Retirement Visa you can come and go as you like without any Re-entry Permit right?" Okay, strictly speaking that is not exactly the case and I will get into why, but it's also true. Those O-A Visas again they have a validity stated on the face of the Visa if you will. I know they are no longer really issuing visas stickers like the way that they were, now it's all digital and they just issue like a printout, but the O-A, the way I look at it in my mind, is the sticker era, the O-A had a sticker validity of a year and you could come and go on it. Now they changed a really fundamental rule associated with coming and going a couple of years back when they made insurance mandatory for the O-A. Basically what they said is on the O-A, if you want to come and go they check the validity of your insurance; they are actually doing it at Thai Immigration. It's one of the reasons a lot of people opt for the O Retirement Visa because it takes out lot of the hassles associated with proving up insurance coverage. Part of that insurance coverage is they basically said they made a policy that we are only going to let you use the O-A, come in and out as much as you want, and we are only going to give the validity up to the expiration of the insurance. So again yes you can come and go as much as you want on the O-A, provided your insurance isn't expiring, even within the duration of the nominal expiration date of the Visa itself. I'm sorry, not to get too complex here but basically even though the Visa says you can use it for the course of a year, if your insurance runs out during that year and Immigration sees that they may not let you back into the country under O-A status until you rectify your insurance. So again, this is one of the reasons again why the O-A can be more complex and a little bit more of a hassle for lack of a better term for many folks here in Thailand and that's why a lot opt to just go with the O Retirement Visa because again, with that category insurance is not a requirement. 

Now with an O Retirement Extension, you do need to get Re-entry Permits in order to preserve it if you want to leave, but the issue of insurance expiration doesn't come up in the O context because insurance isn't a requirement to begin with.