Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are posing the question "is the O Retirement Visa more popular than the O-A?" The reason I was thinking about this, I read a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Pattaya Grapevine: Casinos a Cash Cow. There is a lot of information in this article, a lot of diverse information in this article, kind of a roundup, so those who are interested might want to check that out. I am just going to quote a small excerpt here under Converting Visas, quote: "The O-A Retirement Visa issued by Embassies abroad is unpopular because of the stiff insurance requirements which also apply at renewal or extension stage. The most popular alternative route is Visa Exempt followed by conversion at Immigration to Non-O". 

As we have discussed, it is not a foregone conclusion. Conversion to Non-O Retirement status is not a foregone conclusion. I should have said this in the other video I did directly on this, but one of the big factors in that is nationality. We have seen folks of differing nationalities find it possible to convert into Non-O Retirement status here in Thailand. Again it is just going to be dependent on the circumstances in the underlying case. In any event, the purpose of this video, is the Non-O more popular? Yeah, I would probably say across the board it generally is. It is probably not the most popular being sought out abroad because it is just not issued abroad with any kind of frequency. In fact prior to COVID it wasn't issued at all and I think it is going to revert to that as practical matter in the future. 

The point of this video, yeah the O Retirement Visa is in a way more popular. I mean when you have one Visa that requires an expense in terms of insurance and another that does not, yeah that other one that does not is probably going to prove more popular on the market. I mean at the end of the day for the average expat here that is retired, it is basically the analysis of, "Look I want the Retirement Visa. One of them requires me to pay for insurance and therefore is more expensive; one of them does not. I am going to pick the one that is cheaper!" It is just sort of market forces." So something to look at. 

However, and I can't stress this enough, again moving forward especially folks that are looking to come here in coming months; 3 months, 4 months, 5 months, 6 months out, it is not in my opinion a foregone conclusion that conversion is going to be A) easy or B) even possible. I am not saying it is going to be impossible, I am just saying I don't know and there are enough factors at play here that lead me to believe it is possible that we could see it become very difficult to do conversions in the relatively near future. So something to keep in mind for those who are looking to come out here at a little bit later date and for those who are looking in kind of that direction, it may not be a terrible idea to contact a legal professional before making any travel arrangements and gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.