Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, or puts out there, is the Thai Retirement Visa system “scary”? Well the reason I thought of making this video is I was reading a recent comment on one of our prior videos on our channel and quoting directly: "Thailand Visa situation seems scary. I retired 10 years ago and moved to Vietnam. New visa rules here will force me to move out. Looking at Thailand, it sounds a bit wishy-washy." Yeah it's not so much. I know it sort of seems, well it is quite nuanced but long story short, the Thai Retirement Visa system has been in place for decades and it is not going anywhere. I do understand that folks are kind of in a much more tenuous situation in Vietnam because Vietnam doesn't have a Retirement Visa, Thailand very much does. In fact they have multiple iterations of the Retirement Visa not least of which are the standard Thai O Retirement Visa, the Thai O-A Retirement Visa which can be sought abroad. Then there is also Retirement like visas where you are talking about the so-called Long-Term Residence Visa which as we have discussed in many other videos isn't really a Residence Visa, it is not really all that long-term either. Meanwhile there is also the possibility of utilizing what is called the Thailand Elite Visa which some retirees opt to go ahead and use that. Most folks that we deal with prefer, actually greatly prefer, dealing with the standard Thai O Retirement Visa for a number of different reasons and I can see why, it's kind of the most straightforward. 

That said, no I don't think the Thai Retirement Visa system is particularly wishy-washy. In fact it is pretty straightforward. Yes, they have made some changes to some of the requirements pertaining to some of the Visa categories in the past few years, but I definitely think it's an improvement over Vietnam because Vietnam doesn't even have a Retirement Visa to begin with.