Approved - Sydney, Australia (Royal Thai Consulate General), soft power route.

Applied 7 Feb, approved 19 Feb.

Hi all, just wanted to share my experience and say thanks for all the tips in this group which assisted me when it came time to apply for my DTV.

I applied for the DTV in Sydney, with documentation from Discover Thai Nature. I knew at least one person had been approved in Sydney with these seminars, but I had been a bit anxious as I’d seen several people had been rejected with them in Cambodia and HCMC in recent weeks.

For my application I included:

- Recent passport photo and biodata page of passport

- Proof of current location: a recent phone bill and energy bill with my current address

- Financial evidence: I have two Australian bank accounts which each have more than the required 500,000 Baht. I attached six months of bank statements and proof of current balance reports dated the day of my application (felt like overkill as this came to 45 pages, but wanted to ensure they had everything on hand and didn’t need to request further proof. I merged the PDFs together and also attached a cover letter outlining my financial position)

- Proof of activity: I attached the registration and enrollment confirmation documents provided by Discover Thai Nature (which were emailed to me within minutes of booking with them).

I attached a cover letter to the beginning of those documents outlining my intention to attend the Discover Thai Nature seminars, why the seminars are of interest to me (they genuinely are, and I intend to attend in person as much as possible), why I am eager to spend time in Thailand (I’ve travelled there several times over 20 years so was able to specify what I love about the country), said I would not be seeking any form of local employment during my time there, and that I’m committed to adhering to local laws and cultural expectations.

There was no requirement to upload flight or accommodation bookings, but there is a section where they ask you to provide a flight number and address of your accommodation (I have these so provided the details).

For each section I merged PDF files and wasn’t required to compress them/reduce the size (which was somewhat surprising considering the length of my financial documents 😂).

Thanks again for the support of this group, I think the tip to include a cover letter is a good one and helps you to explain/give context to the documents provided, and enables you to personalise the application re: why you want to spend time in Thailand and why the activity in question is of interest.

Wishing everyone else all the best with your applications! If you’re applying in Sydney and have any questions, feel free to reach out.

I should also mention that I emailed the consulate a couple of months ago to ask if Thai language courses would qualify for soft power. The Sydney Consulate said they do.

I initially intended to go down that route and was in touch with a language course provider who was very helpful, but the course spanned over 7.5 months and I’m unsure if I will stay longer than six months this year. So I may do one of their (shorter) private tuition courses instead while I’m there.