Re: [102attendees] [103attendees] Visa problems - need a different invitation letter

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

> Il 6 settembre 2018 alle 12.48 Tobias Fiebig <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
> 
> 
> Hello Toerless,
> The consulate, actually. I called them yesterday and they were like "Type-B!". Then, after some research, I wrote a mail asking them again (citing businesseventsthailand and the Helsinki embassy) which lead to a rather shroff response of "we already told you that you need a type b".

You may now have the additional problem that they cannot back up from their initial statement without losing their face on how well they are doing their job, which is a serious problem in cultures that are not as direct as central-northern European ones. Maybe you did it and it did not work, but perhaps it could have worked better if you had formulated the initial question in a way that suggested the answer you were expecting, mentioning since the beginning that other reputable sources had told you so (so that, to give you a different answer, they would have needed to openly refute those sources and create undesirable conflict), and including a polite acknowledgement of the help you needed from them. 

This said, often in these situations a third party intervention by a local can go a long way - the local will know how to best approach them to ask for some kind understanding of the situation, and will also figure out how to give them an acceptable reason to say, without losing their face, that things now have changed and so they can give you the answer you need. It will even be easier if the local has some kind of authority and official status, as it will allow them to offload their responsibilities if someone later complained that they should not have given you the answer you want.

In practice: at the point you are, I don't think they will ever tell you that a tourist visa is ok, but IMHO some kind of intervention by the Thai organizers, offering to support them in dealing with your case but also politely reminding them that this is an important international conference and there are national authorities that would like to see it go well, could get them to substantially reduce the amount of pickiness in accepting whatever documents you can realistically give them. Though of course I would trust the judgement of any Thai person on this matter much more then I trust mine :-)

Regards,
-- 

Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
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