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jspill
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Posts posted by jspill
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As I understand it, this doesn't mean you can't turn up and apply in person, the online bookings are separate from the regular queue of people that just turn up.
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It's a bit boring but the safest option is fly to Vientiane, tourist visa there, then come into Thailand via the land border, take one of the private taxi touts after the Laos passport controls, they take you through the car lane of the Thai passport controls, I've been doing that with going on 10 years of tourist visas / exemptions / overstay stamps / ed visas, they don't seem to mind there. The taxi guys have an arrival card and pen in the car ready for you to fill in, and you avoid the main queue. Then directly onto Udon Thani airport to fly domestic to BKK.
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Looks good for digital nomads, thumbs up
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If it was me I'd overstay to 364 days to make the most of it, assuming I didn't need to go back for some reason.
Ban period will be the same (1 year) as long as you don't overstay > 1 year. I'd be more depressed in India, but that's just me.
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My visa history was work permit (TEFL teacher lol), followed by 2 year overstay, followed by Ed visa, followed by 2 year overstay, followed by 2 years of visa exemptions and SETVs, followed by Ed visa, still never been denied or even pulled aside for questioning yet in 9 years, except once to be warned of the new overstay rules and sign the form about that. Then got let in with visa exemption lol.
I think it just comes down to whether the IO is a jobsworth or not. Never choose lines with female IOs. Usually I pick a laid back looking guy who I see isn't sending anyone aside for questioning who looks roughly like me (early 30s farang). If I see that happen I switch queues. Use visa agencies that take you through land borders, Laos border IOs don't seem to give a toss.
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16 hours ago, cornishcarlos said:
What about working out of the country for 6-8 weeks, then back in country for 7-10 days. Repeat on a continuous basis..
Am I living in Thailand ? Am I having several holidays each year in Thailand ?
I'm married to a Thai, who does live in Thailand...
In my mind, visa exempts are a viable option and also not "illegal"
Often quoted is Thailand's definition of 'resident' if you spend more than 180 days in a year here. Resident for tax purposes, but one could use that metric to define 'living here'. http://www.rd.go.th/publish/6045.0.html
So 6 visa exemptions a year, no problem. 180 days without a visa, isn't classed as living here in my mind, and isn't illegal / untoward at all.
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Fly to Vientiane, Laos, and come in via land border with a tourist visa. Extend to 3 months. After that use visa run companies (e.g. thaivisaservice, first hit on Google, that's a reliable one) that take you to Laos and back by vehicle, helping you get a tourist visa, and helping you get through the border - they have a contact that they give 20 passports to to quickly approve while you wait in the van. 3 months again, every time you do that. After doing that a few times consider an Ed visa, and /or changing your passport, it can still help even if they still have access to all your entrances and exits, for it to look fresh on first inspection so they don't dig further.
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1 hour ago, overherebc said:
I have a mental picture of a passport with 12 years worth of stamps missing or did someone sit down in front of a computer and enter the required number of out/in journeys and then add all the stamps and date them?
Or would it be stamped out on the due date 12 years ago and then a new entry 12 years later.
If the later is the case how would that fit as most passports have a max 10 year validity?
To many questions to be answered.
Spain seems to be the only place that issues lifetime passports but only if you are 70 +.
You can renew your passport by mail from Bangkok, while you're on overstay, I've done the same thing. At the UK passport building (Trendy on soi 13) they didn't care what my overstay status was. Then I picked up my new passport, the old one had the corner cut off, and when I finally left the country (after saving tons of money and hassle) I showed them the old one, overstay stamp was put in the new one, and off I went, with the officers all smiles and giggles.
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Visa exempt. Never heard of anyone being denied entry with <90 days stay per year
This is how Thailand shoots itself in the foot, making people overcautious. Can only imagine how many people just decided to spend their cash elsewhere
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1 minute ago, Russell17au said:
Was he "Refused Entry" or was he "Deported"? You can only be "deported" if you actually pass through immigration and enter the country and from what I have read he was "refused entry" and that is the stamp that would be in his passport from Thailand but what the stamp that has been put in his passport in the country he was sent back to would be the biggest worry because if they have put the red "Deported" stamp in his passport then he is going to have all sorts of problems trying to get a visa for any country for a long time, however if they only put a "refused entry" stamp in then he can go and apply for and pay for a visa at an embassy, but with those 2 stamps it can still cause him problems. If he had kept his mouth shut and voluntarily left Thailand and apologised to the IO and flown back to his point of departure then he probably would not have been sent home and he probably would not have any red stamps in his passport which would mean that he could have applied for a visa at the local Thai embassy
Figure of speech, he was denied entry and flown back to where he flown from. Yes technically it isn't called a deportation.
It isn't voluntary either way though. And it had nothing to do with anything he said, he was already going to be flown back. Then, again, what immigration at the next airport did with him (decided to fly him back to his home country) is nothing to do with whatever he said to the Thailand IOs either, as you posted.
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22 minutes ago, Odin Norway said:
As stated many times before.There is no written rules on how many visa exempts you can have a year or how many days pr year in the country.I was also pushing the limits until now with over 100 entries the last 10 years.Yes I was living here and yes that is not what the visa exempts is for.
Yes I got warnings also.But I also took the hint and got a visa before it was to late.Having kids that need you, do that to you.So play it safe and get a propper visa or shup up if you are denied when you push or bend the rules.
I know, he knows too, but there's a much lower risk if you don't do a 24 hour 'in/out'.
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1 hour ago, Russell17au said:
I would say that your biggest mistake was taking the arrogant attitude with the Immigration Officer that you did by demanding to know what law they were refusing your entry on and you were told too many ins and outs when you yourself have admitted you do have too many, but you still wanted to push a point trying to make yourself more superior than the IO. You had been warned about this previously but you chose to ignore the warning and try to enter the country again on this trip with another Visa Exempt. To me that is the action of an arrogant smart ass that does not want to listen to those warnings. You now have Thai immigration off side with you and you deserve it by your own actions. You will eventually learn a lesson that the IO in any country except your home country has the legal right to refuse you entry without having to explain to you the reason. You pushed the issue and now you have a stamp in your passport that you could have avoided simply by taking notice of what the previous IO had warned you about plus what this IO told you, it would have meant that you would have been returned to your previous departure point by the airlines that brought you to Thailand, you could have then applied for a SETV or METV and then returned to Thailand.
No, he was already going to be denied entry before he started asking what the reason for refusal was, it made no difference.
And as he said, he was deported back to his previous departure point.
Then the immigration there decided to deport him back to home country, which is unusual, but nothing to do with anything he said to the IOs in Thailand.
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How long are you spending out of the country on average when you leave? They said 'too many in/outs' and you say indeed you do have a lot. An in/out is flying back within 1-2 days.
You can probably get away with 270 days a year as lkv said, I've done that before too. Just don't push it close to 365
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1 minute ago, Loaded said:
Is it that self defence BS non-imm ED in Chiang Mai run by a military officer?
I'm reliably informed they don't care if you don't attend either
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Just now, darrendsd said:
And that's why there are crackdowns, because people openly admit on a public forum that they are not attending classes
Well done
Nah it's because Africans sell drugs while on Ed visa and that's a profession reserved for the police ^^
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On 5/28/2018 at 4:05 PM, impulse said:
like ED visas for people who never bother with going to classes? They worked like a charm for decades, until one day they didn't.
They still work, I'm on ED visa right now and don't attend, my school is happy about it, gave me a 33% discount in fact. Granted I'm not African, the recent 'crackdowns' pretty much exclusively targeted them.
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I entered recently at DMK with a way worse looking passport, had no issues, I think these 'crackdowns' come and go and lately things have cooled down. I'd say if you take the precautions in post #3, there's very little chance of being denied entry. Maybe 10% chance of being pulled aside for questioning, 5% of being questioned and not let through.
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In the same way lumping together can be a good thing, e.g. 'I really like Asian chicks', I'm doing Cambodians a favour there, putting them in the same bracket as Japanese who are much hotter
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3 hours ago, dotpoom said:What is it with this 20,000 Bt. thing and people's seeming unwillingness and defiance... at almost all costs....not to have it in your pocket in case asked for it.
I mean, I would understand if it was subject to tax payable on it or some such thing. If you are not going to lose any of it by having it in your pocket, why risk not being allowed into a country because you refuse to bring it with you. Maybe they do not have it and will be spending less than 20,000 Bt.on their holiday? I really cannot understand what all the hulla ballu is about.
The OP asks if he can go to an ATM after being refused (if he were refused). So if he can go after...why not go BEFORE and remove all doubt ???
54 minutes ago, bkk6060 said:Because it irritates and aggravates people too much that they have to follow the rules of a country that is not theirs.
Good post....
Because there are no ATMs before passport control, so you have to carry a wad of cash around before even embarking for Thailand, risk losing it en route and on the way to your hotel. Or even longer if you don't have a Thai bank account to deposit it into, or a hotel safe (not that they're always reliable). Until you've spent most of it.
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More like 6 per calendar year, not lifetime. Assuming you stay 30 days each time, so 180 days.
At that point you're in Thailand more often than you're not, so they'd prefer you to be on some more appropriate visa. You become a tax resident too (>183 days).
If you don't stay the whole 30 days of course, you could likely do more than 6, e.g. FIFO workers on 2 week rotations. Or if you extended every exemption to 60 days, you could do 3 per year, same 180 days. Not set in stone, and comes with profiling, the mood of the IO on the day, etc.
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They streamlined the way they do things about a year ago. Laos got even better for visa runners.
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4 hours ago, tassieman said:
Sorry for OP on this one! Hope it works out someway in your favour :) So, to the old hands at this "game", what's the state-of-play? I have just started regular entries and exits to stay with my partner in BKK: plan to leave every 28 days or so by air to Cambodia where I have some work...and always ensure that on return to the LOS I have a booked flight on from Thailand (even if it is back to Phnom Penh). I was hoping these sorts of visa runs (maybe a land crossing etc) could be relatively unproblematic but it sounds as if that's no longer the case? cheers, TM
IMO there's 0% risk if you're only in Thailand 180 days a year, so if you do 3 extended visa exemptions per year, 2 extended single entry tourist visas, or 6 unextended visa exemptions. There's no set limit in law but based on anecdotal reports. Preferrably one of the first two to reduce the number of entries you do.
No set limits on what happens if you push it over 180 days, I'd estimate something like this though:
If it's the first year you've ever been in Thailand, add 10% risk of being pulled aside for questioning for every extra month you're in Thailand on top of 180 days, so about 30% risk if you push it to 9 months, 60% if you're trying to stay close to 365 days, etc. So you stand a good chance of being fine in your first year.
Then for following years, 15% risk per month. So now 60% risk if you push it to 9 months a year in Thailand, 90% if you're trying to stay close to 365 days. So you're starting to get quite a high chance of being questioned from year 2 onwards.
Now, some of the time you're pulled aside for questioning, you do still get let in. Helps if you can show 20k baht, onward ticket out of Thailand, etc., and say you have a Thai girlfriend, that's a good response. Then they say ok well stop doing these visa runs and marry her to stay permanently, you say ok cool and get let in.
Then you apply for a fresh passport and keep doing what you were doing, or go back to making it 180 days per year for a while, to be on the safe side.
The above estimation is if you're white, if you're black / indian I'd double everything and start from 120 days. So OP had about 20% chance of being pulled aside, he'd been in Thailand 120 days in the last 365 (4 previous visa exempts). Quite unlucky to be pulled aside AND denied. Good to hear he was able to get in the next time short after.
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On 18/04/2018 at 2:33 PM, 007 RED said:
because you have not officially been admitted to the Kingdom, the worst thing that will happen is that you will be refused entry and sent back to your home country at your expense.
^ This.
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19 hours ago, darrendsd said:
Ok so you think he won't be punished further?
2 things will happen if he comes out with that line, 1 the I/O will laugh in his face, 2 he will be charged anyway, if he comes out with that rubbish they will try even harder to throw the book at him
Let me ask you this, say you entered on a 60 day Tourist Visa, you overstay by a couple of months and when leaving say to the I/O i'm sorry but I didn't know how long I was given to stay here, can you waive my fine please?
Do you really think he is going to? Really??
Ignorance is no excuse when it comes to the law, this applies to every country in the world, including Thailand
The chances of the OP using that excuse and it working are zero
In your example a crime has already been committed. OP simply attempting to enter hasn't broken the law yet.
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Expelled no questions asked at Don Muang
in Thai Visas, Residency, and Work Permits
Posted · Edited by jspill
Less than 6 months stay in the last year makes him a tourist, OP said he's been here since Oct. He's not classed as a tax resident and there've been many IOs saying as long as you stick to <180 days per year on tourist visas, that's acceptable.
Richard is correct they were being very overzealous in this case. Some people just get unlucky and run into certain staff on a power trip.
There were also many reports of the IOs saying ok we'll allow entry this time but get married to your Thai GF, to rectify the situation. Often they phoned the Thai GF too. That didn't happen in this case, no questions or discussion at all.
I'd wager if he used a land border or flew in to Suvarnbhumi he wouldn't have any issues, he just got unlucky with Don Muang on this particular staff shift. I have a way worse visa history than him, 10 years of exempts, TRs, ed visas, etc.