disagree

Oh very interesting point IMA_FARANG. So it would be beneficial to be on a multiple-entry visa in case you want to leave the country and re-enter within, let's say, a 1 year Thai language course?

If you're just here on a visa on arrival which has been converted to an ED VISA, does that mean you can't leave the country for a year ( or 3 months or whatever period )?

The truth is this... The approval letter for the visa, given to you by the MOE will be addressed to someone. For Thai language courses it will be addressed to a Thai Embassy, for permanent study at a university (eg. Chula or Mahidol) it will be addressed to Thai immigration.

When I went to immigration at Chaeng Watthana I was accompanied by a very pretty Thai lady and we were met by a very not so pretty Thai male immigration officer. He explained the address problem to us and said that he had never processed a new non-ed visa for a farang wanting to learn Thai, he had only processed the extensions. After pleading with him (the Thai lady doing most of the pleading) in the most seductive voice possible, we were still turned away. He said "sorry, the letter or visa approval is not even addressed to the immigration office so I cannot help you." He was actually almost laughing a little bit, like a sympathy laugh.

So dude, if you're gonna insist on this switch in Bangkok, good luck, but I believe that your mate is no where near as charming as you think and that your fate is determined before the immigration visit. The letter of approval that the MOE gives you is key. Perhaps speak to the ladies in that office.

The charm part was not related to the information received, but rather to the genuinity and that bribing was not any part in the conversation. Hence I will have to disagree with you on this part, as he was extremely well received by everyone(!) we encountered, so the immigration workers were very forth-coming and happy to help.

My job was to keep my mouth shut, his job was to chit chat about all kind of stuff with the workers from topics such as the taste of the smoothie they drank until their long commuting hours from their homes in Sathorn - and it worked flawlessly. But I am not here to promote my friend; I'm rather here to find out what it takes to not do a visa run when attempting the ED switch.

So I can agree on the letter part, and thank you for sharing that information with us - as this seems to be a key puzzle element. I assume that if this letter would be addressed to the appropriate authority ( the immigration office, as opposed to 'any thai embassy' ), that would help with obtaining the visa without a run. Now the question would be if that is part of the documents that the Thai Language schools send out to the Ministry of Education, or if it's the MoE who decide that themselves.

Very interesting. An article from 21st August 2009 confirms that this is not hogwash. It highlights the difficulty of course and must be taken with a grain of salt due to the advertisement of the legal firm itself:

Visa status conversion can be a somewhat difficult process within the Kingdom. There is always the option of going abroad, obtaining a new visa, and reentering under a different immigration classification, but for those who do not wish to leave the country, this option may be unacceptable. When changing categories in the Kingdom, the general rule is that the applicant for change of status must have at least 21 days of validity left on their current Thai immigration stamp.

Changing status from one category to another can be more difficult depending upon the original category. Generally, the Royal Thai Immigration Police do not prefer to change an applicant’s status from visa exemption to a proper category. In these situations, they prefer that the applicant depart the country, obtain a proper visa, and return for a Thai visa extension at a later date. That being said, conversion from an exemption to a visa category can be achieved, but conversion is done at the discretion of the Royal Thai immigration officer.

From http://integrity-leg...om-of-thailand/

As mentioned before, an ED visa can not be issued inside Thailand and the initial ED visa has to obtained at an Thai embassy / Consulate.

Only extensions can be done inside Thailand.

I think that the immigration officers where fishing for some extra cash in your case.

...

As mentioned before, an ED visa can not be issued inside Thailand and the initial ED visa has to obtained at an Thai embassy / Consulate.

I understand that this was the general consensus until now preached by Thai Schools based to the unknowing and ill-informed. Based on the feedback so far this seems to have been proven now to be incorrect!

No bribes were even hinted at. It was a strictly informal conversation with all the immigration workers who were handling cases at the time in the J2 apartment. Actually the ladies acted very professional to my colleague who is half-native Thai and a very charming speaker who has my absolutely full trust.

In case of bribes we would have rather expected them to happen during the overstay negotiations, as we know of cases where 20k were reduced to 10k + "tip" just by being witty and getting an officer in a good mood. So I fully trust the discussion as it was not the sleezy type, and also based on the feedback from other members and individuals I have independently spoken to.

Regarding the overstay, This is taken very serious by the Thai Police.

If you go to the airport without problems you should be fine in most cases as you pay the fine and you are on your way.

But if the police stop you during the overstay period and they are checking your status you WILL be arrested and deported.

I saw this many times happening and helped personally some of them with getting them flight tickets back home so they could be released from jail and put on the plane.

I have once already written a post about it. That it's taken seriously by police is no doubt if there are reasons for such a check, e.g. misconduct, bad attitude towards authorities, lack of money, illegal actions, unwanted ethnicity or corrupt officials. This seems to be true with all cases that I've read so far about.

I usually tend to be well dressed and courteous to the authorities around me and had no problems at all so far; police officers who I came in contact with were very courteous, even though they were checking the cab for drugs.

There is a chance of it happening, but it's not as serious as generally assumed from my experience and also from people I've met in similar situations. The case that you mention sterns from lack of funds.

Let me make it clear, it's not an optimal solution by far, but it's not as dangerous as pointed out if you know what you're doing! I fixed my current overstay in the immigration bureau, not at the airport. Had a good Thai speaker with me, who it seems I wouldn't have even needed. It was a strictly professional exchange of money without any further repercussions.

Just like some people on this board

Yes you can and always could. I had 1 for 2 years, not only i did not have to leave the country to get one, but did not have to report every 90 days either.

the no reporting option was 5000 baht (extra)difference in price.

Thank you for your comment. This further confirms that it's not necessary to get out of the country to convert a tourist visa to an education visa.

I just came back from a meeting where what I heard yesterday was confirmed to me by another individual who also didn't have to leave the country to get his. No getting out of the country necessary in that case as well.

Are Thai language schools maybe using the Thai ED visa runs to promote/commission from their visa run sister companies on an unnecessary visa run?

Conversion of entry visa would only be done in the extension of stay process.

Aha, so you could convert your Visa on Arrival visa after 30 days have passed at the Immigration Office to a Student ED? So are there official conditions for this? Is it at the liberty of the immigration office worker?

A visa is not issued by immigration as just a visa.

I don't quite understand this sentence. May you please elaborate further?

I suspect the ladies were using that ingrained Thai trait of putting on the impression they knew what they were talking about when in fact they did not.

You can not get an ED visa issued inside Thailand. It is not a case of simply changing the extension as they were leading you to believe, it is the issuing of a completely new non-im ED visa, and that can not be done inside Thailand. You can not extend a tourist visa for one year, or even 90 days, and you can not change it to a different class of visa to extend it inside Thailand no matter who, and how much you bribe. They did not provide your friend accurate information in this case.

koolbreez, thank you for your reply. I will have to take your word against the words of 3 immigration officials who are handling these cases on a daily basis. Also if I may note your statement contradicts lopburi3's statement further above.

The only time when they were debating something was regarding to how the situation is with a current visa on overstay where the unison was that it's not possible. They didn't need to impress us, as we were on our way out already ( had all papers), as the situation didn't apply to me anyway and I trust that my friend is quite fluent in filtering bs in Thailand as it's part of his job.

That's why I decided to post about it here, so this could be investigated further. Seeing as there is a general consensus that it's not possible ( this counts/counted also for me ) and official information found online is quite outdated.

Maybe it's something that doesn't apply to the visa-on-arrival, as it's not a real visa?

Conversion is not normally done except for full time university type study and most people are talking about part time language study. It may also make a difference what immigration office you are talking about.

My friend was specifically asking for Thai ED visa to learn Thai Language - it was also written down like that in my extension request. Is there a difference between Thai ED Visa? What are the conditions for the 'conversion' and who's the decision maker on that?

Immigration office was main office in Chaeng Watthana.

If you are stopped on overstay by normal police you will likely go to jail/court/fined and be deported.

From personal experience : I was stopped 2 times @ drug control. Nothing happened as I had other identification documents than passport with me - driver's license/personal ID.

Also my friend specifically asked about the effects of overstay as in if it stays on file, and what conditions there are to become imprisoned; Overstay does not stay on file ( no such thing as airport black lists ) and as she so eloquently put it : "prison doesn't benefit anyone - it's the money that is important".

This also is the general consensus in deportation/imprisonment stories I've read so far ( since I've been very interested in this topic before flying out with 360+ days of overstay ) - either lack of funds, or criminal activity/getting in trouble with authorities/not bribing when it was expected.

There is a reason that the stay here is so limited, that immigration workers have the nicest gold rings and live in the best parts of town, and that there is a sole desk with 2 workers at the airport just specifically to pay the overstay fine - it's goood money.

I was yesterday at the Immigration Office to prolong my 60-day tourist visa with 30 additional days. Since I came a week later, it was quite expensive... :-) But since the overstay was paid off ( 500 THB per day ), the 30 days counted from yesterday. ( My own stupidity, and I expected it to be only 4-5 days, since my calculation was very vaguely based on months and not exact days and me forgetting to count the arrival date into it :-) But as I said, my own stupidity )

Anyhow;

Brought a friend of mine with me, who speaks Thai very well and who has a great ability to get the ladies behind the desks talking, to help me with cost reduction and risks of overstay. About overstay the ladies said that money talks; if you have the cash, there's no risk with it. So unless you don't run into an immigration bust in some drug area, or run out of cash - it should be all fine. ( My last overstay was 368 days, paid 20k THB at the airport, no problems whatsoever - just some smirking officers :-) )

But the more interesting part for me was what they said about the ED Visa - since I'm planning on getting an ED Visa in the future, my friend was asking a few questions about it, and was actually notified that it's not necessary to leave the country to move from a ( in my case ) 60 day tourist visa to an ED visa. Which was quite surprising as all information on the learning school websites indicates otherwise.

( However in my specific case it was not possible, since I violated the visa with the overstay - had I not done that, they said they could change it without me leaving the country. )

This was just a 'by the way' question while we were already leaving. I was surprised to hear that, and we had 3 of the immigration ladies at J2 talk about it and all agreed about this statement.

So am I missing something here, or why do all school websites write about having to leave the country? Maybe it was changed recently? Anyway, something worth looking into to save yourselves a visa run!

The whole process except the 'drive somewhere in BKK and not meet anyone while the lawyers act as if they're working' thing - is what would happen if you went on your own. Had 380+ days overstay. Just booked a flight, went through immigration, went to the desk ( remember? the desk is for the SOLE purpose of overstay passengers. The reason it's there is because so many people do it... ), paid the fine, didn't even discuss one word with them, and was in the flyer 10 minutes later.

For re-entry I got a 60 day ( +30 days possible from Thailand ) Visa from the Consulate. Just in case, and just to not overstay again - as I was not overstaying on purpose the first time, it... simply escalated

That's why the scum of the earth actually hides here.

Overstayed in TH for over a year. Successfully talked myself through police checks by... not talking about it and just showing some regular ID/drivers license ( no expiration ) and not the passport. If they'd asked, passport is @ hotel. Were drug checks anyway

If you don't get into trouble - that is accidents, illegal wrong-doings, misbehaving, and don't mingle with authorities ( by acting neutral, non-caring and non-hostile/non-evasive etc. ) you can stay in TH for a looong time.

Not sure why you care so much about his passport renewal.

Let him disappear himself w/o visa-runs nor valid passports if he can survive in Thailand under some other name. There's enough places that will rent out an apartment without valid papers if the money is there on time.

The only thing he will have to ever worry about is running into police controls ( don't have ID on me, some fake paper or some money changing owners ) and not running out of money.