donnacha

2 hours ago, Dipterocarp said:

... I still could not see any practical way (for me ) to apply for Tourist visas to Thailand without applying for a second US passport and doing it by mail. With the crackdown on visa exempts,  I ended up going for the elite program to tide me over until I make it to 50. 

 

 

What, you're American, you have a US passport? Are you saying that US citizens can only apply for an SETV from their home country? I don't mean to contradict you, as I am not a US citizen, but I'm pretty sure that most of the American digital nomads I meet up here in Chiang Mai are hopping in and out of the country on a combination of SETVs and visa waivers.

There is nothing wrong with the Elite visa, apart from being expensive, but it probably does work out cheaper if what you want to do is stay in Thailand and not have to travel out every 90 days. You mentioned, however, that you have "constant international travel" anyway, so, I don't understand why the Elite visa would even be necessary, that sounds as if you could get by entirely on visa waivers and the occasional extension.

No Thai immigration officer is going to care how many times you enter Thailand if you have a constant pattern of legitimate trips (not obvious visa-runs) elsewhere, that represents the category of visitor they want. Problems arise when someone stays for exactly 59 days on a visa waiver + extension, goes to Laos or Cambodia, stays there one or two nights and comes straight back to Thailand on another visa waiver. If you keep doing that, you are clearly living in Thailand and only leaving on visa runs, they presume you have an illegal job.

If, on the other hand, you frequently fly out of Thailand sooner than required, and you spend varying amounts of time in those places, that tells them you are not holding down an illegal job. In your position, with "constant international travel", I would just keep doing visa waivers until an IO actually tells me it is becoming a problem, and only then would I think about applying for the Elite. Hell, as a wealthy American citizen in your forties, they're not going to say boo to you.

Just as a side-note on the Elite, they would make a lot more money if they sold a one-year version for 100,000 Baht. The main reason I hear why people decided not to buy it is not that it is too expensive but that paying for 5 years in advance is too much of a commitment, especially when we have no idea what will happen in Thailand's turbulent politics over the next few years, not to mention our own projects and relationships.

Sorry, misunderstood which situation ubonjoe was referring to, please delete this post.

3 hours ago, Dipterocarp said:

 I don't work/ live near a country having a Thai consul/embassy that will issue me a visa

due to residence requirements. Can't mail a passport anywhere due to constant international travel.

Getting a Tourist visa is impractical.

 

Also the retired and idle rich, who can't get a tourist visa as they cannot provide an employment certificate  Then there are the stories of those who arrive with a valid tourist visa to Thailand and are refused entry due to "coming too many times". 

The citizens of some very poor countries, such as India or Nigeria, are required to apply for Thai visas from their home countries but that does not affect the majority of travelers, especially from the West. The OP is a US citizen, so, we're covering the options available to him and most other users of this forum.

I'm not sure what you mean about employment certificates. We're talking about 60-day tourist visas, you just fill in a form, attach a photo and hand them your passport along with $40, you get it back with the visa later that day or the next day, no need for anything else. I have done this in embassies and consulates throughout Europe and Asia, always fast and easy. If you get asked for ridiculous documentation, that is the staff's indirect way of saying "We don't like the look of you, so, we're just going to make it impossible rather than actually say No". 

If you have a valid tourist visa but get stopped by immigration due to "coming too many times", the real reason is that they have taken a severe dislike to you for some other reason. If you have too many entries into Thailand, the embassy or consulate would have already rejected your visa application.

Immigration have the right to refuse entry people with visas, but they only do it in exceptional circumstances, it creates far more paperwork and possible repercussions than refusing someone depending on the visa waiver.

Instead of wasting $60 and a day of your vacation on getting an extension after 30 days, why not simply spend $40 on a 60-day tourist visa before you leave, so that the onward travel requirements simply won’t apply to you?

Yes, thanks Mario, I guess I could not have expected them to not at least note it, I was lucky to avoid the fine.

Now I just hope you were right, in your earlier post, that it will not stop me getting a visa tomorrow

So, what happened at Chiang Mai Airport was that the immigration officer noticed my one-day overstay. I waved the Suvarnabhumi-branded post-it note that the phone number for the police their had been scribbled on and said something along the lines of "the immigration police at Bangkok said that one day is okay".

I have no idea if she understood what I was saying but she took went over to another desk, did something there, then came back and spent a minute or two on her computer, then stamped my passport, scribbled something and took my photo. Friendly throughout and did not fine me, but I can see that the departure stamp is different from the one I got last year, the text includes the number 30, so, I presume it is about my overstay. I have attached a photo.

Fingers crossed that it won't bother the embassy staff in KL when I apply for my tourist visa tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who responded, I am very grateful, the broad spread of opinions has genuinely useful in deciding how to play this.

I notice that a very good wind-up, by a member named realenglish1, appears to have been deleted. I received an email notification of it and, as wind-ups go, it hit the jackpot, really had me worried, and I came here to tip my hat to the guy and acknowledge a superbly executed joke.

That it has been erased is a pity, others might have enjoyed the post but, on the other hand, thanks to the mods here for allowing me to ask my question, it has made me feel a lot better about my chances on Wednesday

They count the day you arrive because you are in the country on that date.

It is the same as checking into a hotel you are charged for the day you arrive.

Yes, they start from 1 rather than zero, which I think is a bit different from hotels, where the day you are charged for finishes the following day. Under their system, you would get charged one unit for arriving in the hotel and a second unit for staying until the following day.

I did some searching and discovered that this numbering system was commonly used for working out the ages of children in East Asia (Japan, Korea and China) before the adoption of the now standard international counting system.

As this Wikipedia article explains, starting at one rather than zero means that a newborn babe is 1, what we would consider a one-year-old is considered to be two, etc: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning

Thanks Mario2008, ubonjoe and mahjonguy.

I did consider the 1,900 extension, but am on a tight budget and it seems a lot to pay unless the overstay will definitely be a problem. I also picked up on the suggestion, in some posts, that the number of extensions you have marked in your passport, can, itself, be a viewed dimly in future visa applications.

Athough having overstay marks does not usually prevent people getting visas, does anyone think that applying for a visa the very next day might be harder for them to swallow?

I agree that many forms of marketing can be numerically deceptive but at least you know that paying for 7 nights in a hotel means x + 7 i.e. you can arrive on Tuesday the 3rd and check-out on Wednesday the 10th. I have never come across this odd Thai form of arithimetic being applied to something as important as actual international travel and visa arrangements, it seems almost willfully awkward, even dishonest if they are indeed collecting fines on that basis.

There seem to be a lot of conflicting thoughts on this, and rapidly shifting policies. I would appreciate any advice based on the latest developments.

I entered Thailand on the 30-day visa-exemption and had booked a flight to exit on day 30. I did not realise that, here, they count the days differently, so you actually get 29 days.

When I spotted that the date stamped in my passport was the day before my flight out, I actually sought out the main Immigration Police office in the Suvarnabhumi to query it and was shown the rule book from which the stamps are set, rather than using standard addition. I was assured, however, that an overstay of one day would not matter.

Reading here, I have seen some posts confirm that one-day overstays are simply waved through without a fine but others describe being fined 500 (and, in one case, 1000) and having a note made in their passport.

My concern is that such a note in my passport will bugger up my re-entry plans. I am flying direct from Chiang Mai to Kuala Lumpur with the intention of applying for a 60-day tourist visa and returning to Thailand 3 days later.

Is it in likely that, in Chiang Mai airport, I will get my passport marked for a one-day overstay?

And, if so, is that likely to provoke a rejection of my visa application by the embassy staff in KL?

I saw the announcement of a crackdown on overstays, they seemed to be talking about 90-day overstays etc ... but ... could those vibrations from the top cause embassy staff to now become more hawkish than usual, even in the case of one-day overstays?