BritTim

I can appreciate your concern. The only reassurance I can give you is that these kinds of cases are not uncommon, and usually just mean the agent is busy/disorganised, and there is an administrative hiccup which usually resolves itself with nothing worse that a few white hairs. You must, of course, keep trying to contact them, by phone if possible, but there is no reason to panic just yet. I appreciate that the school does not contact you, but maybe you can contact them, and they will be able to tell you the status.

I assume you mean the 60-day permission to stay you received on entry, not the original visa's expiry date. As long as you have not spent a long period recently in Thailand as a tourist (like over four months or so out of the last six) you will, as you hope, be able to fly out of Thailand and back for a 45-day visa exempt entry. It can be risky if you meet the wrong official who decides you are "abusing" the visa exemption process. Denied entry can happen then, but is not that common. You have the option of extending your permission to stay by 30 days at immigration which would be more convenient if you only need another month, and have no great desire to visit another country.

It was officially approved by the cabinet yesterday. It was almost certain to happen before, now it is 100% certain.

For instance, enter visa exempt by air (45 days). Extend by 30 days. Do a border bounce by land for another visa exemption (45 days) and extend by 30 days. Finally, do another border bounce for a third visa exempt entry (30 or 45 days, depending on whether the third entry is before the end of March 2023, and whether the increase in days for a visa exempt entry is extended). This will give you at least 180 days, with options to extend further a bit if desired.

There is a higher chance that it will be unnecessary. No guarantees. I actually have the experience of signing an indemnity form when flying Cathay Pacific (with no onward/return flight booked) about 6-7 years ago. That does not necessarily mean you would be allowed to do this now. How risk averse are you?

No guarantees but, if you have been out of Thailand since March and are entering in November, there is no reason Immigration should treat you with suspicion. A single visa exempt entry (45 days) should be no problem, and the 30-day extension automatic.

It is worth understanding the main reason why the airline is concerned about you travelling without an onward ticket within 30/45 days. If you are denied entry, the airline become responsible for removing you from Thailand (typically, to your embarkation point) and possibly being obliged to shoulder the cost of doing so. If you hold a return flight ticket with the airline you are using (which the check in staff can see through their computer) this is often enough to satisfy them, even though the ticket is dated past the 45-day limit. They know they will always be able to grab that ticket to reimburse them for the costs of your repatriation if necessary. As Jack implied, if check in is still reluctant to check you in, the airline supervisor may be willing to allow you to sign an indemnification form, committing you legally to reimburse them for any costs they may incur as a result of you being denied entry to Thailand. Most airlines will do this on occasion. It mainly depends on whether the airline supervisor likes the look of you (do you look prosperous, able to pay up if they need to get reimbursement?) and whether you are a traveller they do not want to upset (for instance, a frequent traveller on the airline).

These days, you must use the e-visa system to apply for visas in the UK. I suggest you familiarise yourself with https://www.thaievisa.go.th/ and then return here to ask any questions you may have.

You can take a bus from Kuala Lumpur to Hat Yai (Thailand) and fly from there to anywhere in Thailand. Vientiane to Udon and flying from there is easier in isolation, but it is difficult to find good connections to fly direct to Vientiane, and (when you do find suitable flights) you will probably find them expensive. In the end, I would suggest you check out both options, and decide accordingly based on cost and convenience.

Officially, yes. However, if the money has been continuously in your account for many months, most immigration offices will waive the requirement for proof that the money is from overseas. Do you know if your bank account is still officially active? If not, and it must be resurrected, this may be tricky after a visa exempt entry.

Rather than flying to Thailand, fly to somewhere like Kuala Lumpur, and enter Thailand by land. Obviously, this involves a cost penalty, but you ask how to eliminate risk. This is the best way to do it.

Your plan (assuming a border bounce by land, avoiding Poipet/Aranyaprathet) should be perfectly fine.

It became way worse than just requiring the overnight stay. They progressed to giving you a denied entry stamp when you tried to re-enter Thailand, and informing you that you needed to fly to Thailand to re-enter (at which point, their friends at Don Muang/Savanakhet were liable to further hassle you). None of the visa run companies have used Aran for a long time which is telling. I cannot confirm that it is still a rogue crossing, but I would personally avoid it like the plague.

Your plan is feasible in principle (with slight date adjustments). Stay away from the land border at Poipet/Aranyaprathet, coming from Cambodia.

Tourist visas are available in Savannakhet.

Staying indefinitely on tourist visas has become hard. If you want to try, I would suggest getting the first in Phnom Penh, Kuala Lumpur or Penang where they are liable to reject based on tourist visas from other consulates. After that, you can probably get two in Vientiane, then one in Savannakhet, then a couple in Saigon or Hanoi (but re-entering by land from there is a real pain, though you should be OK flying to Chiang Mai). When Myanmar reopens, the best consulate of all is probably Yangon. You can fly there (with a Myanmar visa) and return by land at Maesot. As I mentioned before, when your plans unravel, you use your two visa exempt entries by land as your emergency fall back.

Immigration can see information about upcoming flight arrivals through the Advance Passenger Information System, but they do not have access to the flight booking systems owned by the airlines.

You can leave Thailand by land. The issue is returning for a visa exempt entry as (I assume) you already have two visa exemptions by land in 2022. My suggestion would be to travel overland Chiang Mai->Udon Thani->Nong Khai->Vientiane, planning to get a tourist visa in Vientiane. With a visa, there is no problem re-entering Thailand by land. Note that you need an appointment to apply for a tourist visa in Vientiane, and must plan to stay overnight in Vientiane.

Making it easy for tourists to stay longer is based on the fact that tourist numbers are way below where the authorities want them to be. If tourist numbers recover to anything close to 2019 levels, visa exempt entry will quickly revert to 30 days. I personally doubt a huge increase in numbers by March, so you are probably correct that the 45-day visa exemption will survive past the first six months. I do not think it will be permanent.

That depends on the airline staff when checking in for your flight to Thailand. My impression is that a return flight on the same airline (even far in the future) will often satisfy them because they know they can grab that ticket to return you if you are denied entry and must be returned to your embarkation point. An onward flight on another airline is less attractive. There is no hard and fast answer.

That statement about a further 45-day extension at Phuket immigration is odd. Is it possible that you still have a Covid extension under consideration? Generally, you need to fly out and then return either by air or by land. Since you are looking for a visa exemption after a lot of time in Thailand as a tourist, I would recommend a land entry. You can convert to an education visa/extension within Thailand after returning visa exempt. Some schools might suggest you get a Non Ed visa from a consulate outside Thailand instead, which probably makes sense if you are planning being out of Thailand for several days anyway, and as this would make returning by air a safe option.

There was a recent post from someone (aged in his 50s, thus too young for a UK state pension) who thought he was applying for an METV and, to his surprise, received a multiple entry Non O! The most likely reason was that he included a bank statement showing over £30,000 for many months. That suggests that, yes, a large bank deposit is acceptable, but no guarantees. With the UK embassy, I do not think they are strict about the proof of the need for a multiple entry visa.

It is very unlikely that a second visa exemption at the airport would be denied when you have no prior recent history as a tourist in Thailand. Trying for a third (by which time you would have been about five months in Thailand) would be a bit risky.

As @ubonjoe stated, some have successfully done this. However, the official word from the UK embassy is that you can only use the e-visa system as a UK national when physically present in the UK or Ireland. I assume the same would be true for Dutch nationals trying to apply outside The Netherlands. It might well succeed, but you are not supposed to do it.

This has been discussed many times in the forum, and I freely admit that my reading of the Immigration Act is not accepted by everyone here. A literal (and IMHO intended) reading of the Immigration Act indicates that immigration officials are obliged to admit or deny entry to those with visas only according to reasons specified in Section 12 of the Act. You are, of course, correct that this is not true in most other countries where officials have wide discretion on those to be denied entry.