BritTim

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.

Others have fully explained the multiple entry Non O visas. Just to save you going down a possible dead end, the "long stay" visa is the Non O-A. It is highly unlikely you want to use this visa (even if aged over 50) because of the insurance requirement. It is a multiple entry visa, providing a one-year permission to stay each time you enter Thailand before the expiry date of the visa.

In your case (and for almost anyone eligible for visa exemption wanting to stay less than about five months) I can see no advantage in an METV. The visa does not obviate the need to leave and re-enter Thailand. The METV is mostly only useful for those who (i) come from a country not eligible for visa exempt entry; or (ii) want to make many entries into Thailand by land.

My assumption that the initial entry needs to be before the expiry date of the visa is based on two considerations: Every Thai visa ever issued in the past has worked that way. That includes the O-A and O-X visas, and the multiple entry Non Immigrant visas (such as the Non O). There has been no suggestion by the Thai authorities that the rules in this respect will be any different with the new visas. Certainly, other countries have very different policies on visas, but Thailand has its way of working. In most countries, there is no distinction between a long term visa and a permission to stay, but these are distinct from each other in Thailand. Similarly, there is no concept of "use it or lose it" in Thailand, except for permanent residence.

I think the period of time for entering the country would be five years (expiry date of the visa)