BritTim

It is worth mentioning that the stupid 90-day report does should not be a cause of stress. If it is forgotten, at worst, you are faced with a 2,000 baht fine. The one-year extension of your permission to stay, however, if you do not travel for a year is critical. Thailand Elite may remind you, but this should not be relied upon. Personally, I set phone reminders for everything that is really important. (For 90-day reports, I do not bother, though I have a note on my calendar 15 days before the report is due.)

As long as you to not want to work (for a Thai company) there are really no other restrictions associated with a Thailand Elite membership. You pay the money to avoid most of the hassles associated with long term residence in Thailand. If you are not travelling, each 90 days, you must submit a 90-day address notification (which Thailand Elite will do for you in some provinces, but is most easily done online in most cases); if you remain in Thailand a full year without travelling, you must apply for a one-year extension of stay, for which the only requirement is still being in possession of a Thailand Elite membership. Most members will not need to do this as each time you exit Thailand and re-enter you get a fresh one-year permission to stay. In my view, the biggest advantage of the Thailand Elite membership is that it provides certainty for the duration of the membership. Those, for instance, on retirement extensions can never know when changes in regulations will impact (possibly critically) on their plans for residence in Thailand. At the end of the membership period of Thailand Elite, you will be faced with an unknowable situation (also true, 20 years from now, for those who have not been Thailand Elite members).

Did she offer to sell you a compliant insurance policy on the spot?

I am happy that they were not as strict at that time. Today, an order to leave the country within seven days needs to be complied with. Immigration is much more sticky about overstays today, especially long ones, or overstays when under an order to leave.

At land crossings, you will always be fined for a one-day overstay. At the Bangkok airports, I have not heard of anyone fined for a one-day overstay for over 20 years. If someone has experienced this at Suvarnabhumi or Don Muang I would be most interested in hearing about it, and possible special circumstances that might have prompted it.

The one-day overstay has absolutely zero short term consequences. It is, however, worth bearing in mind that it goes on your immigration record. If you ever end up in a dispute with immigration over an unrelated matter, it is possible for them to use this against you. In your position, I would probably take the one-day overstay, but it is just conceivable you could end up regretting it years later.

Now you really have me scratching my head. I have never heard of an online system specific to the Royal Thai Embassy London, and Google cannot find a page referring to either registration or login for such a system. Where do you go to try to sign in to this system?

While this is frustrating, the staff at the London Embassy are probably no better able to arrange fixes to the eVisa system than you are. My guess is that the system was developed in China or Thailand by developers whose ability to communicate in English is probably equal to the average for those countries.

In all honesty, there is no source I have ever found that is 100% accurate on all aspects of Thailand's visa policy. The Wikipedia page "Visa Policy of Thailand" provided an excellent introduction years ago but, unfortunately, has deteriorated now, being a little out of date, and also having recent edits that are simply wrong. The information is still about 80% accurate. However, for details, you will need to search further. The actual laws and announcements (for which there is a sticky thread in this forum) is a very good resource. The information is mostly accurate as far as the official rules is concerned, but heavy going and sometimes ambiguous. A further issue is that Thailand does not follow its own laws at all airports, border crossings and immigration offices. One of the main reasons this forum is useful is that, when you state your plans clearly, with your travel plans and intended immigration office to use, someone can usually point out any special issues you might encounter The forum's biggest issue is the noise to signal ratio. There is a mass of irrelevant and incorrect information obscuring the useful data that you need. In time, you will learn which members provide accurate advice. This can help you weed out what you are better off ignoring. What would be ideal (if someone had a free year to create one) would be a hierarchical knowledge base that started with a basic summary and then drilled down through several levels of increasing detail on specific topics. Any volunteers?

On July 12th, you will get one.

There is huge confusion on a regular basis caused by people calling every stamp in their passport a "visa". One clue as to whether a sticker or stamp is a visa is that a visa has the word VISA close to the top of it. Any stamp or sticker that does not contain that specific word is not a visa. When you enter without a visa (visa exempt) there will be nothing called a visa placed in your passport. All you get is an entry stamp. Apart from the entry stamp you receive when entering the country (where you should always check the admitted until date) and exit stamp you receive when leaving the country, you should look at all other stickers and stamps placed in your passport and endevour to understand what they are and what they mean. The most common types are: visa, extension, re-entry permit, under consideration and overstay. Just having officials place stamps in your passport you do not understand is perilous. Officials sometimes make mistakes, and if you do not detect them you can end up in serious trouble, even though it was the official's original error that was the cause.

Asking you to come on a specific day (assuming no misunderstanding) is strange, but I am quite sure it is unrelated to your flavour of tourist entry. One possible explanation is that they know, on that day, there will be someone around with excellent English who can relieve the stress on both sides.

Two points: There is no substantive difference when planning to convert to a Non O visa at immigration between entering visa exempt or with a tourist visa. Thus, I do not see that Chiang Mai immigration misled you on this. You seem to have already paid for the extension of your visa exempt entry (1,900 baht) and for the Non O visa (2,000 baht). There will be no charge July 12th. The next time there will be anything to pay will be when you subsequently apply for the one-year extension (September or October). [The only exception is if you decide to make a trip outside Thailand before then, in which case you will need to pay for a re-entry permit.]

I note that you have been using retirement extensions, which are certainly easier when you meet the financial requirements. My suggestion would be to get a Non O family visa via the eVisa site before your return. In my view, this will be easier than converting after entering visa exempt (which, at a minimum, requires two visits to Immigration). Having entered on a Non O family visa, Immigration will still be happy to provide you retirement rather than marriage extensions.

What is in your passport now? This is my guess reading between the lines of what you have written so far: You entered Thailand via the Friendship Bridge from Vientiane to Nong Khai on June 2nd without a visa. You were given an entry stamp in your passport allowing you to stay until July 1st (30-day visa exempt entry) You recently applied for (and received) a 30-day extension of your visa exempt entry, thus giving you the current updated permission to stay date of July 31st. You have subsequently applied to convert to a Non 90-day O visa with the intention of retirement. The application has been provisionally accepted. You now have an "under consideration" stamp with instructions to return on July 12th to receive the confirmed Non O visa and associated new 90-day permission to stay. If the above is correct, on July 12, you should receive a bunch of new stamps in your passport, most important a new permission to stay until, probably, about 10 October. About 30 to 45 days before the expiry of this new permission to stay, on payment of an additional 1,900 baht, you will be able to apply for a 12 month extension of your retirement permission to stay. Does anything in your passport conflict with what I write above?

A visa you apply for in advance (typically a 60-day tourist visa or 90-day Non Immigrant visa) allows a longer stay than a visa on arrival (15 days, non extendable) or even visa exempt (30 days for most eligible nationalities and extendable). Whether it is worthwhile getting a visa in advance depends on the nature of your visit to Thailand.

It would be the same as with any other unused visa.

While looking at alternatives, have you looked at the Thai Investment Visa? To many, this looks good until you examine the details. The financials seem reasonably OK until you look at the limitations on the allowable investments, and discover that past investments in Thailand are not accepted.

This is a particularly good idea if wanting to take the international bus from Udon Thani to Vientiane. Personally, I have always been lucky when getting the Lao visa on arrival at the Friendship Bridge to Vientiane. When entering from Mukdahan to Savannakhet, however, the visa on arrival counter is often closed early in the morning, and getting the e-visa makes great sense if planning to enter there early. It is worth mentioning that you cannot use the Lao eVisa at all entry points, though the main ones are OK.

It is true that, if you never travel, you need to get an extension each time you have been 12 months in Thailand without leaving. No extensions are required if you (as most people who are comfortably off do) make occasional trips outside the country. If you do need to extend, the only requirement is your Thailand Elite membership, and there will be no additional requirements for the duration of your current Thailand Elite membership. What most people fail to factor into their decision making on Thailand Elite is the advantage of locking in the ability to travel in and out of Thailand, and stay as long as you want with the conditions for doing so being known. In particular, those planning on staying decades in Thailand on retirement extensions are making a real leap of faith in assuming they will be able to meet whatever the requirements for this will be years ahead. If the LTR scheme had no other requirements other than 50k baht application fee for a 10-year stay, that would obviously be better than Thailand Elite. I am quite sure, however, that there will be other requirements, probably for the retirement option including unobtainable health insurance (as the O-X visa does).

I mean that the authorities knows it goes on and, whatever the letter of the law might dictate, have decided to tolerate it. If you are not competing with Thais for jobs or customers, there is no good reason to spend resources trying to enforce a law that is anyway rather problematic. If the authorities did want to prevent people working for overseas companies, would that mean that people checking business email while on holiday would be violating Thai labour laws? Where would you draw the line? It is much better just to have a simple test: are you doing some task that would often be done by a Thai if not done by you? If not, take no action.

That can be a good argument for getting the 20-year Elite membership. It protects you against the almost certain changes to the requirements over time for retirement extensions.

It depends. If you are a digital nomad, with only foreign clients, there is no issue working on an Elite visa.

If you are vaccinated, you can still get Covid (but it is less likely) and can still pass Covid on (but it is less likely) and can still get seriously ill and die from Covid (but it is FAR less likely). You use the same arguments as those who defend their heavy smoking habit by saying non smokers can still get lung cancer, heart disease and strokes (among other conditions) so why give up smoking? You can always be unlucky, whatever measures you take to protect yourself. That does not mean there is no point in taking sensible precautions.

That is reasonable, but only if you read the follow up reports on which of the potentially adverse reactions were (after careful investigation) caused by vaccines. When looking at databases that record every medical event that occurs following a medical procedure or treatment, unless you are a professional familiar with the characteristics of such databases, it is very easy to be misled. Look up death from all causes by those vaccinated and unvaccinated. Although correlation does not always imply causation, it is nevertheless an eye catching result that you are considerably less likely to die from all causes if vaccinated. The reasons are not fully understood, but one likely factor is that even asymptomatic Covid infections cause damage that can make you more vulnerable to other medical issues. The Database of Adverse Event Notifications is a useful resource, but only if you understand the concept of dependent versus independent events, and read the results of the individual follow-up investigations.