BritTim

The rule is 20,000 baht for an individual, and 40,000 baht for a family. As your full post implies, the cash rule has long been worthless as a test of someone being able to support themselves in Thailand during their visit. It would have been abolished if not for its usefulness to officials looking for a legal reason to exclude someone with a visa from entering Thailand. The real reason, of course, will be different.

My suggestion would be to fly to Vientiane on Air Asia (cheap now) and return either with a tourist visa (requires an appointment from the Thai embassy) or visa exempt via the Friendship Bridge to Nong Khai. From Nong Khai, arrange to fly from Udon Thani airport, take the train to Bangkok, or go by bus.

The woman was likely previously on an extension based on marriage. For an extension based on marriage, the marriage has to be both de jure and de facto. In simple English this means they must be officially married and also in a genuine continuing relationship. Often when Thais talk about being married, this only means they are living together, and maybe went through a temple ceremony. Anyway, an extension based on marriage to a Thai is not available once they separate. It would be worse, if they were not officially married, which I think might still be possible. The children might not then have Thai nationality, and even a family visa as the parent would be unavailable. Then, a work permit and legally working would become very difficult (even if a way could be found to stay on tourist visas). If a family visa and work is potentially possible, the next question is what work will be available to her, and will it satisfy the financial requirements for the visa and extensions of stay. Are any of her children working adults already, and able to help? What is the relationship like with the father's other family members? Can they, for instance, provide day care while she works? Clarification of the exact status is necessary before any kind of action plan is possible.

You provide too little information about your previous immigration history in Thailand to give you a considered answer. If your arrival on Nov 9 was your first ever visit to Thailand, there ought to be no trouble at all returning for a further visa exemption after a few days in Langkawi and Ko Lipe. However, if you are a frequent visitor, the wrong official might decide you spend too much time in Thailand as a tourist. Arriving by land would then be safer.

That could characterise almost anybody, (in my personal experience it did) as it’s the IOs judgment that can only be challenged by trying to involve a supervisor or as a faint possibility trying to get a lawyer, for which the words snowball, chance and hell are probably accurate. It seems remarkably similar to me, the difference being the fig leaf’s placement has changed from 7 to 2. The refusals are as arbitrarily seeming to the outside view point as they ever were.and the IOs are still as able as they ever were to deny entry to anyone the want to, just the excuse has changed. I never felt good about the exclusion of hippy types from Thailand. However, it is a fact that the authorities (and, actually, most other Thais) considered them undesirables. Possibly they were influenced to some extent by the association of the hippy lifestyle with drug taking. The difference is that officials were denying entry to those who looked like hippies based on instructions from the Minister. It was not just based on the personal antipathy of an individual official. The arrival was told in a straightforward manner that he was being denied entry due to Thailand not wanting hippy types in their country. Today, officials deny entry because they dislike long stay tourists, but stamp a bogus reason for the denied entry in the passport. I should mention, as an aside, that I believe officials have a legal right to deny a visa exemption. They take the place of a consular official deciding whether to approve a visa. In both cases, there is discretion, and no reason is actually necessary to refuse a visa or visa exemption. However, if denying a visa exemption, the denied entry ought to be on the based of Section 12 (1). With a valid visa, you satisfy all the document requirements for entry, and refusal needs to be based on one of the other reasons under Section 12. Staying too long as a tourist is not one of them.

Cash or financial instruments such as travellers' cheques. Nothing else qualifies, and you are not allowed to draw money using a credit card or ATM card after they decide they want to exclude you (until your denial of entry is finalised, and they support the airline in pressing you to withdraw money from an ATM to pay for the airfares the denial necessitates).

Absolutely. They were denied under Section 12 (7) as undesirables, "having behaviour that involved ... a likelihood of being a nuisance". This was backed up by the Minister, and they could just as easily have used Section 12 (10) as an alternative. The current situation is different. There have been no official ministerial announcements to the effect that those entering Thailand frequently as tourists should be denied under Section 12 (2) as "Having no appropriate means of living following entrance into the Kingdom.", especially when there is abundant proof that this is untrue.

I do not know if this check has been removed or changed. I can only tell you that it still existed as of 2019. Knowing the way systems tend to work, unless those at the top requested a change, the feature would remain in force. If so, most officials probably now take the notification less seriously than they would have, perhaps, in 2018. It is noteworthy, though, that officials are still using wording that implies you are under scrutiny because you "enter Thailand too much".

The rules by international agreement is that, in the event of a denied entry (which is different from deportation) the airline that carried you to Thailand is responsible for your removal. This is true whether the airline did anything wrong and whether or not the airline is paid. As a practical matter, airlines usually find a way to be compensated for the flight to remove you. In most countries, you do owe the airline money for the flight and, in principle at least, they can sue you to recover it.

A common misconception. A visa allows you to present yourself to an immigration officer. Visa’s never give permission to enter a country. That the vast majority of people presenting themselves to immigration officers are then granted permission to enter the country is the decision of the immigration officer. This is true of every country that I have been to. It is probably universal. No, The common misconception is that Thailand follows other countries' laws when deciding whether to grant or deny entry. Back in 1979, when the Thai Immigration Act last had a major overhaul, Thailand was trying to reduce the levels of corruption. One way they decided to do this (and it worked well for decades) was by clearly laying out in the Act the conditions under which officials must deny entry, with no ability to deny entry for any other reason. This removed a common source of corruption in third world countries where officials extort money at the border. At least as far as Westerners were concerned, this Law was invariably followed until the last few years. The habit of denying entry according to the whims of the officials, and stamping the passport with a reason for denied entry that was untrue is a relatively recent phenomenon. Of course, along with this are reports that some have successfully bribed themselves in when officials hinted they are about to be denied entry.

The limit if entering by air varies by airport and by immigration official. What they are told to do is verify if visa exemption is being used in a manner consistent with "normal tourism". That is clearly a very subjective test. At one time (and probably still) immigration's system was set up to prompt the official that you should be subjected to greater scrutiny if you had received more than six visa exempt entries (total by land or air) since a specific start date which I have forgotten (maybe mid 2016?) Some officials are very thorough in their scrutiny, and restrictive in what they regard as "normal tourism". Avoid most airports if you are a long stay tourist in Thailand.

Indeed! That is a common misconception. The first thing to learn about Thai immigration rules is that 'visas' and 'permissions to stay' are almost completely independent of each other. A visa allows (or by law is supposed to allow) you to enter Thailand, at which stage you are given a permission to stay with an expiry date. The visa is no longer of any relevance as to whether you are legally in Thailand. Your permission to stay may be extended. Your visa is never extended. This is different from most countries where, in general, your visa and permission to stay are closely linked.

I do think there is the difference between someone trying to break UK laws at the British embassy, and someone who you notice is not in compliance with Thai law. I am not saying you are wrong. I just do not believe that most shopkeepers would refuse to sell you something because they noticed you were on overstay, and I do not believe most consular officials would refuse a passport application if you met the published requirements for one. There might be some officials who would shop you to the Thai authorities, but that is a separate issue from whether they would issue you a passport to potentially leave Thailand.

None of the visa run companies will touch Poipet with a bargepole. They have avoided this crossing for years. EDIT: Supposedly (this information is quite old) it is possible to bribe your way back in at Poipet. There are fixers on the Cambodian side who liaise with the Thai officials to facilitate this. The price was reported to be sky high (20,000+ baht).

You state that it is obviously illegal, and that is the normal attitude of a Westerner who has never researched the subject. The fact is that Thai laws have loopholes that I firmly believe are deliberate that facilitate no risk corruption. Yes, if you directly bribe an official, that is illegal. However, indirect bribery via payments to third parties cannot be prosecuted, even if everyone admitted (which, of course no one does) that this dodge was being used. It happens all the time in this country, and for much larger sums than those involved in agent assisted extensions.

For a price, you could probably persuade the Cambodian officials to overlook the illegal entry. However, it would not help to clean up your immigration status in Thailand. It is not 1970 any more, and the Thai authorities would immediately flag your illegal status as soon as you tried to enter.

In the past, certainly, there was no mechanism for an immigration official to annotate a personal record of you in immigration's system. I suspect that might no longer be true. Immigration officials, previously, would often make cryptic marks next to stamps which seemed to be intended for other officials in the future. I get the impression (I cannot prove it) that they recently acquired the capability to add remarks in their system instead. Anyway, the most important advice is avoid Poipet in the future. That crossing has been problematic for tourists for years. They have even been known to hassle people with multiple entry Non O visas.

To be a real volunteer, you need a sponsoring organisation. Some are genuine charities, some are out and out scams. The genuine charities vary tremendously in how they treat their volunteers. You can end up in awful accommodation, almost inedible food, and needing to pay for the privilege. Or, you may end up with one of the best charities (especially if you have skills they need) in good, clean accommodation, fed well, and provided a limited, but adequate salary. As a genuine volunteer with a visa, you work, and not just a token couple of hours a week. You may well (more likely than not) be posted to a remote, rural area.

If you are on an extension of permission to stay based on marriage that expires 16 Aug 2023, and used a re-entry permit to come back to Thailand, then the entry stamp is correct.

Decades ago, probably. Today, as soon as the Lao authorities became aware that you had illegally entering Laos from Thailand, they would fine you and then hand you over to the Thai authorities who, seeing you are on overstay in Thailand, would arrest you. You never legally left Thailand and never legally entered Laos.

I have no definite knowledge on this specifically but, in general, I do not expect a citizen's country's officials to do anything to enforce the laws of another country without that country's request (and, only then, if there are friendly relations between them). It is certainly possible that my country's embassy has an agreement with the Thai government to assist in enforcing its immigration laws, but I have never actually seen any evidence of this. In general, the consular officials simply say that they cannot interfere in the legal affairs of another country. My guess would be that they would provide a new replacement passport and, if they notice you are on overstay, advise you to leave.

I would just point out that emergency care is only legally a requirement if the issue is immediately life threatening. Had you refused to pay, they would have waited until there was no alternative to an emergency amputation. You wisely decided to pay.

If it had progressed to the point where an amputation was immediately necessary to save your life, you would likely have been sent to the nearest public hospital where the amputation would have been done. If unable to pay, you would be reported to the police who would arrange your deportation as soon as practically possible. Most people (like yourself) will decide it is prudent to agree to pay before matters reach such a critical stage. I have recent knowledge of an acquaintance who was, as a pedestrian, involved in a serious traffic accident. He was delivered to a local public hospital in a coma, and was treated in the ICU without the hospital even knowing his identity.

Assuming your home country social net supports your widow and children adequately should you die unexpectedly (which most countries do not) that would support the proposition that you should wait until you are about 60 years old to have a family. Of course, you should have life insurance once you start a family, but there is no guarantee that the life insurance company will be able to pay out if you die during a financial crisis.

I hope he turns in those who jaywalk. Those irresponsible individuals make it more difficult for those of us who properly use only designated pedestrian crossings.