theGadabout

Quick update, we will be going on our 3rd and final border run tomorrow morning at 6AM. We have spoken with the border folks we have worked with the past 3 years and they have assured us it's "business as usual" for the Pattaya -> Cambodia run. We will be the guinea pigs for this. If this doesn't work out for us we plan on heading off to Siem Reap to stay with some friends for a week or 2 then flying back in to avoid this hassle, then doing the 1 year ED visa for my fiancee, and the 1 year visa for myself as a US citizen. I will certainly report back as soon as I'm either back in Thailand around 1 Thai time or if we are excluded. Stay tuned.

Maybe an ED visa would be suitable for her? Thai language course or Massage course, then when you open a business maybe you can get her a work permit?

Good luck.

This is starting to look like the only option left. It seems we had better act now, it didn't seem like a huge priority before but it seems we had better act now or possibly leave Thailand for another country or just spend a year apart. The thought of the latter makes me sick.

I'm not sure if I fully understand your issue. Maybe if clarified your problem disappears...

Question: were you planning on doing VISA RUNS or BORDER RUNS?

BORDER RUNS (holding a VISA EXEMPT entry and going to the nearest border vevery month and exiting and immediately re-entering on another VISA EXEMPT entry continuously for one year) are going to be a no-no.

VISA RUNS (obtaining a proper tourist visa for your fiancé in Vietnam, and returning to Vietnam when the visa expires and obtaining another tourist visa) is totally OK.

You may also be interested in the APEC Business Travel Card available to Vietnamese citizens if you are planning on running a (hotel) biz in Thailand.

Really no need to fret... do your due diligence and where there is a will, there is a way...

Border runs for 3 months, she was to return to Vietnam for 2 months while I went back to the USA. Then when we both returned, planned to figure it out after that. Ideally the hotel deal would have been finished and we could have used it for our visas too.

This board really is great already for us having been quite informative on what we need to do to remain legal. Admittedly we didn't spend a lot of time researching since we have been a bit transient until recently, and having expected that we could continue to to the border runs since we had done that last year for 3 months too.

Lesson learned though, our mistake for not being more vigilant. Luckily I have already been in contact with a few people and it looks like we are going to be able to get her an educational visa, although we will be paying 700 USD for the privilege. It's unfortunate timing.

Made an account just for this. This is a particularly big problem for my Vietnamese fiance and I, from the USA. I can get a 1 year visa but we were planning on doing visa runs when she wasn't traveling back to Vietnam. We just got a home in Thailand because it was the easiest for both of us to have visas here before we get married. Now we don't know if we should stay here or if we need to find another country or go back to our home countries until we get married in a year or so.

I am not sure what we are going to do or how this will play out but I hope we can both get visa's here. We will find out Thursday if and how this affects us and we will report back.

I don't know but the Mods will know and will no doubt be along shortly to advise

Good luck BTW

Thank you. We are hoping for the best. We just spent 50,000THB on this place. If we can't stay here now it's likely we'll be forced to either Indonesia, Cambodia or Malaysia. We can both get visa's relatively easily there, but it's really quite terrible timing for us since we just paid all of this money for a place, we had planned on buying a hotel here and already have all the bank documents completed. Now we don't know if we can invest here or not for our future. This might be a minor inconvenience for some, but really is a life altering decision for us. My friend woke me up today and told me to read this thread and I instantly got sick. Like I said, we will report back.

Maybe an ED visa would be suitable for her? Thai language course or Massage course, then when you open a business maybe you can get her a work permit?

Good luck.

This is starting to look like the only option left. It seems we had better act now, it didn't seem like a huge priority before but it seems we had better act now or possibly leave Thailand for another country or just spend a year apart. The thought of the latter makes me sick.

Made an account just for this. This is a particularly big problem for my Vietnamese fiance and I, from the USA. I can get a 1 year visa but we were planning on doing visa runs when she wasn't traveling back to Vietnam. We just got a home in Thailand because it was the easiest for both of us to have visas here before we get married. Now we don't know if we should stay here or if we need to find another country or go back to our home countries until we get married in a year or so.

I am not sure what we are going to do or how this will play out but I hope we can both get visa's here. We will find out Thursday if and how this affects us and we will report back.

I don't know but the Mods will know and will no doubt be along shortly to advise.

Good luck BTW

Thank you. We are hoping for the best. We just spent 50,000THB on this place. If we can't stay here now it's likely we'll be forced to either Indonesia, Cambodia or Malaysia. We can both get visa's relatively easily there, but it's really quite terrible timing for us since we just paid all of this money for a place, we had planned on buying a hotel here and already have all the bank documents completed. Now we don't know if we can invest here or not for our future. This might be a minor inconvenience for some, but really is a life altering decision for us. My friend woke me up today and told me to read this thread and I instantly got sick. Like I said, we will report back.

Made an account just for this. This is a particularly big problem for my Vietnamese fiance and I, from the USA. I can get a 1 year visa but we were planning on doing visa runs when she wasn't traveling back to Vietnam. We just got a home in Thailand because it was the easiest for both of us to have visas here before we get married. Now we don't know if we should stay here or if we need to find another country or go back to our home countries until we get married in a year or so.

I am not sure what we are going to do or how this will play out but I hope we can both get visa's here. We will find out Thursday if and how this affects us and we will report back.