Maestro

It is not the airlines (which you refer to as "flying companies") that say that you "cant have a 5 month holiday in Thailand on a visa exempt with a return ticket" It was the Thai government who, with the Announcement of the Ministry of Interior dated 15 June 2024 which was published in Thai language in the Royal Gazette, said when you enter Thailand without a visa you are allowed to stay for up to sixty days for the purpose of "tourism, work, or short-term business engagements". It further says that if you wish to remain in Thailand temporarily beyond the period permitted under this Announcement, you must apply for an extension of stay at the Immigration Office before the expiration of the permitted period. The Announcement makes no mention of a return flight. Based on the abovementioned Announcement, the IATA entered relevant information in their database which is accessible free of charge and when I consulted it just now displayed the following: When checking in passengers for flights to Thailand, the staff of airlines who subscribe to a specific IATA service package get analogous information displayed on their screens. Airlines are completely free to chose whether and when and to what extent to apply conditions or restrictions upon any passenger who has no return or onward ticket.

An ESTA is useless for travel to Thailand, isn't it? How long will Thailand's ETA be valid?

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Based on your supplementary information, the good news is that after you get your new passport you don't have to travel with both passports. P.S. Also, you don't have to hold on to the printout of the DTV you currently have in your possession for the rest of the five years; you can print it out again any time and as often as you need it. Just hold on to that PDF file, perhaps keep copies of in some cloud storage.

@JoeyMac Is your DTV a stamp or sticker in your passport or did you receive it as a PDF document attached to an email from a Thai embassy which you then printed on a sheet of paper?

In your situation, go for it, the DTV, if you meet the criteria for it.

A wise decision, IMO.

What do you mean with "50J"?

What assumption? I made no assumption. I stated the fact that the TM.30 is not for the owner of a dwelling he rents out to a foreigner to apply to the immigration office for permission to allow the foreigner to stay in that dwelling. The TM.30 is not an application for anything at all.

Part of the confusion is that some people talk of the TM.30 as an application, as if the owner had to apply to the immigration office for permission to allow the foreigner to stay in his house. This is of course not the case.

I have misunderstood nothing. If I live in my condo in Thailand and invite a foreign friend to stay with me, I retain possession of the condo and thus continue to be the householder and it is my obligation to make the TM.30 notification of the arrival of my guest. If I rent out my condo to a foreigner and live somewhere else – currently in Switzerland – the tenant becomes the possessor and thus the householder and it is his obligation to make the TM.30 notification. I realise that the law and the rules posted on some immigration web pages can sometimes be confusing, even to immigration officials.

Well, the immigration office certainly won't give a red stamp in your passport for corruption money they received, because that's what your agent paid, not a fine. Anyway, that was an elegant solution for you.

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I have seen no exception of this kind mentioned anywhere.

It's not quite like that. When a tenant makes the TM.30 notification, he does not do so on behalf of the owner (whom you refer to as the landlord). He does it on his own behalf as the "householder", so defined by Section 4 of the Immigration Act. The immigration office may ask the foreigner to submit with the notification copies of some documents which he has to obtain from the owner, but this does not mean that he makes the notification on behalf of the owner. This is how Section 4 defines the householder (in some translations called the house-master or house master) in the case of a rented dwelling (highlighting in bold is mine): The rental agreement makes the tenant the chief possessor of the dwelling and thus the householder.

Correct, but handing down punishment under Section 77 of the Immigration Act can only be done by a court of law, not by an immigration official. Please take a look at Section 84 for clarification.

That's the information posted on the the website but it is not legally correct.

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Is it really technically the same when using a Cambodian crossing? Isn't it Cambodia that says you must stay in Cambodia at least one day?

It is not in the Ministerial announcement published in the Royal Gazette. Someone from the Consular Department of the Ministry of the Interior may have mentioned it in an interview.

How exactly does this work? Does the border immigration official say "don't come back earlier than in two days" (Chiang Khong) or "come back tomorrow" (Chiang Saen) without putting a stamp refusing entry into the passport?

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Thank you. Therefore, this new topic is not required. Discussion continued in this earlier topic: https://aseannow.com/topic/1336345-lao-borders-some-at-least-now-requiring-overnight-stay/page/2/#comment-19179539

That's interesting. So if you turn around the same day, what will Thai immigration do?