eaglesflight

These kinds of topics always bring out the Thailand bashers. Maybe I am just lucky but I have never had any problems at the immigration office in Chiang Rai. Okay, I did sign the copies with the wrong color ink one time but that is the extent of our problems.

What's your definition of 'Thailand bashers'? Is it anybody who doesn't think that every single little thing about this country is absolutely fabulous?

Five days and counting...

Thank God my life isn't THAT boring.

500 baht when I did it just over a month ago. They'll ask you for 2,400 baht but that includes the 1,900 baht extension fee.

Yes. The one to the left of the immigration office (immediately to the left of the copy shop) will do it.

Scratching the teflon pans is also one of my pet peeves. I've got the ole lady using plastic spatulas, we use olive oil for stir fry. Stainless steel for all cooking might be the way to go.

Farang Pet Peeves in Thailand?? - Helll's Bells thehelmsman..where would we start?? LOL..

I have put olive oil on my ever-growing list of (food) things to take to Thailand, along with what I took this time..

- Protein powder with no added sugar or cholesterol

- Shreddies cereal with no added sugar or salt

- organic oatmeal

They now have non-fat yogurt at Macro, so things are looking up in the LOS!

Yeah, if you're not in a big rush, spending the night is far more relaxing. And, as I think the flight is the same time every day (?), you can have a few beers without having to worry about getting up early.

I've done that trip 3 or 4 times. I normally spend the night in UT before flying back the next day but each time I made the trip, I could easily have caught the flight you're talking about. I've always taken a taxi from the border to Udon though, I don't like minibuses. There's almost always a driver sitting in the car park before you enter Thailand. Costs 800-1000 baht, which I don't mind, with the added bonus that you go through the immigration booth for travellers by car - much smaller queues there.

Edit: First time I didn't have to wait long to get passport back, next time I paid someone 60 baht to go in and grab my passport as soon as the consulate opened after lunch. Last time I used an agent to get someone to stand in line so I had an early queue number when applying for visa and they handed them back in the same order. Not sure how it would pan out if you had to wait a long time to get your passport back. Taxi takes around 45 minutes from Nong Khai to Udon

Cheapest one-way onward flight I have found is with Nok Air - from Don Meuang to Yangon - usually around 1,000-1,100 baht inclusive of taxes etc.

Well, I have £17,000/annum as a pension (after tax), comprising: nothing whatever from the private pension scheme to which I contributed for many years which all went down the tubes in the recession, a trivial sum as a state pension for my many years contributions in the UK and a £13,500/annum Luxembourg state pension (for a mere 11 years working there). I don't own a property and when I did my calculations a year or two before I was due to retire, I realized, fairly rapidly, that there was no way that I could afford to live in the UK or that at least not anywhere south of the Humber Estuary nor indeed anywhere much in Europe and that is how I ended up in Thailand. Personally, I am truly delighted it worked out the way it did as, if I had had just a few £1000 a year more, I would have settled down to a life of relative poverty in the cold, miserable UK, whereas, with that pension, I am obscenely affluent in Thailand.

So no, I don't think their demands are unreasonable at all. I really don't know how any couple could live in Britain today in any sort of comfort on less than about £25,000. If your prospective partner is Thai or from somewhere else with a tropical climate, would you really doing them any favours by taking them back to the UK where you will both be living in relative poverty? Would you you be able to afford to heat your residence to 24° or 25°C so that your partner would feel at least comfortable. Could you afford to stump up the hundreds of £s it would cost to outfit your partner with warm enough clothing and footwear to survive the UK's wonderful climate? These are the questions I would be asking someone in that position.

I agree with your point of view if you are applying the rules to somebody like me who has lived outside the UK for 12 years and not made any contributions in the form of N.I. or tax during that period. If I were to go back to the UK with a salary of less than £18,600 (?), I can't see how I could possibly support both myself and my partner (let alone my child). However, if I lived in the UK full-time and earned say, £17,500 a year, then married a non-UK citizen who I met whilst on holiday, it does seem a little unreasonable that I would not be allowed to bring her back to the UK, especially if I were living down the road from a family of work shy locals, who were living on the dole in a 3-bed council house(paid for with housing benefits).

I think asylum seekers and other immigrants are largely irrelevant to this discussion. There is a certain type of person that loves to get indignant about immigration in the UK but I met far more natives sponging off the state during my time in London than I did immigrants. During hard times, when I had to take whatever temporary work I could find, my companions on the gas bottle filling line, or wherever I happened to be working that week, were mostly Polish and African (not sure which African countries), not British citizens. The locals were probably too busy sleeping off their hangovers in some nearby sink estate and arguing over who was going to walk to the Paki shop to buy some more White Lightning cider and Kestrel Super Strength lager.

5,000 we are talking about big money right?

300 baht taken out? That's less than $10.

Is that small amount really getting worked up about or should you just contact the company directly if it is troubling you so much?

They are not large amounts but if you are happy to accept 6% disappearing from your payments with no explanation, freelancing might not be the best career choice for you.

Why don't you ask the company you did the work for?

"im looking to marry my thai gf, im from the uk and looking to marry (mainly for the visa)"

Is it any wonder that some are viewed in less than a complementary light ?

Hope the G/F has been made aware of the REAL reason for the marriage proposal.

He might well have been living with her for several months - or several years - before deciding marriage would work better.

Exactly. So what if he is getting married mainly for the visa? I'm doing exactly the same thing myself. Marriage means nothing to me, it's just a piece of paper that governments happen to like. I've been living with my gf for 8+ years and have a 4-year-old child so there's nothing fake about my relationship. I'm not old enough to retire so I am going to get married instead.

(I think you meant complimentary by the way)

May mean nothing to you today, but it may take on a whole different significance in case of a split-up. Imagine finding yourself unmarried again, this time with 50% fewer assets to start over.

And it's not so unusual that the woman is secretly dreaming (or is it scheming?) of being unmarried again, with 1000% more assets than she would have had without that meaningless piece of government paper.

I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but the OP may be setting himself up for a major disappointment getting married mainly for the visa.

That's really nothing to do with what we're talking about though, is it?

"im looking to marry my thai gf, im from the uk and looking to marry (mainly for the visa)"

Is it any wonder that some are viewed in less than a complementary light ?

Hope the G/F has been made aware of the REAL reason for the marriage proposal.

He might well have been living with her for several months - or several years - before deciding marriage would work better.

Exactly. So what if he is getting married mainly for the visa? I'm doing exactly the same thing myself. Marriage means nothing to me, it's just a piece of paper that governments happen to like. I've been living with my gf for 8+ years and have a 4-year-old child so there's nothing fake about my relationship. I'm not old enough to retire so I am going to get married instead.

(I think you meant complimentary by the way)

If you are married to a Thai or are the parent of a Thai you can get a 60 day extension to visit them.. If not there is no extension possible other than one year.

You could get the 60 day extension for every entry but would need to pay attention to the enter before date on the visa so you can get another 90 days by doing an entry on or before that date.

Do you know what proof they require to grant a 60-day extension on the basis of being the parent of a Thai citizen?

Now where did I put that passport? totally forgot, must have left it somewhere...

Ah well time for a new one.

How would that help him?

He'd be issued a new PP. He'd have the same overstay violation but wouldn't be caught for having a fake stamp. A fake stamp is probably a serious offence.

Seems like the best bet to me.

The trouble is, if he has a fake stamp, he won't have been recorded as having an extension at the time of the fake stamp. In other words, he will have a much longer overstay violation, not the same one. Just something to bear in mind although getting a new passport still seems to be the best solution.

If that figure is correct, I would say it's safe to assume they depend on tourism to maintain a healthy economy. They're not dependent on tourism for survival but no country could lose 17% of it's GDP without enormous repercussions.

And 99% of that 17% comes from the 2 to 4 week tourist.

The serial visa exploiters are the only ones to feel any pain.

Those that qualify for the METV will have no problems.

All my opinion of course

Re. Your other point - Thai consulates in neighbouring countries used to offer double-entry tourist visas to those from Western countries. Citizens of Western countries therefore travelled to those consulates, applied for and obtained visas - how does that make them 'visa exploiters'? You seem to have appointed yourself judge and jury on this matter but your opinion carries no weight whatsoever as far as Thai immigration matters are concerned (neither does mine of course but then I'm not the one accusing people of exploiting the system).

If that figure is correct, I would say it's safe to assume they depend on tourism to maintain a healthy economy. They're not dependent on tourism for survival but no country could lose 17% of it's GDP without enormous repercussions.

Not sure about this one. I read somewhere, may be on Thai Visa? That a Thai wife can contribute towards the 400000 baht needed for her foreign husband to get a year visa extension and it`s acceptable that she can support her husband if she is working. But not clear on this?

Not true. A few years my wife called the immigration and asked if we can use her salary (over 40k) for this. They said no. The purpose of the visa is to transfer money from abroad to Thailand.. Err.. The foreign husband to support Thai wife, not the other way around.

Yes. I'm trying to say that if EU citizens turn up in Britain, IF they are banned from collecting any social security, if they are banned from NHS services and public housing, they don't want to work, they do have some money, and they simply want to live in Britain, well surely, Britain will/does benefit from these people ? And from that, when foreigners turn up in Thailand, they are in the same situation as mentioned just now, they will also benefit Thailand ?

It's only the first 3 months that they cannot claim benefits, but can access NHS straight away. I think you will find a lot of British people don't like foreigners, but the UK government likes to play the pc card and says they benefit the economy, in fact it's the reverse of Thailand 555

Any country that doesn't realise attracting young immigrants is the only practical solution to a rapidly ageing population will find out the truth sooner or later, probably too late for them to do anything about it though. As far as I recall, Thailand's population is quite old by Asian standards so they ought to be encouraging immigration if they want to remain economically viable as a country in the long term.

I emailed the Thai consulate at Hull to get clarification for UK residents. When I get a response I will post here.

I emailed another consulate in the UK and they seemed to think I can still apply for a double or triple-entry visa 10 days after November 13th. Does this mean they are mistaken or is the date for phasing them out not a firm one?

I suspect they have not been informed of what the rules will be by the embassy in London yet. Nothing has been posted on the embassy website.

When I inquired about it to the consul at the Bali honorary consulate he could not answer any questions because he had not gotten anything form the embassy in Jakarta.

OK, thanks. I'd better not rely on being able to get one when I go there then. Cheers.

"You're still missing the point, you must have a mental block. Why are you assuming that the average balance in somebody's current account is all the money they would have available to spend on a six month stay in Thailand? You're making no sense whatsoever.

You don't seem to understand the financial markets either. Stocks may not be cash but let's say somebody has a large portfolio of stocks, each of which pays them a healthy dividend twice a year. They may live (very well) on that money, but they still may not keep an average balance of 400,000 baht in their current account. Not everybody lives a humdrum, 9-5 life in this world."

Most people of means would be able to demonstrate access to a miserly $7000 in cash !

It's not about demonstrating access to a "miserly" $7,000 in cash, it's about having to ensure that your current account balance never dips below that amount over the six months prior to applying for a multiple-entry tourist visa. What is it that you are finding so difficult to understand about this? Most people of means will not want to be told what to do with their money for a period of six months either.

Which embassy is it that is insisting your current account balance never dips below 7k? I have a feeling you are the one misunderstanding.

I was referring to an earlier post that stated US nationals had to demonstrate a cash balance over the last six months of that amount. Whatever the actual requirement, it's not difficult to comprehend that whatever I have in my bank account at this moment in time is not all I am going to have to live on in the next six months (for example). Some of us have incomes and don't routinely keep thousands of dollars/pounds/yen whatever in our bank accounts (current accounts, deposit accounts or whatever).

"You're still missing the point, you must have a mental block. Why are you assuming that the average balance in somebody's current account is all the money they would have available to spend on a six month stay in Thailand? You're making no sense whatsoever.

You don't seem to understand the financial markets either. Stocks may not be cash but let's say somebody has a large portfolio of stocks, each of which pays them a healthy dividend twice a year. They may live (very well) on that money, but they still may not keep an average balance of 400,000 baht in their current account. Not everybody lives a humdrum, 9-5 life in this world."

Most people of means would be able to demonstrate access to a miserly $7000 in cash !

It's not about demonstrating access to a "miserly" $7,000 in cash, it's about having to ensure that your current account balance never dips below that amount over the six months prior to applying for a multiple-entry tourist visa. What is it that you are finding so difficult to understand about this? Most people of means will not want to be told what to do with their money for a period of six months either.