Mooch_Zarathustra

For what it's worth, I just came back from a visa trip to Sydney. (I'm from the UK.) I got a double entry tourist visa seemingly without any problem. I was a bit worried - I had about eight back-to-back 60 day TVs from Singapore in my passport, along with a liberal sprinkling of 30 visas on arrival, but they didn't give me a hard time. Hope this helps.

I've got a passport-full of two month tourist visas from Singapore. I've got a trip to Japan coming up. Does anyone have experience of applying for tourist visas there? I checked the website of the Embassy in Tokyo and Consulate in Osaka and it seems a bit severe - requirement for documents even for a tourist visa: 'Company employee must prepare company work certificate (Business card is not acceptable)' Does anyone have first hand experience? Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, I couldn't find anything. Thanks.

You know, I am appalled at how every news item posted on this site immediately draws a knee-jerk outpouring of cynicism, negativity, paranoia, bitterness, hostility and out-and-out ignorance. There doesn’t seem to be any topic under the sun that some moaners here can’t interpret as some form of attack upon them, or more disingenuously, as an attack on the tourist industry which they laughably claim to be part of; as if living here permanently and doing monthly border runs constituted the definition of tourism. Thai Immigration enact a trivial change in the law and off these people go like dogs out the gate. It’s an attack on tourists! A personal vendetta promulgated by Prime Minister against farangs. They’re doing it to make money out of us! Guys, get real. These opinions are absurd and are expressed by people who have completely lost sight of how lucky we are to be allowed to live in this country. This is the great irony, lost on the moaners: It is precisely because we farangs get treated so well here that we can even have this discussion. Precisely because the offence of overstaying has been treated so leniently that some people have come to regard it as their right. Do they ever stop to think about the shameful way our embassies treat Thai people applying for a visa? The girls, especially - subjected to humiliating, intrusive, insolent cross-examinations in which the subtext is the insinuation that she a prostitute. It’s deeply insulting to the Thais and you couldn’t blame them for responding in kind, but they don’t. They continue to extend to us the most relaxed visa and residency system anywhere in the world and permit hordes of us to live here for years on a tourist visa. And all they ask in return is we obey the rules. But even that seems beyond the ability of some of the respondents to this forum.

I don’t believe the Thai authorities are prosecuting any particular vendetta against farangs. I don’t believe they greatly care. But if they read the comments in these forums and others like them, they might feel like starting one. The never-ending chorus of bile and indignant outrage at every action the government takes must surely count as the grossest display of ingratitude to be found anywhere on the planet. Do you think it would be possible for us to take stock and maybe moderate things a bit? To temper our attitude with a dose of humility? Count your blessings guys, it’s clearly a wonderful country for all its faults or you wouldn’t be here.