Caldera

Sounds more like a careless traveler to me who didn't queue up to get his entry stamp after getting his visa on arrival. Two different things, usually processed at two different counters. And in any case, you never walk away from an immigration checkpoint before you've had a good look at your passport to ensure that everything is in order.

Isn't it his tenure yet again all over though?

Can you really not imagine having that much money? How much do you spend per month, 20k? In reality, 40k really isn't all that much!

They had already been busy before the changes that were introduced last year. Those changes obviously mean two things: Firstly, more nationalities qualify for visa exempt entries - and extensions thereof. Secondly, many if not most of those who would have gotten a tourist visa before and would have gone to the main Chaeng Watthana office to extend are nowadays entering visa exempt and have to go to Laksi instead. Mayhem? Maybe. Very busy, especially between holidays? Certainly.

Yes, that's definitely not "normal", at least not at Chong Mek. Have a great Songkran, too!

Some people collect watches and others collect visas. I won't even claim that I understand which ones of the OP's visas are current and which ones they intend to get.

One has got to wonder if this particular building was built so poorly that it would have collapsed anyway, even without an earthquake or with a weaker one in the future. The thought that this could have happened later when fully staffed is quite scary.

A disaster like this one tends to bring out the best in some people and - sadly - the worst in others.

You're just too poor to retire, nothing to do with Pattaya or Thailand really. Enjoy working some more, bye for now.

I don't think they will still have any paper forms, the whole idea is not having to deal with them any longer. They want YOU (the traveler) to do the data entry for them, instead of having to decipher your handwriting. They might offer a way to enter the information in arrivals (by providing tablets or kiosks), but I wouldn't count on that.

To streamline the process, it's possible that they will instruct the airlines to require the QR code when you check in for a flight to Thailand. Or they might have kiosks at the airports, like Cambodia. Time will tell.

That is not uncommon, also seen with Vietnam's eVisa system for example. They'd enter their names in the same way as they appear in the machine-readable lines of their passport.

I'm not sure if I'd call them "delayed", considering I still haven't received one. "Forgotten", maybe?

I haven't seen any evidence of "mass hysteria" here in Bangkok. Have you, or did you just dream that up?

Hawala isn't secret at all.

I would call that stupid.

Not really. They usually get denied for "spending too much time" visa-exempt in Thailand. Quite some people have reported flying in and out frequently, without any issues as their overall time spent in Thailand is short.

I'm here mostly for my amusement. I know that most posters cannot be taken seriously and I don't really have a problem with that, as long as they don't try to sell me anything.

What an incredibly foolish act by someone of such a mature age.

Maybe they realize that their waitstaff and cashiers fled as well and wouldn't even have been there to collect any payments.

Luckily, Thailand isn't a Western country where people can abuse such an event to milk the system for benefits due to imaginary distress. Seriously, how bad could the mental toll be unless you were near that collapsed construction site? I stayed in a swaying high-rise and I think I'll survive without seeing a shrink.

What are the chances that all of those hastily recruited "volunteer engineers" (the article mentions this term a whopping FOUR times) are adequately qualified and incorruptible?

There's no way Trump, or anyone else, can make America great again. He's a great showman and hyperactive, but I don't think there will be any tangible benefit for the vast majority of Americans. Most of the disruption he causes works in China's favor in any case.

There's no official rule, so it will be whatever that individual IO or supervisor says. If you stayed in Thailand for 8 months as a tourist, an airport IO might well consider 2 months out insufficient to be allowed in again.

Nonsense. I use the TrueMoney app for PromptPay payments all the time. As I wrote, it can be used for both. Have a look at the payment categories you can get TrueMoney coins for on the screenshot below. "PromptPay Merchants" is one of them.