Caldera

In this case the question is why your passport office didn't cancel your old passport when you picked up the new one. That's what they are supposed to do, unless you qualify for having multiple passports for special reasons.

Udon Thani and Nakhon Phanom, aren't those flights more like bargirl shuttles instead of bringing in tourists?

That's a ridiculous idea. Unenforceable, impractical, doomed to fail miserably. Maybe some people need to remember that Thailand used to have a very successful HIV prevention campaign. Revive that instead of coming up with comical nonsense.

With a short-haul flight, you cannot escape the miserable monsoon season weather, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that this isn't a popular time for regional tourism.

He's clearly having a laugh. How about the scam compounds nearby the Vietnamese border then, Vietnam's fault? And the ones in Sihanoukville and nearby Phnom Penh? Oops. The one country all these have in common is Cambodia.

Pretty much every single time I buy something at 7-11, they ask me if I'm a member. As I clearly look foreign, I can only assume that they have foreign members, otherwise why would they bother to ask? I use the TrueMoney wallet, so I already get "coins" for 7-11 purchases. With a ridiculously low monthly cap that I've typically maxxed out around the 5th of each month. That doesn't amount to a lot in actual baht and I just cannot be bothered to check if becoming a "member" gives me significantly more benefits. The owners of CP need the money a lot more than I do, in any case. 555

That's quite a spin. Rather than calculating how much less that is compared with Trump's 49% opening bid, it is still 36% MORE compared with the pre-Trump tariffs.

A downloadable statement is fine, as long as it has the required details. What they don't accept are screenshots of an app or banking website, it does have to be a statement.

They mostly seem to post garbage.

Maybe I just misunderstand what you mean, but it sounds like you have that upside down. More difficult requirements means that MORE people use agents to circumvent those requirements.

Cambodia and Thailand, united they stand, at least when it comes to being at the receiving end of King Donald's fury.

I don't say this very often, but I'm with the Thai police on this one.

I can see how this will become a concern for people from repressive countries who know their country is keeping a watchful eye on them. I don't think Thailand will share this information with other countries voluntarily, but a data leak is a very real possibility considering the sad state of cyber security. Using the data obtained from such a breach to deduct a few social credit points (or worse) isn't exactly unthinkable.

In fairness, this is the "Thai Visas" forum and there's another one for other countries. What @BrandonJT wrote is certainly true for all Thai visas nowadays. You're right about other countries, obviously. Schengen visas routinely are issued to start on the exact date that the applicant wants to enter. Closer to Thailand, the Vietnamese eVisa comes to mind; you can choose when it will be "valid from". I remember that some (honorary) Thai consuls used to be "flexible" when they still issued handwritten visas. That's why I wasn't sure if you were referring to Thai visas years ago.

Thai visas? When was that?

The FOREX market disagrees. End of.

I want to believe this, I really do. But when you see how those scam compounds can operate with impunity for a long time and not exactly well-hidden from view, you cannot help but doubt that they aren't being protected by high-ranking government figures as alleged.

You're not wrong, in many cases it's over the top, they seem to want to catch all scenarios with a single extensive list of requirements. Still, that paper-shuffling exercise is nonsensical but manageable, not really a big deal. What I would really have a problem with are home visits (I've never had one myself), especially if they insist on repeating the same brain-dead exercise year after year (more likely to happen for marriage extensions than for retirement extensions).

That's just incredibly naive. If they were serious about corruption, they'd have to dismiss the entire police farce (including immigration) and start over. Even their internal processes are hopelessly corrupt, starting from passing the entrance exam. All that is well-documented, of course, so you're either having a laugh or being delusional. So who gets caught and is punished for "being corrupt"? Officials who fail to pass the appropriate share of the loot up the chain. Officials who cross their superiors in other ways. Officials who have the wrong political affiliation. In all those cases, having some "corrupt officials" as fall guys to make an example of is perfect both with regards to the effect on the gullible public and as a deterrent for other officials. Nothing more, nothing less.

That is just wrong. If a citizen's wrongdoing against the state amounts to a crime (such as treason), the criminal justice system can deal with that. If it doesn't, it's just harmless dissent that those in power need to tolerate. But I think we can all make an educated guess who they are targeting with this: (self-) exiled Cambodian opposition figures.

The Shinawatra clan really has lost the plot. Nowadays they can't even get their populist policies right, which used to be the foundation of their success. The silly wallet flip-flopping, now this botched program, what's next?

Indeed, using that kind of picture for such an article is so incredibly dumb, as it perpetuates the wrong and dangerous belief in too many people that you can see if someone is not healthy and just need to avoid them "to be safe". I'd daresay most people who catch HIV here in Thailand catch it from someone who looks perfectly healthy.

Also known as "the Thai way"... Pretty idiotic to use the term "immoral" in my opinion, as I don't think the local officialdom appreciates to be lectured about morality by random foreigners.

If you've already applied for the Non-O visa, then any 30-day extension would already be stamped into your passport. You cannot apply for the 30-day extension after you apply for the Non-O visa, and the 30-day extension is issued on the spot, so there's no "returning to the office" for that.

At least at face value, that's true for the PDF file that you receive from the bank. But you don't submit that file to immigration, merely a printout that has no security features whatsoever. Most immigration offices don't accept self-printed statements, so yours was an exception before they fell in line. The reason why they ask for a statement although you ALSO need to show your passbook has been discussed here many times. It's because transactions listed in a passbook can get combined if it isn't updated often enough. That can make it impossible to spot if the account balance dipped below the required amount.