Caldera

Maybe they could install donation boxes at the airports in the meantime, so that foreign tourists who wish to contribute a little extra to Thailand's struggling tourist industry may do so at their discretion. </sarcasm>

Hopefully a few more of those senators will grow a spine.

Sad as it is, given the choice between believing either a random "Kazakhstan thief" or a random member of the Thai police farce, I'd choose to believe the former - every single time.

That's scary even by Thai hospital standards. The poor woman.

You could try to dig up the bilateral agreement. I couldn't easily find it and it isn't really relevant to this thread as you said, but maybe someone will find and post it eventually. Personally I don't doubt that what the company posts is correct. I'm sure many of their border bounce customers are Russians nowadays, they're in a great position to know.

Out of curiosity, which school do you think of as the "best school in Pattaya"? Regardless of the school though, I think people on an education visa or extension need to be very careful about using re-entry permits.

I haven't found the actual bilateral agreement, but I consider the excerpt that @swerveposted here earlier from Thai Visa Service's website reliable information. That's a border bounce company that takes Russians to the Cambodian border on a daily basis. https://www.thaivisaservice.com/

That's correct. Bilateral agreement between Thailand and Russia, no official limit for entries by air AND land, but no option to extend in-country.

How's that cheating the system? If the course has the Ministry of Education's approval, which is a requirement for obtaining a visa or extension based on studying, I'd say it's immigration's problem how they deal with "quizzing" those students.

I don't know if Western Union outlets in Thailand nowadays look up the current visa or extension when making a transaction. Maybe someone with recent experience can comment. I'd guess not, just like money changers they probably just copy the photo page of the passport.

Visa runs aren't illegal. As long as an IO admits you and you don't violate the conditions of your stay, it's perfectly legal. Not really suitable for a long-term stay anymore, but still. Trying to make sense of your various websites and organizations is quite a mind-bending exercise. My takeaway is that your solution is similar to what the likes of iglu used to offer, but unlike iglu back in the day, you don't seem to be able to describe what you offer and how it works in a concise way on any of your websites. To me, that's a big red flag, either what you're doing is too complex or you have something to hide.

It was getting increasingly difficult right before Covid, but still doable with careful planning. I got my last tourist visa in Hanoi in October 2019, with a passport full of tourist visas from elsewhere within the region. Never had a problem, but I put a lot of time into planning my "visa runs" and stayed out of Thailand for a bit longer than necessary just to obtain a new visa. Nowadays, I don't think it's feasible anymore. Hanoi is a good example, they've become far less friendly after Covid. HCMC, Vientiane and Savannakhet are all more strict as well. I have one old passport (issued in 2015) that has four tourist visas from Vientiane alone in it, plus two from Savannakhet, that would be unthinkable now. Your best bet right now is probably to start with a METV from your home country. Add a few visa exempt border bounces and you'll get a bit more than a year out of it, but for after that time, you really need to think about more suitable longterm visa options. Personally, I'd mix things up instead. Vietnam will bring back 3-month tourist visas in August, so I'd split most of my time between Thailand and Vietnam and throw in visits to other countries.

Drop like a rock, baht, will ya.

Or their neighbors? I shudder when I think about how they tend to (mis-) manage IT security issues here.

They've done nothing to earn that trust, and a lot for the public to distrust them.

You'll be fine. They'll send you from the exit immigration counter to a special desk, where they will do the passport transfer and stamp you out in your new passport. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes, but allow some extra time just in case.

The meddlers are busy meddling, nothing has changed in that regard.

... among other things

The Thai authorities' biggest concern when it comes to foreigners working in Thailand is whether they are taking away work from Thais who could do it instead. That would make the OP a prime target, as "helping around" the wife's resort clearly is something a Thai could do, more specifically a Thai the wife would then have to hire.

This latest wave really wasn't worth reporting all this much, the whole thing looks a lot like an ordinary flu wave nowadays - just move on, as other countries did a long time ago.

Breaking News!! There will be major rainfall in the monsoon season.

The people shouldn't allow the election to be stolen from them yet again, and I think they won't. What's different this time is that the majority of Bangkok's voters voted for Move Forward, so unlike the Red Shirts, their supporters won't need to be bussed to Bangkok from upcountry.

Ah yes, the "rainy season", it rains from time to time. ????

They do allow walk-ins, in fact they have very few available slots for appointments compared with the total number of applicants they serve. If you can make an appointment, I'd suggest to do it to save yourself some time. The default time zone shown is based on your system settings, nothing immigration controls. As you wrote, just change it to Bangkok. Yeah, it's pretty nonsensical not to have it hard-coded to Bangkok, but then again, I've seen worse.

I've often wondered why this isn't even a bigger issue, tourists getting scammed and then talking about it back home (or on social media of course). Thailand's reputation in this regard is nothing to be proud of, and when I encountered European tourists again last year after the Covid slowdown, most of them were mostly talking about how they've been scammed. Some weren't talking about anything else, in fact. That was in Trat and about rip-offs related to visiting Koh Chang, which arguably isn't even one of the worst places.