Caldera

I think it's safe to say that the tax issue will only keep getting more of a pain here in the years to come. Now there's already talk of taxing foreign income by Thai tax residents that is NOT remitted to Thailand. Like many other countries, it seems clear that Thailand ultimately wants to tax the worldwide income of its tax residents. I know there are tax treaties in place to avoid double taxation, but just the hassle of having to file tax returns in several countries, translating documents, dealing with different rules and deadlines etc. etc. can already be stressful.

Sounds like a great idea to me.

I doubt it, that wouldn't make sense. There IS an official fee for the Cambodian visa on arrival, $30 for a tourist visa.

What would be the point? They're usually given to people who can apply for a 1-year extension once they're in Thailand.

All that idle talk for years. Just bring it on, and if it doesn't work as expected, you can always do your usual Thai flip-flop and scrap it again.

Vietnam. Plenty of short direct flights available.

Dupe

The idiocy of having nothing but a basic state pension and thinking that you're entitled to retire abroad. Stay at home, where among other things, you have access to government-funded healthcare. Try to get health insurance in Thailand as a foreigner that age.

How does this change affect those who can't or won't stay that long? Not at all, of course. But for all those who can and want to stay longer, it's great news.

You can claim whatever you want at this point, considering the absence of confirmed facts. But there's no Thai visa that currently works like that, so in my opinion, you're in fantasy land with that assumption.

But those double and triple entry tourist visas were never called "multi-entry" visas by anyone in authority, so I really don't see how anyone would assume that this newly announced multi-entry DTV will be anything but a real multi-entry visa (unlimited entries during its validity period).

With regards to the DTV, I'd caution that lots of people initially got excited about the SMART visa and the LTR visa as well. Once all the details and requirements were made available, however, many people realized that they don't actually qualify. At this point, there's too much speculation and too little known facts. Also keep in mind that the Thai authorities weren't even able to roll out the visa exempt change by today, which is a very minor change in comparison to rolling out a new visa type. I wouldn't be surprised if that will require several iterations of decision-making - leading to significant delays.

Hardly.

You've got to admire their optimism.

What a frivolous claim, what on Earth are they thinking? Why would the airline remove them for being black? I'm quite sure they fly plenty of black passengers on any given day. Surely the explanation given by the airline makes a lot more sense.

From a practical point of view though, most people wouldn't be able to apply for this visa from outside Thailand if having a Thai bank account with funds was a prerequisite. The way this visa is designed and named, it seems to be pretty much targeted at people who aren't in Thailand yet - and who most likely don't have a Thai bank account, which is a pain to open without having a longterm visa first. I'm curious how they'll resolve that.

Without knowing all the details, it's hard to tell if this visa will be yet another failure (just like the SMART and LTR visas before) or finally a success story. At this point, it's not even clear where you can apply for this visa and where those 500,000 baht financials have to be shown and kept. That in itself could make or break this visa. Eagerly awaiting more details!

Correct, that's confusing terminology here.

Now he brings even more attention to himself, damaging his reputation even further. Hilarious.

No lack of altar and choir boy abusing "celibate" priests in his despicable kiddie fiddler organization. He should stop pontificating (555) and be happy for every priest he's got who's into adults - male or female.

S: Am I toast? W: You know you are, otherwise you wouldn't visit me. S: Thank you. W: You're welcome.

The timing might be a bit unfortunate. With the upcoming introduction of 60-day visa exempt stays, the single entry tourist visa could very well become obsolete. Without the tourist visa applicants, the queues should get quite a bit shorter.

Sounds like lots of good news according to a new Bangkok Post article that can't be linked here. It will be interesting to see the details. Some of the measures due to start as early as June 1st.

Try to go without your wife. Whenever I want to get anything done in Thailand, I know that taking a Thai along will just mess things up. You'd think they know how to get the point across efficiently in their own language, but it just never seems to happen.

Bless those 0.4%. The Watch Man isn't forgotten (completely).