Caldera

Maybe you could consider spending some time in Laos, apparently there are ways to get a one-year business visa without actually working. Quite affordable compared with the Thai Elite visa that you say is too expensive.

A planned overstay is never a good idea nowadays, you should have gone earlier this week and you wouldn't have lost any days by doing so, as the extension starts from when your current permission to stay expires. That being said, if your permission to stay expires during a weekend or holiday, you won't be charged for an overstay if you go to immigration on the very next working day.

Maybe they want to investigate your company to establish if you're illegally using Thai nominees to circumvent the restrictions on land ownership by foreigners Or maybe they just want to make things difficult for you to entice you to use an agent. With Jomtien in particular, that would be a reasonable guess.

What a farce. If this dinosaur gets voted in with the help of unelected senators, there's really no hope for Thailand.

It's pretty much impossible to predict.

That's where I see the problem. You need a sizable pool of potential customers (as you said it's a niche service), which in Thailand means Bangkok. The service is worth 1000 baht to a customer, but you can't provide it for that price when you take transportation into account. You might spend 1-2 hours on the road for those few minutes of consulting and testing. Upsell options? Quite limited. Repeat customers? Maybe after a year, at best. I can't see that work in any smaller town.

Much as I like the man, I really don't see him fit enough for another term. I think running again was the wrong decision, one that could still be corrected at this point.

I take early morning flights pretty often and I've never had any problem using Grab for a ride to the airport at 4am.

Thailand's reputation as a rip-off destination seems to be strong in China nowadays, which suits the Chinese government well, as they'd rather have their people holiday within China.

They aren't exactly up for a great start, hopefully they'll get their act together and focus on what's really important for the benefit of those who voted for them.

What a horrific thing to happen.

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.