Caldera

Yeah right.

My feeling is that it won't end well, but I hope to be wrong. The old guard seems unwilling and unable to let go.

He certainly embraced la dolce vita. It was refreshing to see someone like him among all the sour faces when he met the leaders of other countries. RIP.

What a mess.

If I was Thailand, I wouldn't trust China, and if I was China, I wouldn't trust Thailand. Both countries' leaderships are as untrustworthy as they come.

Yet another ineffective crackdown, let's see how many they will catch and how many law-abiding foreigners they will have to inconvenience just to catch a few lawbreakers.

YES. That's true for both Bangkok airports. If you land there first, you need to clear immigration there.

That's a good question. It's conceivable, maybe part of the information the airline needs to share via APIS?

Yeah my guess is he'll win the nomination but lose the election, his positions are too extreme for far too many swing voters.

Thailand's leadership simply can't agree on this, some want as many tourists as possible who stay as long as they have money to spend, while others see that as a security risk first and foremost. So the result is that there isn't a clear limit in place, conveniently giving an IO three choices depending on their personality and mood: Relaxed, power-tripping or money-grabbing. Which explains why personal experiences reported here are all over the place.

Unfortunately, the air is also breathtaking (barely breathable) for a good chunk of the year. And it just seems to be getting worse year after year.

With the usual caveat that it's at immigration's discretion: Yes, you can apply and would be denied another 30-day extension, but be given 7 days to leave the country.

I really don't like the sound of this.

It's quite a bit more substantial than many had expected.

Only his legal problems are bigger than his ego. That's how big they are

Mobile.

The ads have been totally out of control lately, both in quantity (high) and in quality (low). At this rate, the site will become completely unusable within a few months.

I don't see how you would be able to link such a new SIM card to your Thai bank account without being in Thailand.

Not maybe. If you fly via Don Mueang, it's a certainty that you will need to clear immigration there. As your plan is to enter Thailand at Chiang Mai Airport, you'll need to make sure that this will be the first Thai airport you land at.

Yes, having been denied entry to Thailand previously wouldn't make you ineligible for using a Thai airport for airside transit later on.

If you're denied entry, they'd bounce you back from Chiang Mai Airport, you wouldn't be able to get on a domestic flight to Suvarnabhumi Airport. Most likely, that would mean flying back to Laos, and making further arrangements from there.

That COULD work. They want to see 3 months of bank statements and they want to see that you have enough funds. I'm not sure if they'd be hung up on lower balances in the past or go through the laborious task of calculating averages as long as the current balance is sizable (significantly more than what's required). As you're in Laos anyway and already have an appointment, it would be worth a shot (nothing to lose). I think the other options are a no-go.

Were you already on a non-immigrant entry from something else before you applied for this extension? Such as studying on an education visa for example? You can't go straight from a visa exempt entry to the extension you've posted.

So besides the extension stamp and the re-entry permit stamp that you have, you should have a few other stamps, one of them being a non-immigrant visa issued by the same immigration office (Trang). That non-immigrant visa stamp has a line named "Category", and in your case that category would be "B" for business which should be clearly written on it.

At the tax office, the worst that can happen is that they don't give you the TIN / send you to the "correct" tax office. Unless you can prove a change of residence and have documents for where you actually reside, they would almost certainly be of the opinion that you need to get your TIN in Trang, where your current extension was issued. If you'll run into trouble with your "visa" elsewhere is hard to tell, this being Thailand. The process and circumstances you describe sound dodgy and evoke memories of the now infamous "volunteer visa" that was once popular. Did you enter the country with a non-immigrant visa, or is there another stamp from Trang Immigration in your passport that is a non-immigrant visa issued locally? I'm surprised that you don't have a work permit, was it explained to you by the agent why you don't need one? You don't work, I get it, but for that kind of extension they must have come up with some kind of a relationship between you and a company.