james173

Hi all, I just learned about Thailand's Special Tourist Visa (STV) which can be extended up to 9 months: https://thaiest.com/blog/thailand-special-tourist-visa-stv

Do you guys think this significantly changes the answer to the question "Thailand VS Vietnam? Which one will be better in 5yrs?"

This article called it "game changing" for expats but I wondered whether people here see it as that significant?

Cheers

Thanks to everyone who's been participating in this thread, which I've found very helpful on a number of occasions. As I write we're in the middle of the UK coronavirus lockdown but I'm casting my mind forward to future adventures in Southeast Asia ????

I just saw the video shared by Roy Baht above (The Vietnam Visapocalypse) from January 2020, so I checked the youtube channel it came from to see if there's been an update. Turns out there was an update in March 2020, here you go:

Summary:

Back in January it looked like people might need to do a visa run every 30 days, even if they had a longer duration visa, due to a new rule coming into force this July.

But this video from March seems to clarify that won't be necessary. Instead a stamp from the immigration office is what will be required every 30 days, costing approx $10 USD. Once your visa expires you'll need to do another visa run, as always.

(The author speculates it might be possible to pay a middleman to do that every-30-day run to the immigration office for you.)

Cheers