Badger18

Thanks all. My valuables/hard-to-replaceables are too bulky to carry on me so would have to go in the luggage compartment underneath. There's an option to do train + taxi instead so I guess I'll do that.

I would have to out some stuff under the coach that I really don't want to lose. When it stops on the way, do they just open the luggage compartment up and let people grab their own bags, or how does it work? This would be in the south if that makes any difference.

I was thinking of stopping for a couple of days en route. Any suggestions for where?

Anyone know? I will be in KL for a few months so should probably stock up if it's a hassle to buy.

I read in the "How to renew a 5-year DL" topic that there is a 12-month grace period, but does anyone know: - if this applies to 2-year "temporary" licences - if you are legal to drive in the grace period (or if it's just that you don't have to start again as if you'd never had a licence) Bonus Q: I'm assuming I will need a residence cert to renew, but what I've seen on that is from a long time ago, so can anyone confirm it's still a requirement? TIA

I'm looking to buy a plot of land - not in my own name, obviously - to put a house on. Who would I go to to have a look at it and warn me about any likely issues, for example problems bringing services in or getting any necessary building permits?

It looks like I will need a side trip to get a visa, but I'm not sure how long you have to leave between applying and picking up your passport. Anyone have this info for the embassy in Hanoi? Vientiane would be another option if that's any quicker. Just need to figure out flights and accommodation.

Yeah, but I think this rule is basically there to catch you out, or in other words to give them a concrete reason to refuse entry when their real concerns are a bit vague or hard to prove.

Looks like I will be coming in visa exempt later in the month. I think you are supposed to be carrying at least 20k but can this be in any currency? I have some EUR and GBP which should be OK but I also have some Polish and Indonesian currency that would have to count if I am going to get to 20k. Do I need to change this to THB before arrival? It'd be a bit of a waste of money as I'll be going back to those countries, but not a big deal if it might avoid a problem at immigration.

SETV, Vietnam. Might give it a try then.

Last time I got visa for Thailand I don't think the eVisa system was up and running in the UK. Recently there have been reports of applications being rejected. Do I still have the option of applying in a neighbouring country, or do I have to use the eVisa system now (or does it depend on the neighbouring country)?

I got what you meant about the exempt entry plus covid extensions. What I'm not sure about is whether that was your only entry in 2021. As others have said it's all educated guesswork and in the end we are always at the mercy of the IOs. You have been in Thailand less than 6 months this year but on the other hand if they let you in you are pretty much bound to go over that, plus you've only been out of the country for a short time. They won't be looking for reasons to turn people back atm and my feeling is you'll be fine (but wise to apply for a visa). If you want to come back in later in the year - or if you end up doing way over 6 months this year and then want to come in early next year - that's when I think you might have a problem. It's not that you're doomed if you go over 6 months but I think you may move yourself from green to amber by doing that. My situation is not so different - I had a bit under 6 months in 2021 and will be coming in towards the end of next month having left early March. I'm not that worried but have only booked the first couple of nights accommodation just in case.

I think we may well see a spate of cases of the 180 day rule / guideline being applied to people who have been in the country for longer periods because of the covid extensions. I know a lot of people consider it made up because it isn't written into law, but we know it has been used as a litmus test of whether someone is a genuine tourist in the past. If you find yourself in that situation it doesn't help to say there's no such rule or that it is just an excuse. OP, how long have you spent in Thailand in the last 12 months? Many people think that they reset the clock on 1 January, which by the sounds of it gives you four months. In your shoes I would be thinking about the entry after this one, as by that point you will presumably have spent more than 6 months in Thailand during 2022.

Does the rule against owning land also prevent you from holding a mortgage (e.g. I lend money to a Thai so she can buy a house, and take a mortgage over the house much like a bank would).

I don't understand why you are talking about English <> Thai transliterations or English translations of the Sanskrit text. Wasn't there a period when the Mahayana was the dominant tradition in Thailand? Their texts are largely in Sanskrit I believe. Maybe some old transliterations have been digitized. Is there a separate copyright in the transliteration? Not sure as there isn't much skill involved and I seem to remember this makes a difference - but obviously the transliteration may be a lot more recent than the work itself.

Have you come across the Aksharamukha script converter? It's an online transliteration tool that supports quite a range of scripts. I haven't used it with very long texts but if you found an electronic copy of the BG in Devanagari you might be able to transliterate it that way. Curious why you would want to do this by the way. Edit: sanskritdocuments.org will display it in Thai script. It actually uses the Aksharamukha converter to do the transliteration. I am not into Wikipedia and have no clue whether that would count as durably archived under their rules.

The only people being specific about the year are these guys who look to be trying to corner the market ahead of time. Somewhere on the main ASEAN site there is a 10-year plan that started in about 2015 and includes the common visa as a target for the second half of that period. There's a regular ministerial meeting where they apparently discuss it, so it's already reached the board room, but it could well be they just say what a good idea it would be to have something like that one day and then move on. Looks like it's an aspiration but no more than that for now. I have a good few years till I can get a retirement visa but after that it shouldn't matter to me, so fingers crossed.

Apparently an ASEAN-wide visa is expected to be launched in the next year or so. It will be similar to a Schengen visa in that it will be valid in all the member states. The system will involve more sharing of information between the member states and is obviously a step towards a common visa policy. In the Schengen area that has meant limits on how long you can spend in individual countries being replaced by limits on how long you can spend in the bloc as a whole, so you can't ping pong between say France and Spain and stay in the region indefinitely. Is a similar thing on the horizon in this region? Will a visa for a trip to Thailand followed by one for a trip to Vietnam followed by one for Singapore come to be seen as 3 back-to-back visas? I usually spend about 5 months of the year in Thailand - so no problem currently - but I spend at least 10 months of the year in ASEAN. Should I be worried?

Looks like it doesn't check the custom dictionary until it's decided on the word boundaries. It finds โท in the main dictionary so looks for คริป and draws a blank. It doesn't find any part of ดิจิทัล but still guesses that ดิ is a separate word. If you can't override this behaviour with spacing (so the program goes "this is a spaced document - no need to guess word boundaries") I suspect you're stuck with it. My version of Word does have a "Nonbreaking space" character, shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + SPC. It could be that the whole document has to be spaced to get it to stop guessing.

Looks to me as if those dialogs are actually saying that คริป and ดิ are not in the dictionary, not that คริปโทเคอร์เรนซี and ดิจิทัล aren't. In other words it's a word boundary issue. I didn't know MS Word did Thai spellchecking at all. I would have assumed not because of the difficulty of identifying the word boundaries. What happens if you insert a zero-width space after each word?

I'm wondering if I can use the day 5 test as a pre-departure test, which would require a turnaround of 1-2 days max and a proper certificate rather than just an SMS. I realize not many people will be taking these tests now, but does anyone know how the system works?

I was wondering what you could realistically do in that situation. I mean you can't just pop down to immigration. My extension expires 11 March and I'm planning to leave around 5 March. I had been wondering whether I should extend again before getting the PCR test, just in case. I don't want an overstay on my record. From this comment it sounds like you're OK as long as you're in a tourist area, but it still seems a bit risky. Maybe better safe than sorry.

Funnily enough we had some very average Thai food in KL once. It didn't stop her from coming out to see me in Jakarta a few months later so I guess I got away with it. Yeah that might be a good plan. She has some travel history but only to neighbouring countries that are on a similar economic level. I quite fancy Japan, but as you say it's not possible right now because of covid. Maybe it's yet another thing that has to wait.

The Thai in question is 31 and doesn't really have a stable job. No kids, no house of her own (it belongs to a family member), no savings to speak of. I would like to take her to Europe, ideally Switzerland, for say a three week trip, but I get that she would struggle to get a visa. Schengen is obviously supposed to be a single system with a single set of rules, but is that how it works in reality or would she have a better chance if we went somewhere else in the Schengen area? Europe would be my first choice just because I need to head back anyway, but it'd be useful to know if there are any other Western countries that are known for being less harsh (Canada?)

Try Thai Language Hut.