Do you overstay?

[george]

Have you ever or are you currently overstaying your visa in Thailand?

[hera]

Yes 3 years ago I overstay for 6 month. The Immigration police caught me; I've been 3 weeks in jail in Chiangmai and one week in IDC Bangkok... Never again, especially with the souvenir of Thai jail. (The hel_l) SO DO NEVER OVERSTAY.

[palace1]

Lets not panic everybody. If you overstay for a week or two you should be Ok subject to paying a small fine which is charged for each day you overstay. I heard a year ago the authorities were getting tougher and threatened to imprison anyone overstaying a month!

[george]

palace1, you don't know what you are talking about. My advise is, never go overstay in Thailand!

Read about the heavy penalties for overstay here:

Do NOT overstay in Thailand!

[zer(-)biwan]

Anyone considering an overstay should take a good attentive read of this. Scary stuff.

http://philipwilliams.freeservers.com/pagev.html#overstays

[dr_Pat_Pong]

Palace's gratuitous advice could land someone in deep sh*t. I wonder where these instant experts gleen their incorrect and dangerous information. With the overstay stamp in one's passport ( and one will be there indicating fine and number of days overstay ) it not unknown for some 3rd countries to refuse entry to overstayers. The US and UK are well known for this. First priciples Palace, unless you are sure shut your mouth.

[donmeurett]

Overstaying a Visa

Any guidebook that contains a visa information section will tell you that if you overstay a visa in Thailand, you will be fined 100 or 200 baht for every day you have overstayed. You can pay this money to the immigration officer upon your departure at the airport.

Can you imagine a situation where a man overstays his Thai visa by one day, is unlucky enough to be picked up by the immigration police doing a spot-check, and thrown into a Thai jail without food and water for five days, in a cell containing 260 people with barely room to stand up. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it. Let me tell you that it isn’t. Because seven years ago, I was that man.

It was a Saturday morning in October about 7.45 am. I had overslept due to a rather late night, and was awoken by a loud knock on the door. Normally, I would have been up and dressed and on my work to my office at the Silom Rd gemstone company by 7.15, but it was sheer fate that on that particular morning, my routine went out the window. I opened the door somewhat groggily to be confronted by half a dozen young Thai guys in plain casual clothes. My initial reaction was that they had got the wrong room. I was living at that time in a rather seedy apartment building in the Soi Sri Bamphaen area of the city, and there were always groups of dodgy-looking Thai lads wandering around. They muttered something in Thai that I couldn't quite catch, and I politely told them that they had the wrong room. It was at that moment that one of them uttered the magic words "Immigration, passport", and they came into my apartment. I stood there somewhat bewildered as they proceeded to open drawers, check the clothes in my wardrobe, and flash a torch under the bed. I started to become somewhat angry when one of them grabbed my arms to check for needle-pricks. I rushed over to where I kept my passport and held it out for scrutiny. Perhaps that might be the key to live me in peace.The guy who appeared to be the head man flicked through the passport until he arrived at the visa page, looked at it carefully, and exclaimed "overstay, you come immigration". I have to say that I wasn't the slightest bit worried at this point. I knew about the 100 baht a day overstay, and I also had a flight ticket to Singapore for the following day. It had been my intention to pay 200 baht at the airport when I left the country. At least they knew it was my intention to leave.

I called my boss at work to say I would be late, and was escorted downstairs to the front of the apartment building. I was told to get in the back of a pick-up truck along with a young French guy and an Israeli. They had been rounded up just 10 minutes earlier for not being in possession of a passport at all. We made nervous conversation as we rode through the streets to the police station on Soi Suan Phlu next to the immigration office.

At the police station itself, I was made to fill in several forms, and generally sat around for what seemed like hours. The tension of the whole situation was heightened by a vicious argument going on between two policemen. It was something we didn't need. Just adjacent to the room we were in was a large holding cell with iron bars. There were about 100 people in it just staring out into space . Teenage motorcycle joy-riders, the odd prostitute and pimp, and a good handful of farangs rounded up for passport violation. I certainly didn't belong with them. I had just overstayed a visa by one day. I'll be on my way to work before too long How wrong you can be. One of the immigration police produced a bunch of keys. You know the sort of keys that you see in Robin Hood films. He inserted the key in the iron door of the cell and gestured to the three of us to step inside. By now, I'm getting really worried. My thoughts were drifting toward my family back in England, and a more law-abiding family you could never meet. Funny how all sorts of mental demons begin to play in your head at times like this. We were held in that cell for a further hour, just generally chatting and wondering what fate awaited us. There are several moments that I recall in this story when time stood still under the sheer weight of 'this abso-f*cking-lutely can't be happening to me' and the first of those moments came next. A copper emerges with a long chain of leg-irons, and he actually wanted the 8 farangs in that cell, including me, to put them on. After they were secured, we hobbled and shuffled the short distance from the immigration police station to the immigration detention center (IDC), which is directly behind the immigration office. Not in your wildest dreams could you ever imagine the degradation of having to do that in full view of the folks in Soi Suan Phlu going about their daily lives, parents pointing us out to their kids. Humiliation beyond belief. The IDC at that time had been featured in the international news. Apparently, Amnesty International had been campaigning to have the place closed down, and they still are to this day. I joined Amnesty shortly after I was released from here. I've never really been a political person, but it fights causes that are worth fighting. But back to the story. The IDC consists of an open courtyard with about 6 huge cells surrounding it. First of all you have to go through a processing system before you are incarcerated. We were divided up into three groups; farangs, guys from the sub-continent of India and Pakistan, and Burmese. That day the immigration had rounded up over 300 passport violators. We sat in that open courtyard for over an hour with the midday sun blazing down, while the Thai police wandered around importantly, barking orders at anyone who so much as coughed. But they weren't really the ones to be feared. There were a couple f huge African guys who I later learned were in their for 10 years on drug charges and holding false passports. They had somehow been given the job of overseers by the Thai police, who allowed these two Schwarzenneger-like figures to carry batons and use them whenever they felt the need. Watching these two guys strutting around with their psuedo-authority almost became the moment when I decided enough was enough. A little man inside me was screaming and imploring me to stand up and just say 'Excuse me, but I'm British. I'm going to walk out of those gates now, and there ain't no motherf*cker gonna stand in my way'. But I sat down and remained silent. An Austrailian guy behind me could see I was starting to lose it and put a re-assuring hand on my shoulder. It's difficult in these kind of situations not to interpret that as a homosexual gesture, but I knew he meant well. Eventually after being fingerprinted and weighed, we were taken to the cells. The 8 or so farangs were put in cell B, along with about 250 Burmese and Indians. A cell barely big enough for a 100. As it came to pass, all thoughts of sleep were out of the question. When 120 people sat down, 120 people had to stand up. That's how it continued for five days. Each prison cell was run by Chinese mafia. They organised the cleaning, the distribution of food to the prisoners, and made any decisions such as when half of the cell's turn to sit down had arrived. I became quite friendly with the main-man, a Chinese guy called Kenny. He spoke excellent English and had lived in London for a number of years. It wasn't my place to ask him what he was there for, but I needed the guy on my side. The cell itself was third-world to the extreme. A small toilet block overflowing with urine and excrement, and a totally window-less room with no indication of when night became day. I learned valuable lessons in prison. Lessons about how much every nationality can get along when their backs are truly against the wall. I talked politics with Burmese, debated football games with Germans, and laughed and joked with Indians, Arabs, and Pakistanis. Without their support I would never have got through it. I recall a Thai guy approaching me, his hair shaved from having recently completed his monkhood. He basically wanted to bum a cigarette from me, but he reached out to me and grabbed my hand, and with an almost psychic sense told me that I would be leaving tomorrow. He was right, and the next day the British Embassy had been informed by my boss, and they came to get me out. When the prison guard called out my name and freedom beckoned, all 260 people in that cell stood up and clapped ( a traditional prison gesture). It was an overwhelming moment that I will take to the grave. I was taken by police escort to Don Muang airport and put on a plane to Singapore. I stank. I hadn't showered in 5 days, and the smell of prison hung all over me. I really don't know what the well-dressed woman in the next seat thought, but I was too busy tucking into the airline food. Later that evening, I was sitting in the Merlion park in Singapore. If you've been there, you'll know that at night the view is something else as thousands of tiny lights dance across the harbor waters. And I remember thinking about what freedom really means, and yes, I do remember tears streaming down my face. I don't suppose there is an objective to this story really. Thailand lies about its visa overstay law. It says that you can pay a fixed amount for every day that you overstay, but what they don't tell you is that if the police catch you first, you're in deep shit. I've never forgiven Thailand for what it did. The mental scars have never healed. 7 years later, I still get nervous when I have to go to the immigration office in Suan Phlu for even the most trivial reason. On one of the last visits there, I chanced to see one of the black guys who had acted as overseer on the day I was imprisoned years ago. Perhaps rather stupidly, I gave him a mouthful and then some. He stood there and took it. He just smiled, but perhaps I had exorcised one more demon. If you've read Warren Fellows book about his 12 years in a Thai prison, he hits the nail on the head when he says that Thai prisons are 'robbers of the soul'. They are not even worthy of being classed as 'third-world'. There are farangs rotting away in these places, and I'm not sure all of them deserve to be there.

 

[Rinrada]

Agree..

Good report,Grime reading-Message-Dont Overstay :ghostface:

[hukster]

I overstayed one day last month, due to the fact that the airlines changed thier schedule, and cancelld the flight to BKK on the day i was leaving. The airline sent me an E mail, i printed it, showed it to immigration at the airport. No fine, and no overstay stamp. I still hsve the E mail with my passport so when i apply for my visa in Los Angeles next week if they say anything i have the documentation.

[george]

First day of overstay is by rule no charge, but the immigration give you an overstay stamp in the passport.