Visa Runs - Requirement To Enter Other Country

[Radar501]

In 2010, I found myself at Sadao on yet another visa run to the Malaysian border. My Australian passport was almost full, and I did not want to use the remaining few pages quicker than I had to.

The usual procedure at a Thai-Malay border is a Thai stamp-out, Malay stamp-in (free, no visa required), then Malay stamp-out and Thai stamp-in.

This time though, I thought I would test the immigration procedures in order to try and save some valuable space in my passport. After stamping-out from Thailand, I browsed around the dutyfree shop in No Man's Land for about 20 minutes, then without entering Malaysia, I returned to the Thai side and got stamped-in. I know that on some previous occasions I had entered Thailand at Sadao, Thai Immigration officials flipped through my passport, maybe to check if there was a corresponding exit stamp from Malaysia. On this occasion, though, I got straight through.

I have since had time to reflect on what I did, and I regret my actions. Although I now have a new passport (and therefore a clean slate), I hate the thought of having had an irregularity in my old passport which may have invited scrutiny. I won't do anything like that again.

As previously detailed, the only reason I took the action was to save space in my passport. I am sure it would have been even more critical had I done a visa run to Laos or Cambodia, where, on top of the exit/entry stamps, a further full page of my passport would have been used up with the visa sticker, and at a cost.

Soooo, what is the law in relation to these border posts? Having legally departed Thailand, or any other country for that matter, what requirements are there for me to enter another country before returning? I would be interested if any other member at TV has any war stories about this topic.

By the way, I have heard some ridiculous accounts of people actually unpeeling visas from their passports to create extra space. That would be so easy to detect, and any such altering of a passport would surely make it invalid.

[Maestro]

Soooo, what is the law in relation to these border posts?

There is no law about it. The immigration police most likely has internal guidelines on the subject.