Hi,

My wife and I are visiting from USA and would like to extend our stay, we are currently in the Isaan area. We are considering staying long term and learning the language.

We have two questions:

1) process for extending 30 day visa to longer tourist visa, what documentation is required?

2) process for changing to a ed-visa, what docs are needed as well?

Thank you for your assistance.

1. passport and arrival card and copies there of, passport photo, a form you need to fill out and 1,900 baht.

2. That is normally not done. The educational institution will help you with the paperwork and will advise you of your options. In most cases it means you will apply for an ED-visa in a neighbouring country.

1. There is no extension of 30 day visa exempt other than 7 days to depart upon TM.7 application for extension not being approved. A trip to a Consulate to obtain a tourist visa would be normal process.

2. ED visa requires paperwork/payment of school and normally a trip to a Thai Consulate outside Thailand.

Since you are in Issan I suggest make a trip to Vientiane or Savvanakhet Laos to get a 2 entry tourist visa. That would give a total of about 180 days by getting a 30 day extension of each 60 day entry at immigration. Since the visas you will get are only valid for 90 days you would have to make a border run to use the 2nd entry before it expires.

You could start your studies using the tourist visas and then make trip out of the country again to get a non immigrant ED visa with documents from school.

Edited February 7, 201313 yr by ubonjoe