Hello,

I would have please your understanding of what my options are for possible longer stay in Thailand.

I have a 6-month Non-Immigrant category B visa, with date of issue 16 Jun 2012 and "enter before date" of 17th Dec 2012. I have been in Thailand since August 2012. On 16th Dec 2012 I crossed the Thai/Burma border one last time and came back into Thailand and got a 90-day entry permit valid until 15th March 2013. I had thought that this 15th March date was now the final limit of my stay in Thailand.

However a friend now suggests that I should be able to cross the border and get a tourist visa for 15 days and repeat this indefinitely.

Another friend says that because of the length of the original visa the maximum I would be granted would be a 7-day extension, with a maximum repeat of one extra 7-day extension. Even then, they suggest, the extension is not guaranteed.

If I need to, I can cross the land border at Mae Sai as much as I need to, but I need to book my flight back to Europe as soon as possible based on the true end date. Currently I have 3 weeks to book the flight back, which is OK for time at the moment, but now this new possibility of staying has been suggested I need to find out asap if this is a valid option.

What is the true situation? In particular I don't want to find myself in the situation where I have to book a flight at the very last minute.

I am a 49-year old British male.

Thank you very much for any help!

It sounds like 15 March is your last day for what you have now.

You can get a 7 day extension at an immigration office, but will probably be required to show a ticket out of Thailand within those 7 days.

You can cross the border, and return, and get a 15 day visa exempt entry. You can do that multiple times, but I doubt you'd be able to do that indefinitely.

You can visit a Thai Consulate in another country and apply for a tourist visa. That would give you 60 days, and can be extended for another 30 days. Double entry tourist visas should also be available in the region.

Terry

Thanks Terry!

Apparently 4 consecutive visa exempt overland entries are what they are allowing and at both Mae Sai and Mae Sot they seem to be quite strict about this. If you have a valid reason for needing to make more trips than this, they might be OK with it, but you are probably pushing your luck. Note that it would be OK to make 4 consecutive overland entries, following by a period of absence from Thailand, say by going to Laos or even Tachileik (opposite Mae Sai) but this would need to be for a while not just 1-2 days and then you could probably continue the process again another couple of times. All really depends how much longer you want to extend your stay in Thailand for but 15 day overland entries are not a guarantee that you make them indefinitely, at least not without a longer period of absence from Thailand.

Have never heard of a six month B visa - they are either single entry or multi entry as issued by Consulates outside of Thailand? This was issued by a Consulate and not an extension of stay from Immigration? Was it perhaps a two entry visa? Normally a Consulate multi entry would be valid for 12 months from date of issue so this is not making sense. To obtain a new 90 day stay it would have had to be a multi entry visa (or second entry of a 2 entry visa) or a mistake was made.

As for new visa exempt entry of 15 days by land entry or 30 days by air entry is available or a tourist visa could be obtained from a Consulate for 60 day stay. Obviously you can not work on such entry so any work permit would be invalid.