Category: Thailand Visa

Thailand Visa Extension

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If you have a Non-Immigrant Visa in Thailand, you will most likely need to apply for a Visa extension every 90 days while living in Thailand. It’s actually quite a complex process and nothing is really officially set in stone as to what immigration forms you need to fill out and what you need to bring. So here’s a breakdown of the Thailand Visa Extension process…

Where to find Bangkok Immigration for your Visa Extension

If applying for a Visa Extension in Bangkok, the local Bangkok Immigration is Chaeng Wattana located slightly outside of the main city centre. To get to Chaeng Wattana you can just take the BTS to Mo Chit station and ask a taxi driver to take you to ‘Chaeng Wattana Immigration’. Most taxi drivers will know exactly where to take you straight away and it will usually cost around 100 baht each way.

Once you arrive at the main entrance, the Bangkok immigration department will be through the doors just on the right hand side. N.B You might want to dress a bit warmer than usual as the complex gets really damn cold.

immigration bangkok

Chaeng Wattana opening times

Chaeng Wattana is open Monday to Friday from 8.30 am. Bangkok immigration will temporarily close at noon until 1pm while the officers take their lunch break. It’s best to get to Chaeng Wattana Immigration as early as possible so you can be finished before the lunch break but, don’t worry, it’s not so bad if you can’t. The Chaeng Wattana government complex has a few shops, restaurants and cafes to keep you entertained during the break, it’s more like a cross between a shopping mall and an airport than a government building. They even have cars on display for sale.

90 day report

What to bring to Immigration

  • Your passport
  • 1 copy of all pages of your passport*
  • 1 passport photo*
  • All the necessary documents provided by your school/ work.
  • 1900 baht fee

*N.B: Conveniently, there are a couple of passport photo and photocopy services on the basement floor where all the cafes and food courts are.

First time applying for a Visa Extension in Thailand

  • Collect a Thailand Visa Extension TM7 form from the reception area and fill it out.
  • Collect a ticket for the queue and wait
  • Once called, the officer will take your passport and documents and tell you to sit back down
  • Make sure to keep hold of your queue ticket. The officer will call you back to collect your passport
  • You should have a new stamp in your passport with a new leaving date. Also, you should have received a small, white slip of paper to confirm report of your address (as below).

Bangkok immigration

Thailand 90 Day Report Address

When living in Thailand for more than 90 days, you are supposed to report you address within every 90 days. When you first extend your Visa at immigration in Thailand, the officer will automatically report your address and attach this small white ticket inside your passport. Every time you apply for a Visa Extension in the future after this, you need to fill out yet another separate form, 90 Day Report, afterwards and queue all over again in a separate section. You need to make sure to do this or you could be fined up to 5000 baht. All the queuing at Bangkok immigration takes quite a few hours so be prepared.

Second time applying for a Visa Extension in Thailand

  • Collect a TM7 Visa Extension form from the reception area and fill it out
  • Collect a TM47 90 Day Report form and fill it out also
  • You will need to collect a queue number for the Visa section to apply for your Visa extension, same as before
  • Once finished you will need to collect another queue number ticket for the 90 Day Report section to report your address.
  • You should receive a reciept to show that you have reported your address

Thailand Immigration leeway

N.B. I have seen it written on some forms that you must report your address and extend your Visa at least 7 days before the date stamp in your passport. True, it is probably safer to do this if there is a risk of paying a fine. However do not stress too much about this as, on the contrary, I believe they actually allow leeway for an extra 7 days after the date stamp in your passport. In the past, I have accidentally passed the date on my 90 day Report Address by a couple of days and it wasn’t a problem with Bangkok Immigration at Chaeng Wattana.

Thailand Tourist Visa

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What Visa should I get to go to Thailand?

If you are planning on visiting Thailand for a simple short-term holiday, a Tourist Visa will normally provide a long enough length of stay (up to six months) for most people. Also, it depends on what country your passport was issued in (scroll below for a full list), but most Passport holders can stay in Thailand for up to 90 days without even having to apply for a Thai Visa all thanks to the Visa Exemption Rule in Thailand.

Want to skip the boring details? Take a gander below at Entering Thailand Without A Visa.

How do I apply for a Thailand Visa?

If you are from one of the below listed countries, you do not need to apply for a Tourist Visa before departing for your holiday to Thailand under the Visa Exemption Rule. You do absolutely nothing, immigration will simply issue you with an arrival card and stamp on arrival at the airport in Thailand. The only catch is that you cannot stay in Thailand for longer than 30 days at a time. This means you need to cross the border, get your passport stamped and re-enter every 30 days, but this isn’t usually a problem for travellers planning on exploring the neighbouring countries such as Laos, Malaysia and Cambodia anyway.

Providing you leave Thailand every 30 days, you can stay for a maximum total of 90 days within a 6 month period without a Thai Visa. It may be worth noting though, that if you first enter Thailand at a border crossing rather than an International Airport, your Visa will only allow you a stay of 15 days, rather than 30 days.

What about a Thailand Tourist Visa?

The only time you will need to apply for a Tourist Visa in advance, is if you are only booking one-way flights and don’t have any other proof of onward travel out of Thailand. Some airlines may have a problem with this and refuse to allow you to fly. Another advantage of applying for a Tourist Visa in advance, is that you will be permitted to stay in Thailand for the first 60 days instead of 30 without leaving.

This means that if you apply for a triple entry Thailand Tourist Visa in advance for around £75, you can stay for a total of 6 months instead of 90 days – as long as you exit and re-enter Thailand every 60 days. Either way, in this case, you need to make sure to apply for your Thai Tourist Visa at your local Thai consulate at least a week or two in advance – Most Thai consulates generally take no more than a few days to process Thailand Visa applications. You can also apply in person if running low on time, this typically only takes up to an hour.

Entering Thailand without a Thai Visa

  • Obtain an entry stamp and arrival card after landing at the airport in Thailand
  • Leave the country or cross the border within 30 days of arrival in Thailand
  • You can exit and re-enter Thailand up to 3 times for a maximum stay of 90 days
  • Must provide proof of adequate finances, for example cash of at least 10,000 baht per person
  • Must have at least 6 months passport validity
  • Must have proof of onward travel within 30 days of arrival in Thailand. For example a return flight ticket or train ticket out of Thailand
  • Passport must be issued by one the listed countries below

Countries under the Visa Exemption Rule in Thailand

  • Argentina
  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Bahrain
  • Belgium
  • Brazil
  • Brunei
  • Canada
  • Chile
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • Hong Kong
  • Iceland
  • Indonesia
  • Ireland
  • Israel
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Korea
  • Kuwait
  • Laos
  • Luxembourg
  • Macau
  • Malaysia
  • Monaco
  • Mongolia
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Oman
  • Peru
  • Philippines
  • Portugal
  • Qatar
  • Russia
  • Singapore
  • South Africa
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • Turkey
  • United Arab Emirates
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
  • Vietnam

Alternatively, anybody planning on acquiring a Non-tourist Visa in Thailand must apply in advance. You can read more about staying in Thailand long-term and other Thailand Visas here.

Applying for a Non-Immigrant Thai Visa from Kuala Lumpur Embassy

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kuala lumpur thai embassy

How much does a Thai Visa application Run to Kuala Lumpur Cost?

A three day Thai visa trip to Kuala Lumpur on a budget – 8000 baht. Easy.

If you fancy seeing a little bit of Malaysia while doing your Thai Visa application, you can do so relatively cheaply and easily. You can get two trains from Hua Lamphong station to Kuala Lumpur, first to Penang (where you can check out George Town for some sightseeing) or Butterworth, then changing over to Kuala Lumpur. This does, however, take about two days of travelling time I believe, and costs not much less than a cheap flight. If you are flexible with dates, you can get a return flight to Kuala Lumpur from Bangkok for about 5000 baht – not too bad.

From the airport, you can catch the KLIA train to the centre of Kuala Lumpur for 35 RM (£7) and find a decent youth hostel for 35 RM (£7) per night – Explorers Guesthouse is a particularly good one for this price. Also, food is cheap in Kuala Lumpur – you can get a meal from 4 RM and catch the metro from just 1 RM. So you can get by on a small amount of pocket money if you’re on a budget.

mala

How to apply for your Non-Immigrant Thai Visa and what to expect

It’s important to make sure that your stay in Kuala Lumpur is no shorter than two working days. You will need to make sure you bring a photocopy of your passport, 2 x recent passport photos, 220 RM fee and all the necessary documentation. Then get to the Thai embassy in the Ampang area for 9.15am (as it gets busy). There is a metro station (Ampang Park) very close by.

Once you’ve filled out the visa form and got your receipt, you can spend the day sight seeing! Yay! But… there is not that much in the actual city to do or see in my opinion so you do not need more than a few days in Kuala Lumpur for sightseeing… unless you have the cash to go on some excursions out of the city.

You won’t be able to collect your passport and visa until 2.30pm the next working day. I’ve seen people at the embassy completely screwed because they were expecting it all to be done on the day… so they booked the flight the same day and everything 🙁

You can only get a single entry visa from Kuala Lumpur, but as a single entry visa is considerably cheaper than a multiple one, I personally think it’s much better to apply for one of these anyway. If you ever need to leave the country or go on a holiday, you can simply apply for Re-entry at an embassy in Thailand for a small fee.

Batu Caves In Kuala Lumpur

 

I have no Exit Stamp from Thailand

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thia visa no exit stamp

If you ever managed to leave Thailand on for whatever reason did not get your passport stamped at the border, this post may be of interest to you.

 

Earlier on in the year, I took part in a charity tuk tuk race from Bangkok, across the Malaysian border, over to Sumatra and ended up in the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta. Thanks to a combination of exhausting, confusing and a healthy dose of nonchalance, I managed to leave Thailand without getting my passport stamped. The Malaysian border officials gave me my Malaysian stamp and on we went.

 

It wasn’t until I wanted to return to Thailand to live for a year that I thought I should get this sorted before landing in Bangkok. Not having an exit stamp from Thailand could result in any of the below…

  • Being fined in Baht, per day from the date my visa ran out to the day I landed back in Thailand.
  • Being incarcerated until I can pay said fine.
  • Being deported from Thailand.
  • Being permanently banned from entering Thailand.
  • All of the above.

None of those are particulally appealing to me so I decided to call the Thai Consulate in the U.K to get this sorted before flying. Luckily I have an entry stamp to Malaysia long before my Thai tourist visa expires, I also have an exist stamp from Malaysia before my Thai tourist visa expires. On top of that, I even have an entry and exit stamp from Indonesia within the Thai tourist visa limit.
 

So I call the consulate, who are confused by the situation. I explain several times that I left Thailand via land, through Sadao and I do not have an exit stamp. After some worried groans, the Thai Consulate offers to call the Thai Embassy to see what we can do. I wait for two days and get a call back, and to summarise: good luck.

 

What the Consulate actually said was that there is nothing they, nor the Embassy could do. I would have to board my plane, rock up in Thailand and except to visit the immigration office in the airport, where I would have to explain why I do not have an exit stamp. The Consulate thinks it should be fine, because its obvious I’ve just landed and I clearly have stamps for the other countries. That being said, I should take any additional proof I have that I left the country such as train or plane tickets and be prepared to pay a fine. I guess if your moving to Thailand you should probably get used to it. Don’t be put off, what are often long complicated processes in England can often be solved in Thailand with a minor fine. It’s a good thing, to an extent.

 

Oh, one more thing – The Thai Consulate gave me the number of immigration at the airport so that I could call them before I fly in, and do my best to explain my situation. The Consulate was not sure if this would help or not, mearly suggested it is worth a try.

 

So, quite an open answer from the Thai Embassy. It’s certainly an exiting start to my year long stay in Thailand. I’l be sure to update this post as soon as I speak to immigration on the phone and once again once I fly in.

UPDATE: Got in fine. Zero happened at the airport. Cool.

 

Adios,
Happy