New Visa rules for Thailand; the Thais, they are a-changin'

In order to limit the amount of foreigners using "back-to-back" border runs, Thai Immigration has issued a new regulation regarding the 30 days tourist exemption.

Effective immediately, travellers without visa will get only 15 days of stay if they are arriving via a land border checkpoint from a neighboring country.

Passengers arriving via an international airport will obtain a 30 days stay, and for them there is no change.

Travellers with Malaysian passports will obtain a 30 days stay.

This police order number 778/2551 is today confirmed by Royal Thai Police, Immigration Bureau, in Bangkok.

-- thaivisa.com 2008-12-04

Thanks for the update Static.

Man are they making harder to live there without being a citizen or what?

Gone are the days where a border run every thirty days would make it almost like you were living there.

Do you have advice for people that want to try to stay there longer? Is there still an option for doing that?

In the old days it was always 15 days. All of here would simply go down to Penang every 3 months and apply for a new tourist visa (valid up to 3 months). Vientiane wasn't open for visa runs in those days.

When you think about, doing a trip to say Vientiane every 3 months is, in the end, a lot better than dashing to the border every 1 month.

Compare:
2 nights in a comfortable train sleeper to and from Laos, one night in Vientiane and enjoy the laid back atmosphere and good food in the Laotian capital. Once every 3 months.

with:
a complete day sat on a bus bored stiff going to the dirty Khmer border town of Poipet where scam immigration officials try to get more out of you than the official fee. Once every month.

During differnt visas, non-immigrants, i've had to do that kind of visa run - gruesome. Going for a proper visa every 3 months is far better! And there is currently no limit to how many you can get in a row!

OK, so would you recommend I get x2 30 day thai visas then: we're entering from Hong Kong end of Feb 09, prob have a week or two there, and either work our way up to chiang mai or down to the islands (not sure which yet) then crossing into either cambodia/laos plus vietnam then re-entering Thailand?? Which route/visa option would you suggest??