About

My name is Somchai. My friends call me Bank, which I have never successfully explained, and I have lived in Chiang Mai long enough that I have strong opinions about which noodle stall is acceptable and which one has gone downhill.

I write about visas because that is what people ask me about, and about everything else because the visa is the part that stops people coming.

How I research this

Thai entry rules come from Ministry of Interior notifications in the Royal Gazette, with MFA maintaining the bilateral agreement list and the Immigration Bureau running the arrival card and the extensions. When those change, this site changes. I check monthly and I date-stamp everything.

Where the government has not published something, I say it has not been published. There are four open questions on the visa page right now and I have left all four of them visible rather than rounding them off into a confident answer.

What I will not do

I do not sell visas, take a fee for an application, or refer you to anyone who does. The Thai eVisa is applied for directly and every embassy publishes its own fee. If somebody is charging you a service fee, they are charging you for a queue that does not exist.

I am not a lawyer or an immigration adviser. Nothing here is legal advice. If your case is unusual, a real Thai immigration lawyer is worth more than anything on this site.

Corrections

I get things wrong. Thailand changes these rules fast and I will occasionally be a few days behind or have misread a notification. If you find an error, tell me and I will fix it and say so. Accuracy matters more to me than being first.