Thailand Visa Guides 2026

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Visas & Immigration

Why Most Expats Should Not Get a Thai Retirement Visa

The Thailand retirement visa costs about 65,000 baht a year in government fees, gives you the right to live in the country, and pays a pension you cannot claim from.

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Visas & Immigration

Extending a Thai Tourist Visa: The Real Procedure, Step by Step

Two documents, one rubber stamp, a queue at an immigration office that is free, and a 1,900 baht fee. The hard part is not the process, it is the two-week rule and people find out about it on day 58.

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Visas & Immigration

What It Actually Costs to Overstay a Thai Visa

A one-day overstay is 500 baht and a short conversation. A six-month one is 20,000 baht, deportation, and a re-entry ban that is recognised well beyond Thailand's own borders.

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Visas & Immigration

The Questions They Ask at Immigration, and How to Answer Them

How long are you staying, where are you staying, how did you get here, and what do you do. Four questions, asked by everyone, and the wrong answer to any of them is a longer queue.

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Visas & Immigration

You Cannot Earn Money in Thailand on a Tourist Visa, and the List of Jobs You Cannot Do Is Longer Than You Think

Working a single shift behind a bar is technically illegal on every visa except a work permit, and the list of jobs closed to foreigners even with a permit runs to more than two dozen.

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Visas & Immigration

The Cannabis Advice Everybody Repeats Is Two Years Out of Date

It was legal for three years, then it was not, and almost every piece of advice written before June 2025 is now actively misleading. The rule that matters is not the one about smoking.

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Visas & Immigration

The Insurance Requirement Nobody Reads Before the Visa Appointment

Retirement and LTR visas have hard published insurance minimums, the policy has to come from an approved insurer list, and a travel insurance policy will not do it.

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Visas & Immigration

The Border Run Is Now Capped, and the Cap Is Two

For twenty years the answer to running out of days was a bus to Aranyaprathet. From 15 September 2026 land border entries are limited to two a year.

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Visas & Immigration

Permanent Residence Requires Three Years and a Quota of a Hundred People

The PR card solves every visa problem in Thailand, the application window is fixed each year, and the quota is about a hundred places per nationality.

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Slow Travel

The Coworking Space Is Not the Product, the Visa Status Is

A desk in Chiang Mai costs two hundred baht a day. The visa costs eight thousand. Sorting these in the wrong order is how people end up on a 30-day visa exemption.

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Visas & Immigration

The Ninety Day Report Is Not a Visa Renewal and It Is Not Optional

If you are on any long-stay visa, you have a form to file every ninety days. Almost nobody knows it exists, and the penalty for ignoring it is a flat two thousand baht.

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Visas & Immigration

You Cannot Get an Education Visa for Something You Do Not Attend

The cheapest legal long-term stay in Thailand needs a real school, real attendance and a real curriculum, and immigration actually checks. Here is what has to be true.