To be on a budget - part II: The visa

Applying for a Visa

I will not write about all the visas that exist for Thailand but only about those concerning those of you who want travel to Thailand. This is just an overview over the options; the exact regulations are different from country to country and from embassy to embassy.

1. The easiest way: Just entering the country by plane gives you a 30 day tourist-visa. You don´t have to apply for anything or call the embassy. But you have to prove before departing to Thailand that you have a ticket indicating that you’re leaving Thailand in the next 30 days. Entering the country with a one-way ticket is illegal. This is why the airline will not even let you enter their plane in your home country. You can extend this visa by crossing the border which entitles you to 15 more days.

2. The comfortable way: Applying for a 60 day tourist-visa in your home country. With this visa you can extend your trip for another 30 days by doing a visa-run if you have a re-entry permit (if it says "single entry" you just have 60 days, but you can still get 15 days more by crossing the border). This visa costs around 50€. 

UPDATE: It seems as if there are also long-term tourist visas with up to 180 days - so you have to do a visa-run every 2 months.
I never had a tourist-visa so I am not sure.

UPDATE 2: "BANGKOK: -- Royal Thai Immigration Bureau has confirmed to Thaivisa.com that holders of passports of UK, USA, Japan, Germany, France, Canada and Italy are since November 1, 2013 given 30 days at land borders instead of previously only 15 days." - www.thaivisa.com

3. The awesome way: Applying for a one year visa. To get this kind of visa you need a good reason and someone who is a guarantor for you in Thailand. The most common ways are Business and Education visas depending on whether you get a working permission or you start studying something here. The Education-visa may be the easiest one: There are several language schools which offer the opportunity to get an ED visa if you start studying Thai there.

I got a Muay Thai education-visa. On some websites of the Thai government it said already before I left that it is not possible to get them anymore but I guess it just depends on how cool the embassy in your country is. I recommend applying for visas at one of the honorary consulates instead of an embassy, because the chance is higher that they simply sell the visas, because they want to earn money, and are not that strict.

The German honorary consulate in Essen is pretty lenient with the regulations concerning the visa. I just needed a printed email from Joel, one of the Team Quest Chiang Mai owners, in which he confirmed that I will stay for training here for one year. I arrived in Essen, Germany, showed them the email, paid 140€ and walked away with a non-immigrant ED multiple entry visa.

Make sure to call the consulate in your country early enough to ask what kind of visa they offer, when you have to apply and what you need. Basically it depends to 90% on the mood of the employee of the consulate if you get an awesome visa or just a tourist one – so make sure to be nice. Picking up a friendly chat is a good idea. That is the way how I found out that they can give me the ED visa for Muay Thai also, even if it is not common anymore.

Re-entry permits and visa-runs

Whatever visa you received, you have to leave the country after, at the latest, three months to extend your visa. Even if you just cross the border to Burma, turn around and get back to Thailand, you will get another stamp in your passport, which allows you (depending on your visa) to stay another 15, 30 or 90 days until your next visa-run.

It is important to know how many re-entry permits you have since with every visa-run you lose one permit. So if you leave Thailand with a non-immigrant visa (= 1 year visa) at the 01.01.2014 you will get another 90 days into your passport, which allows you to stay until the 01.04.2014. If you leave on the 11.01.2014 again you will lose another re-entry permit, but will again just get 90 days, which means you are allowed to stay until the 11.04.2014.

So be careful and plan your trips as close as possible to the expiration of your 90-days to stay in Thailand as long as possible... unless you have as much luck as I had and get a Multiple Entry Permit. This permit allows you to leave the country whenever and how often you want to and you will always get 90 more days.

The expiration date of your visa

If your non-immigrant visa expires on the 10.01.2014, it does not mean that you have to leave the country. Instead, it marks the last day on which you can get 90 extra days through a visa run. So you can leave Thailand on the 9^th and get another 90 days.
So it is possible to stay in Thailand for a total of 15 months with a 1 year visa that at least allows 4 visa runs.

Overstay and more re-entry permits

Don´t stay longer than the stamp in your passport says! The Thai government is serious about overstays. They will charge you 500 Baht per additional day you stayed in Thailand without a valid visa. Furthermore you can lose your visa - even if you could have stayed another 9 months or so in Thailand. And if you make them really angry you can also be prohibited to enter the country for a whole entire year.
So mark the day for the visa-run in red in your calendar.

If you have a visa for one year but not enough re-entry permits you can apply for more at the Office of Immigration. I don´t know how they decide if you get one, but I know that it costs a few thousand Baht.

Furthermore you can also buy the permit to stay another 30 days, but I am not sure how this works and everyone told me that the easiest way is to just do visa-runs.

The visa stuff is quite confusing and every country deals with it differently, so make sure to contact your consulate / embassy early. I hope I could give you a brief overview on the most interesting options for you. If there are questions, post them in the comments. This way everyone can see the answer.

Final advice: Try to get a multiple entry permit! You still have to leave the country every 90 days, but it makes you rather independent as to when to travel abroad and you can´t lose days by leaving earlier.

I hope this helps!
Felix