Takeaways & tips!
30-day tourist visa on entry (no cost) - Thailand
2 options to extend – border run & immigration extension
Border run can bus/fly to Malaysia
Immigration can stay an additional month for $2,000bt per person (cash only) (~$90AUD)
The biggest thing I wish I understood more before leaving Aus was the visa situation. Sure I’d googled it, to the extent of “what is the Visa situation in Thailand”, I’d clicked on a couple of non scammy looking links, I think I even read the Smart Traveller website! (which basically just made me scared of mosquitos and monkeys...) and I thought I kind of knew what was going on, but to be honest, I found the information really confusing. Between the Australian Government websites and the Thai Embassy website there was a lot of info, and I think I just had enough to worry about at the time I thought whatever, I don’t have the capacity for this right now, I'll just figure it out as we go.
We had essentially no plan or schedule when we left Aus mid-September other than being due in Bali early Nov for a family 60th then maybe probably heading back to Aus sometime near Christmas to see family and get Kaia’s 12-month vaccinations.
When we arrived in Thailand at the airport, we realised our period of stay was for one month only.
There was some conflicting info online, I had read 90 days, 60 days and 30 days. I was optimistically hoping it would be 60 or 90 but these were COVID allowances that had been pulled back. There was no cost on entry, we just knew that we had to figure something out if we wanted to stay longer than a month.
We heard of people doing border runs and it all sounded simple enough (some of the tourist places advertise it) where they take you up to the Malaysian border, get your passport stamped, then bring you back. The more we looked into it we realised it wasn't feasible for us and the baby – maybe us pre-baby would have chanced it but not with Kaia. It was a long bus ride (like 8+ hours), likely an overnight stay somewhere random and that very long bus ride back. There was also a warning published about that area being a high risk due to civil unrest, protests, and terrorism.
We got chatting to locals and climbers who had stayed longer than a month and while some/most did the border run, there were other options. The border run in a slightly easier, shinier, comfier and more expensive version aka fly up to Malaysia and fly back, for us it would also include an overnight stay in the airport to accommodate the baby. There was also a less ‘advertised’ option which was going to the immigration office and asking to extend your tourist visa, so this is what we did.
We headed out as soon as Kaia woke up from her 1st nap (~20m scoot from Aonang), as soon as we got there we saw a sign on the door, the office was closed for 1h for the staff lunch break, of course we had just missed it by minutes. We took off to find some lunch then headed back, of course to a plethora of others waiting to do the same thing. We were seen surprisingly quickly (probably because of the baby), an officer explained to us the process and our options, basically you pay $2,000bt per person (yes for the baby as well), they do an 'interview', stamp your passport, give you some paperwork and send you on your way. The paperwork took longer than I expected, but in saying that it's an official document and visa extension so you're kind of grateful that it's all very above board and done properly.
Note: They need a paper copy of your passport! We didn’t have one, thankfully we could pay some more for them to do it there.
Note: They accept cash only! Thankfully we had just got cash out as we don’t usually carry that much $6,000bt about $270AUD.
Note: The immigration office is in the middle of no where so you can't just step outside to an ATM or go grab some food.
Note: You can only do the immigration run twice before you may be pushing the friendship, and are likely to be declined.
In hindsight it was a necessary experience for us, but moving forward we would definitely do it differently by either planning to only stay for one month and moving on, or looking into more detail at other visa options (in advance).
There are other visa options, an education visa being the next step up for a longer term stay which is where you pay a fee for a 12-month stay. You do have to commit some volunteer time to a Thai learning school, but from what we heard this was easily avoided if you wanted to. There was also a business visa which we didn’t know much about, but what we were told was that it was so hard to get or keep it wasn’t worth it. We also looked at the digital nomad visa which a lot of countries were jumping on board with, to encourage travellers earning a foreign income to stay in their country and contribute to the local economy without taking any local jobs, but essentially the requirements were so high that 99% of travellers didn’t go down this route - the most popular were definitely the tourist visa (with border run or immigration office extension) followed by the education visa for those who were serious about staying longer.
Nowadays we plan our stays in Thailand in one-month blocks, then spend some time somewhere else.
In November we did another month in Thailand before going to spend a week in Malaysia. We could then return to Thailand for another month with no issues, but instead we headed back to Aus for Christmas😊
Til next time,
R
Comments