Travel Documents for Thailand-Lots of Options

January 15, 2017

Wat Chedi Lueng, Chiang Mai

Travel Document Requirements

This post is not so much of a story as a lesson on how to obtain travel documents. My examples are specifically for Thailand, although you would probably have to follow most of the same steps to travel to another country for an extended time. I’ve included a few pictures for those of you who are not needing all this information at this time.

Ebb and flow of traffic in Chiang Mai

For those of us who travel to the United States, Mexico or even Europe, a passport is all you need to enter the country as a tourist, even if you are planning to stay for an extended time. If you plan to stay as a student or to work in another country, then you are no longer a tourist and will usually need some kind of visa. Our children had student visas when they attended university in Pennsylvania and Mississippi. Melissa has a special kind of work visa now to enable her to stay in California to teach, but only at the school that hired her. Owen married an American so he has a “green card”. This is a visa that allows him to live in and work at any job in the United States.

The purpose of the visa is a way to keep track of who is visiting and to ensure that tourists are not taking jobs away from the residents. Immigration also wants to make sure that visitors have enough money or a ticket to leave the country. Hotels have to register our passport/visa number with the police who come by several times a week to check on the location of the tourists. Although the economy here is dependent on traveller’s dollars, they also don’t want their culture disappearing by being overrun by outsiders. Northern Thailand was never captured and they don’t want to start now.

Visa Waiver Stamp

If we were visiting Thailand for less than a month, we would only need our passport and an ongoing ticket showing that we were not going to remain in the country for more than 30 days. We would receive a visa waiver stamp. Everyone entering Thailand also completes an arrival/departure card. The departure card is stapled into your passport until you leave so they can check that you haven’t over stayed. The same is true for citizens of 51 other countries. Some countries can stay 15 days or 90 days and others need a visa to enter for any length of time.

For people staying longer than 30 days as a tourist, there are options. I will share what I have learned, but the rules are changing quite frequently and I am definitely not an immigration lawyer. I will put some links to websites in the blog that I used for information. Blogs are useful on the “how to” part of the paperwork, as long as they are relatively current. We have also gained information from talking with other people who have visas that are different from ours.

Single Entry Visa

Most visas are applied for from your country of residence. You can either visit a consulate office in person, or send your documents and forms to a consulate and have them sent back to you with your visa. Fortunately for us there is a Royal Thai Consulate in Edmonton, Alberta. It has limited hours, but was able to process our visa the same day. We needed our passport to have at least 6 months before expiration. There also have to be enough blank pages remaining for the visa and the stamps when you arrive. The new Canadian 10 year passport made that part easy. We needed to complete an application form found on-line and provide 2 pictures that are 4X6 cm. This is different from Canadian passport pictures (5X7 cm). You also have to pay cash for the fee.

We chose a single entry visa. This means that we entered Thailand and stayed as a tourist for 60 days. At the end of that time, we visited the immigration office in Chiang Mai and extended it for 30 more days. It cost us $40 CAD for the visa and about $70 to extend it. If we had left Thailand before the 60 days were up, we could have paid for a re-entry permit at the immigration office, or at the airport the day of the flight. They cost about $40 and are necessary if you will still be covered by your original visa days when you return. I only just found this existed while doing some research for this post. The answer was on a blog, not an official government page.

How it works for us

This visa works just fine for us as we want to get to know Thailand first anyways. Once our 90 days are up, then we can leave the country and come back in as new tourists with the 30 day visa waiver stamp. It can also be extended for 30 days and $70 if needed. We are travelling to Laos on January 22 for 5 days. We leave for Cambodia on February 16 before the 30 days are up. After a trip to Krabi in the south with Melissa in March, we will travel to Nepal for 10 days before returning to Chiang Mai to fly home on April 1. This will ensure that we are not in Thailand more than 30 days at a time after our visa runs out. The number of times you can come and go is officially unlimited. Those who are in and out the country more often are likely to be scrutinized more carefully at immigration and can be denied entry. They really want you to apply for a proper visa from outside the country.

Visas for other countries nearby

The countries that we are visiting require visas but these are purchased at the border/airport when you arrive. They also require forms, cash and a different size picture. We paid about $15 each at home for the wrong size pictures. A local photo place here did 6 pictures each for about $4 and they are correct. Laos charges $35 USD for Americans and $42USD for Canadians. They also expect you to pay in USD. The Thai bhat price converts to a much higher amount. It can be very confusing, even with the advantage of Internet searches.

Multi Entry Visa

Canadians, and many others can also enter Thailand on a multi-entry visa. It costs $200 and requires a copy of your bank statement to show that you can afford to stay in the country for up to 6 months. ($7500 in the bank for 6 months prior to applying) This visa allows you to come and go from the country without a re-entry permit. When re-entering the country it gives you 60 more days to remain in Thailand, instead of the 30 days for the single entry. It can also be extended at the end for another 30 days at the immigration office.

I have learned most of this from people who have this type of visa. It has been in effect for about a year yet it was difficult to find anything official on this visa, except that it exists and how much it costs. Blogs and in person seem to be the best way to understand how these work. I think it is a better choice for those that want to use Thailand as a home base and travel to other countries throughout their visit here.

Retirement Visa

People who choose to live her full-time or longer than 6 months can apply for a retirement visa. You have to be 50 years old, have a pension and/or savings in the bank, a medical check, a criminal record check, and a lease agreement. This visa also requires you to check in with immigration every 90 days. It is a more complicated process as you need re-entry permits each time you leave the country and have lots of paperwork to complete in the beginning. There are some changes that may require you to have Thai health insurance which you can only obtain if you are under the age of 70. Many retirees here have international health coverage or their own emergency account. The advantage, though, once you have this visa is that you can just apply to have it renewed each year. I have met many people who are on this visa, but I don’t know as much about it yet.

I was intending to share our experience with getting our extension at the Immigration office in Chiang Mai, but I didn’t realize how much I had learned about visas. That discussion will continue in another post.

Student monks

Elephant Parade

There are no exciting pictures for this topic, but being in Thailand wouldn’t be possible without a visa so I will share a few of my favorites. I have also added some pictures from the Parade of Elephants art exhibit in the city. It raises awareness for elephant care after a young elephant stepped on a land mine and received a prosthetic leg. These can be found in the menu under travel.