I come to Thailand every month (from Australia) as part of a business consulting group in IT services. I spend from 2 to 30 days in Thailand but usually 5 to 12 days. Have been doing this for 4 years and have always used the 30 Day Visa on arrival.
I have been waiting to see how they are going to enforce the 90 out of 180 day limit of stay using the 30 day visa on arrival as I could be effected.
Arrived last night at the airport (25th JAN), nearly 4 months into the new system. Thought it may have been automated - how wrong I was.
The immigration official looked at my passport and saw the meant entries to Thailand in the past - she asked me how many days I had spend in Thailand since the 1st of October and I said "about 60". She then went through the passport and identified all the entries and exits since the 1st of October 2006. She added up the days and came to 64 - therefore I was not granted a 30 days visa but a visa which expires in 26 days.
So a few points to note -
- The enforcement of the 90 in 180 days is as per expected and was fair as per the guidelines I understood.
- The is no electronic system to automatically calculate the days used or left in the 180 days period.
- The days are counted as per entries in the passport - if you have two passports then I assume you could use two to stay on two lots of "90 out of 180" and be here the whole time - although illegally.
- It is VERY time consuming - it took a good 15 minutes for her to go through my passport and annoyed the people waiting behind me in the line.
- Adding to the time was the issue that typically Thai immigration officers do not put stamps in a chronological order so she had to go through my passport from page 1 to page 64 to check for all entries from Oct 1.
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