Originally Posted by
CrazyInteg
I have no experience with this at all, but it was my understanding that "back-to-back" meant the people that did same day turnarounds. It was my understanding that if you left the country for a week or two then came back, there would be no problems.
Sort of. The official policy is that they don't want people staying here long term on a series of back-to-back 30 day entry permits. There was some talk a while back of a maximum number of such entries you could have in a calendar year; but I don't know if anything was ever officially implemented. Regardless, it depends to some extent on the individual immigration officer.
Originally Posted by
melkor
I haven't stayed long enough to need to do a visa run but I always choose to spend the majority of my time in Bangkok for work trips in the region and I've had no trouble getting a new visa each time I've left Thailand for a couple of days.
As the holder of a U.S. passport, you're most likely entering the country on a 30 day entry permit, not a visa (unless you obtained the visa at a Thai Embassy or Consulate outside Thailand).
Originally Posted by
eccentricfusion
Not particularly a local thing, but a thing I really enjoyed recently was attending a cooking class. I went to Chef LeeZ (chefleez.com) cooking school and had a great time. My class was only four students and it was a lot of fun to learn Thai cooking. Small class size allowed for intimate instruction from the Chef.
There's also a cooking school called
Blue Elephant, which my then g/f attended for a day when she visited me a number of years ago. What she particularly liked about it was that they went to an open air market to buy the ingredients first, so she was able to have that experience, too.