Thai evisa application problem s and questions
 

I am finally going to Thailand after my trip has been postponed for two years. I am filling out the Thai evisa application for the 60 day stay, and I have hotels in Koh Samui. The towns are not listed on the application, and you can't type the town in or the zip code. The instructions don't cover this, and no googling has shown any results. Do I just pay the $300 or so for the agency to process my application? It doesn't seem like it should be this hard. Also, I am staying at about 14-16 hotels. Do I need to list eveyr single one of those? Any answers or leads on where to find the answers would be appreciated. I did email one of the American Thai embassies. Thanks!

are you applying for a single entry 60 days tourist visa? or any other type of visa?

you should read the instruction of your embassy; for example at my embassy, you only have to provide proof of accomodation for at least half of your stays

regarding the list of city to choose from: Koh Samui is probably not among them. try Surat Thani (province name), Chaweng, Lamai, Nathon...

I'm not really sure what you should do, as it appears you can only add 1 additional place of accommodation. On the next page, it will ask you to upload the hotel confirmations.

For Samui, use the province name, which is Surat Thani. You can look those up easily in Google, if the city isn't there in any form, just use the province name.

-David

They really do not care about the specifics of which hotels you stay etc from my experience.

Thanks, I got through that, but was only able to list two hotels. I am now stuck again. I downloaded my entrance flight, but did not download my exit flight. The pplication won't let me add my second flight, or let me delete the first flight to add a file with both. I must say I am a lawyer with some technical savvy, but this evisa is dirving me batty!!! It has absolutely the worst directions! It does ntotell you it only only wants one document, or documents in only one or two formats, or document not exceeding certain sizes. I have spent 12 hours so far. I am not fights to add my second flight, get my scanned passport pages with visas into an acceptable size for the application (spent two hours on that so far), and I haven't even tried the me holding my passport picture part yet. Should it be this hard? So far I had to scan 5 separate visas, join then into one big JPG and shrink in size, and I am trying to see if that works. I guess the next option is to print out each page of visas, paste them together and scan that. Life shouldn't be this hard!!

If you can't update the file in the e-visa app, then you can just a start a new app. Hopefully you are saving all the files you upload in a directory in case you need them or want to refer back to them later.

For the passport, besides the first page, you only need "travel records for the last 12 months" from the passport for the 60-day TR visa which probably just means the entrance and exit stamps for the last 12 months unless you traveled to places where you needed an actual visa in the last 12 months. You have to figure out how to reduce the file size of the images and combine them into a single file. That's fairly easy to do with the preview app on a mac. I'm sure there's a similar tool available on a PC.

The alternative to the TR visa is just forgo the visa and go in as 30-day exempt (assuming you are US citizen from your "location") and then waste a day in the middle of your trip going to Thai immigration and getting a 30-day extension for 1900 THB. You just look up the requirements to do that, there's a form TM.7 and you need your passport a copy of your main passport page, and a passport picture, and the fee in cash.

Personally, I did the 30-day extension once in Bangkok, back when you had to go to Cheng Wattana, which is a huge government immigration complex in Bangkok and I vowed to never waste my day doing that again. Since then, the location for extensions in Bangkok has moved, twice, I believe and they are in a more convenient location now (Lak Si), but if you are doing it outside of Bangkok, it's likely much easier than doing it in Bangkok, regardless of where you have to go now. In Bangkok, as you can imagine, it's very busy and they have early cutoffs for the number of people they will service each day. Where will you be in the middle of your trip? (And don't forget to time that visit properly, taking into account weekends and Thai holidays and any other events that might cause Imm. offices to close.) This is the link for 30-day visa extensions at the Bangkok Immigration office, but you want to use the office in the province where you are at that time. https://bangkok.immigration.go.th/en/visa-extension/

-David

I would do that, but I am going out to Koh Samui, Koh Tao and Koh Phangan. I will be on Koh Tao, and I would waste an entire day. I did scan my visas into one Jpeg, and then shrunk that, it still hated that. It wouldn't even take my picture with my passport and there was no reason for that. Also, the recaptha is funky and only works half the time. I tried copying my visas, combining them and scanning-I haven't tried to drop that yet. The site usually refuses to drag and drop and isn't happy about browsing to take files either. Honestly, if I knew it was this bad, I would have paid, and I still may.

I had to go there once before I got my non-B visa sorted when I first moved - to get a re-entry permit. Just like you, I vowed never to do that again. I doubt the location change would have any effect on the.. ehm... process though :D
Luckily, the OSSC for BOI accredited companies is quite a bit smoother, and is in the city.

There appears to be an immigration office on Koh Tao Here's the link to Surat Thani immigration:

Contact Suratthani Immigration

No idea if you can do extension at that office or not. If nobody here knows, you can try one of the thai visa facebook groups. It's not likely you would waste an entire day there. You go early when it opens and you will probably be out in relatively short order compared to my experience in Bangkok, which is crazy busy.

-David

Yes, it really could be a lot more user friendly. The instructions are incomplete, there is no way to resubmit a document you've already submitted, the size limits and required file formats are limited and limiting, and the algorithmically driven accept/reject of certain required information is finicky at best.

Like another poster mentioned, combining PDFs on a Mac is quite easy using built-in applications, and so in the end most of my time was spent moving pages around among PDFs that I created by scanning (passport, documents, etc). Then the biggest issue is that the PDF sizes can easily end up being too large. I eventually got around that by changing my scanner software to output 1-bit b/w PDFs, vs. the 24-bit RGB it was configured for. That dramatically shrunk the PDF sizes. I also removed a few pages I thought were irrelevant, from certain documents.

Hang in there. My application was for a more complicated visa than yours, but it was approved on my first attempt. That was late March 2023, on the 11th business day after submitting, submitted to the LA consulate.

sure you can do that! you can do EOS at any immigration office...that's what they are here for...

Outside of Bangkok, I think that's probably true.

-David

Maybe not, at Hua Hin there are different offices for different functions too. Not sure about now, but when it opened the Bluport office could not do extensions.

that's about offices in the same region right? but if there is only one immigration office in one region, it will certainly do EOS
so what is the Bluport office for, if they do not do EOS? Just 90 days reports, TM30, reentry permits, certificate of residence? now with 90 days report and TM30 online, EOS is the main biz of immigration offices...

I submitted my application for an e-visa on July 25 to the embassy in Ottawa, and haven't heard anything yet. Status on the website is still "Pending Documents Check". My flights are booked for September 1, so I'm not worried yet, but if any of my documents are rejected or they need more information, how long does that part of the process usually take?