THE RECENT CHANGE IN IMMIGRATION POLICY.

The Royal Thai Immigration department have recently reduced the amount of time given for a visa waiver from 30 days to 15 days to all people (except Malaysia) who arrive in the Kingdom of Thailand without a valid tourist/business/retirement/educational visa. (unless by air) THIS APPLIES TO ‘PASSENGERS’ ON SAILING VESSLES TOO. What this means is that you should check-in all people on board as either ‘captain’ or ‘crew’ and they will be given a waiver of 30 days, as before. This applies only if you are planning to exit the Kingdom on the same boat. If you are going to exit the Kingdom by any other means, ‘crew’ will have to put up the 20,000 baht bond, also as before. If you have friends traveling with you who will not be leaving on your boat, you need to make sure that they check-in as a ‘passenger’, but also that they will exit the Kingdom within 15 days. (no bond required)

If you are leaving your boat with LMS and then flying home, 1 ‘crew/captain’ and the rest ‘passengers’, again as before, but you’ll only have 15 days to exit.