An Update to the Thai visa tightening

This friend of mine went to Thai Embassy on Monday to apply for a visa, today he got a 3 month single entry visa, that is the best he can obtain now. It can only ease his immediate urgency at the expense of some further pains.

With this visa he can now spend Song-Kan the Thai New Year in April with his wife & children in Thailand, but from now until May he can not come back to visit Singapore.

The alternative was to apply for a Multiple-Entry 3 month visa, but in order to satisfy that, the Thai govt now enforce a strict requirement for Singaporean applicants to show a huge deposit bank statement. For a year of such visa e.g. will require Singaporean applicant to show an amount of 400,000 Thai bhats.

In the long past such requirement was much lower amount and was almost NOT enforced on Singaporeans. It reflects and when relationship between Singapore and Thailand were good, their immigration policy was slack and ultra friendly.

Frequent Thai long term visa applicants said that for many years when they renewed annual visas, they had prepared the required Bank Statements but the Thai Embassy at Orchard didn't even asked the applicants to show this supposedly required documentary proof.

Right now, it is not only strictly enforced against Singaporeans, but also since the coup that ousted Thug-Sin, DOUBLED the amount of this big sum of money required to apply for such regular visa.

This is my update to the matter.

Sammyboymod Msg Link