Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing well TM30 yet again. This is the address reporting mechanism that folks need to undertake when they are staying in Thailand, in fact it's a requirement to do it. According to Immigration and we will get to that in a minute, it is requirement to do it within 24 hours. But as we have discussed, this hasn't been such a big deal in the past. We have seen a lot of internal protocol changes with regard to TM30 in the past couple of weeks. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Phuket News, that is thephuketnews.com, the article is titled: Phuket Immigration Crackdown results in 188 arrests in one year. Quoting directly: "50 suspects were arrested and charged for breaching Section 38 of the Immigration Act, which mandates that every foreigner should be registered by an accommodation provider within 24 hours of moving into a hotel, rental villa, or other temporary residence."

Now I am not trying to make this video to be unnecessarily fear inducing that Thai Immigration is out there sort of looking to pounce on every foreigner for every little thing. I don't think that is the case here, but it is worth noting that Thai Immigration does seem to be taking an increasingly stringent stance with regard to the notion of enforcement of relevant Thai Immigration law as evidenced by the fact that 50 people in the past year have been arrested specifically citing section 38 which is the rules regarding TM30.

So the thing to take away from this video and understand is and tourists do not freak out by this. Folks that show up and stay in a hotel for example here in Thailand, it is all pretty much automated; you are not going to see it and the hotel is going to go ahead and deal with that. What I suspect and there is a level of speculation going on here, but what I suspect was sort of the underlying issue was these were people that were coming in and staying in what is the equivalent of Airbnb which as we have discussed is kind of a nebulous thing here in Thailand, or they have some kind of private relationship with a landlord here or they are staying in a guest house which doesn't have the same protocols which hotels do here in Thailand and basically folks were being remiss in filing their TM30 form and it resulted in an arrest.

Now again, I suspect that these citations were for the most part occurring sort of in addition to something else going on. So for example spot checks associated with overstay or some sort of complaint was filed by someone and the police became aware of someone who hadn't filed their TM30. Again I don't think it's particularly prudent to resume that Immigration is sort of running around out there trying to find every TM30 violator but again it is worth noting that they are increasingly taking a more proactive stance regarding enforcement of Laws such as the Laws pertaining to TM30.