Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are posing the question "how many land Border Runs are allowed in the Kingdom of Thailand?" For those who are regular visitors to this channel or viewers of this channel, you will probably have some idea of what I am going to be talking about here because we have talked about it before but it is worth reiterating because quite honestly, we have a lot more folks here in Thailand that are new, that are just coming in so yeah maybe a little bit of redundancy on this channel is in order.

I thought of making this this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Visa exempt 45 days is back to 30 days at Thai Airports and border crossings. I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail. I am going to quote an excerpt but there's a lot of great information in there. Quoting directly: "In other words, nationals from Visa exempt countries will have a maximum 60 days rather than 75 before their time expires. However, they will still be able to leave the country, however briefly and repeat the procedure for 30 + 30 days. But land Border Runs are limited to a maximum of two in a calendar year. There is no formal restriction on entries by air, though Immigration Officers can refuse admission if they feel a formal Visa from a Thai Embassy should be obtained in advance. "Don't try to live in Thailand on short permissions of stay," has long been a common refrain in the country's Immigration halls and Border posts." Great information in that article. Again I urge those who are watching this to go look it up.

Long story short, we are talking about land Border Runs. There was a decree in The Royal Gazette going back a couple of years ago which stipulated that yes certain countries that have Visa Exempt status in Thailand, it's roughly 60 countries, included in that are countries like the United States, the UK, Australia, Canada, much of Europe, New Zealand, many of these places, also Russia to the best of my understanding has Visa exempt status on arrival here in Thailand. Those folks that have Visa Exempt status that can come in to Thailand on a passport which is granted Visa Exempt status, you are allowed 2 Border Runs per year, land Border Runs per year. It has been my experience they treat the first crossing into Thailand if you will as the first Border Run, the first entry in a given calendar year. I have seen some discrepancy on this but it has been our experience that is how Thai Immigration looks at it even though as stated in that article there is more discretion with respect to airports. I think that extra discretion comes from the fact that look there are many people that choose a hub in Southeast Asia be it Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, even Phnom Penh now more and more, here in Bangkok for example, or Chiang Mai they choose hub a certain place as their hub and then they travel in and out to various other countries. I think that those kind of folks, like Immigration can see the travel history of a given person, they can see oh this guy comes every couple of months but he stays like 4 days and then leaves because he is possibly here for a brief meeting with friends, just maybe wanting to have a good time, maybe here for sort of basic business meetings and again we have done other videos on this channel, you've got to worry about work authorization with respect to that but there are limited circumstances where one can travel into Thailand for a very brief period of time and do what in the past could have been described as sort of work associated things, oftentimes corporate meetings this type of thing, possible to come in temporarily. I think that Immigration at the airport is granted that sort of discretion because quite honestly there are business travelers that come to and from other countries and they need to have that discretion. But land Border Runs, two a year in a calendar year, so you get two every calendar year. It has been our experience they treat that first entry as one of those two so you can come in, get 30 days; in theory you could extend by another 30, then run to a land border, cross out, cross back in get another 30 and be eligible for another 30-day extension which we have discussed in other videos thereby getting 120 total days of lawful status here in Thailand solely in Visa exemption status, not without a Visa at all.