Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Re-Entry Permits. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article, actually reading a recent comment on our channel, quoting directly: "How long does a re-entry permit last or remain valid for?" 

This has gotten kind of quirky. So in the past, the rule of thumb was the re-entry permit always lasted to the end of the Visa status. These days though, because they are actually moving some extensions faster, you could end up with a situation wherein for example you come in on a 90-day Business Visa for example and then let's say you are running around regionally, so you are not just planted here in Thailand, you go ahead and get a re-entry permit and say you need to leave, you have got to go to a business meeting in Singapore, or you have got to go up to Japan or something and do a business meeting and you leave but you are planning to come back to do your extension. Sometimes what we will see is, in the past we would file for the extension and generally speaking the extension where we would get the extra 11 months extended tacked on after the initial 30-day review period, oftentimes that would just coincide with the end of the underlying Visa.

These days, to their credit, Thai Immigration is doing things a little bit faster when it comes to extension status so you could end up with a situation where actually the re-entry permit, the validity goes out longer than the period of time in which you have to return to Thailand to go ahead and get that extra status tacked on. What does that mean? Well as a practical matter it means pay close attention to the underlying Visa validity as well as the re-entry permit validity date, because sometimes they are not going to just jive together like they used to. It used to be they basically just automatically ran together but these days yeah, expiration of a re-entry permit may be different than expiration of one's underlying status.