went to renew my thai motorbike license today in phuket as it has been a year from when I got mine (TR here)

after your first year is up you can renew the license for another 5 years (or a bit more, looks like they give you 5 years + the time until your next birthday, in my case i got almost 6 years until the license expires)

i read that you need to let the 1 year temporary license expire before you can renew it. as my expiration date was 4th of november i went there today the 5th

I had with me:

medical certificate (100 baht from a clinic in phuket town). took about 10mins. you need your passport or atleast a copy to get this

certificate of residence (300 baht from immigration, need copy of lease, copy of passport, copy of visa, copy of latest stamp and copy of departure card. I also thought you would need a signed copy of landlords ID but the officer returned it back to me). took about 10mins to get

more copies for the license place:
copy of passport, visa, departure card, latest stamp
original medical certificate+certificate of residence and the expired license

went in around 9am, place pretty full. went to first desk where a girl browsed through my papers and told me to sign all the copies. I did and got a number. Was called to a desk 1min later where another girl browsed through my papers and took 305 baht as payment for 3 separate things (that are in thai in the receipt so no clue)

after that i was instructed to go sit in a bench waiting my turn to be photographed for the picture (you dont need to have your own pictures for the ID). I waited maybe 5 mins to get the photo taken and another 5 for the ID to be printed out. I paid 110 baht to the photo/ID printer girl. total time at the license office under 20mins

total cost of renewing the license 815 baht

^ wow they need so many documents, i would think the FBI would require less... even your land lords ID and all this ... Those documents requirements are way stricter in thailand then in canada yet on the street anyone can drive without a licence and just pay a 300 baht fine if caught... yet in canada they tow your car and take you to jail.

I only know the names of the ones in Samui, I suggest asking expats in your area for a name. Probably less needed in places like Phuket where the visa run is short, but the visa run from Samui is a 20-hour round trip, so a lot of long-termers use those services.

Basically they just collect your passport, send it to their guy in the immigration department and a week or so later it comes stamped with an entry from a place that you've never been to like Munich. Of course the risk you take is that you will get caught and banned from the country permanently, but a lot of people hate visa runs so much that they are willing to run that risk.

IMO, the best thing to do is to get ED/education visa. You can stay in Thailand for 1 year and keep renewing it for years to come. The requirement is that you have to be studying something in Thailand. It does not have to be Thai language (and it is probably the worst choice.) This is why there are so many language schools out there. People pay the 30K tuition and can stay in Thailand without any hassle.

The thing is, in some areas there have been reports that people who have been doing this for years are getting a basic Thai language oral test... super basic... but still risky. So you might be better off looking for schools that sponsor ED visas that are not language schools. immigration officers can't really test or criticize your Thai Boxing skills or whatever other school you find....

Anyone know of schools doing ED visas that are NOT Thai language schools? I know there are Thai Boxing schools doing this. Legit universities should do this for their students as well. Any other places? Cooking schools maybe?

Thai Visa has all the details. You can't just stick 10 mil baht in their stock market and count it as investment. There is a lot more to it that doesn't make it a chose choice unless you really do want to start a business in Thailand and employ a couple of people.

It's really not that simple. You can't just get an education visa for studying any old course at any old school. The school has to be an approved government-certified school. And the visa is not infinitely renewable.

See here:

Ive had the education visa for 2 years learning thai, it cost me about 20k per year for 40 hour of private course. I could get more hours if i went to some group class but i cant be bothered. Its very nice to not have to go out of the country all the time when you dont feel like it, and i want to learn thai anyway.

I guess if you dont want to learn thai there are some cheaper options. A guy a know paid about 10k baht to some firm to get him a business visa for example, but it was a bit shady.

education visas can be shady even from legit schools. there are schools that sign a bunch of ppl up at 30k/year or whatever, and then close up shop, leaving everyone hanging and the edu visa worthless without the ability to renew for the next cycle.

rumor had it that some guys on this board gut ****ed by CMU just banning falangs from classes, so Edu visas were meaningless... it's hard to get much more legit than CMU in thailand....

anyone know if theres any hotels in kopangan that will let you stay at a hotel for 3nights during the fullmoon party?

There are places that teach other languages - Japanese is quite popular.

All of them? Why would a hotel not allow a 3-night stay?

Tommy Resort is pretty good, right on Haad Rin.

You appear to be confusing an Investment Visa (10 million Baht and yes you can just stick it into the stock market...) and a Work Permit (start a company, put 2 million Baht in a Thai bank and hire at least 4 Thai's) - neither of which is a 'business visa' that you can get by paying somebody 10k or 30k as two people have now suggested ITT.

I found this from the immigration code, I guess it does exist and there appear to be no requirements other than a sponsoring company:

thanks for the information PokerSpiv. There is probably no other way to buy one of these sticks if you don't want to leave the island not?

That's pretty bad for me because the wireless connection doesn't work in our house and I don't know when it will be fixed because the cable to our house is probably broken.

I have a stick from AIS but on Samui it's not working properly.

If there is somebody who wants to rent or sell his CAT CDMA stick till I can buy one on my own next month this would be cool. I'd pay you 1500 Baht rent + the costs for internet access and a security deposit.

because every room will be full during those 3 nights anyway, so they will want to reserve rooms for people who will also fill up the hotel for other days. this is pretty standard during festivals

This is only half true. The class wasn't run by CMU but another company connected with the university. They did screw over quite a few students for visas, but many of the students who took the course never came to class, which was part of the reason they stopped giving out the ED visa.

god i love those lime/chili cashews

I got a education visa from chacrit muay thai school in soi 22. 30k. 80 classes. Feel like its a better option than some language school especially if you want to excercise.