dont even go to the embassy. just go to one of the tour companies on the river road and ask them to get you a visa. for $17 extra they will get it for you in one day.

Beef sucks and not very available.

Chicken is good quality and fairly cheap. But if you want good cuts like breast it will often cost more than in a US supermarket.

Fish... there is some mystery fish that is cheap and widely available in soups and various dishes, but the second you stray from like 3 fish things, you will pay dearly for it. Lobster/crab/salmon/shrimp - almost all seafood in restaurants is not cheap at all. Every place in BKK and near the Islands I saw lobster had prices of a downtown Washington, DC restaurants or higher. Maybe if you find some fish market and someone else prepares it, or find some fish market stall, it will get cheaper than in the US, but otherwise prices are not good at all. I would go and search in Chinatown in BKK - I saw lots of seafood there and tried things like shark fin soup.

Also, I don't agree with the person saying that getting the s**ts is inevitable. In Thailand, it is only inevitable if you really try your best to go to random backstreet cheapest food stalls that no one is ordering from and ordering some old looking things. If you go to places that look hygienic, or food stalls that seem to have a lot of turnover, your chance of feeling bad afterwards diminishes to close to zero. There are some things to look out for, however. For example, cut up fruit is often sprinkled with tap water to look better, and ice is often made with tap water. Those are good things to avoid.

ice is find if its the tube-style one.
you want to avoid shaved ice, which i never saw served in a drink.

and yeh, youre less likely to get the ****s if you eat at places that are more expensive than western restaurants lol.

outside the embasy i pnom penh theres always a guy galled savy or savey or somethng tell him u want double entry pay him the extra 30$ and u will get ur visa

the chicken and fish are great. Its the place to be if you love seafood

not interested in a debate over it but my take on it is alot of meat ext in the USA is pumped with steriods, beaten to death (kfc style) than frozen for 2 months before it gets to your plate. in thailand they kill the chicken/cow/whatever than cut you a slice while holding the carcass in hand. literally. one of the main differences i draw vs living here compared to the states is the food is 100x fresher.

whatever quality you seek is available long as your not stuck on an island-) in bkk you can have a hot thai chick wearing a kimono cook, slice slice up some tender kobe beef than eat it off her breasts. if you seek the meat on your own it kind of comes down to the area you stay/how much you know about thailand/area you stay. my gfs mom fishes for shrimp/sells it at the market and drops off huge tasty shrimp along with pounds of fresh beef, chicken, whatever we want about once a week.

one thing i will say is far as street vendors yeah the food is safe and good for the most part this is where people tend to get sick as some vendors can be heeeeya mak. (not good) my advice to people visiting is you can eat food thats sold on the st no problem but stay away from A. seafood B. anything that looks like a sausage as those are the 2 things ive seen people get sick from as seafood spoils and i dont even know what those sausage things are made of-/ but hey if your here for a short time go to mcdonalds and buy a big mac. better yet call them at 3am and have them deliver as they do that in thailand. lol

Well, maybe you can find variety of seafood in Thailand, but it sure isn't going to be cheap seafood. All of it seems to be more expensive than what my local Washington, DC supermarket charges. The exception being the two mystery fish that every vendor has/puts in soups/etc.

Where exactly do you guys find this cheap seafood. Please share your secrets as to fish name and price. Even when I traveled through small fishing villages along the coast - all the way to Malay border, things were just not available. It's all slated for export to the US and local eateries don't sell it. And when they do sell it, it's mad expensive and for things like lobster many of these places want a 1 day advance notice so they can buy it and then charge me 2500-3K baht.

I found this post on another forum. (Per the rules, not sure if I can say which one.)

Apparently the Thai gov't is making it harder to enter and extend stays. It affects me because I don't have a return flight - I'd planned to sign up for school after I arrive.

Has anyone had problems with this? Any work-arounds? I'm leaving in a few days.

--

I have just copied this from the UK Thai embassy web page. No mention of other changes or anything in the 60 day visa section only this below.

The Thai authorities have recently announced changes to the way in which they will deal with tourists entering Thailand for up to 30 days without a valid visa and as there is some confusion as to the exact meaning of this announcement we hope that this explanation will help clarify the situation.

The most important point to understand is that this only affects people who do not have a valid visa. If you have a valid visa there is no change at all to the way your travel arrangements will be dealt with and you need read no further.

If you are entering the Kingdom of Thailand without a valid visa there is a concession which allows you to do so providing that the following conditions are ALL fulfilled.

1. Your Passport is on a list of passports approved for this purpose. It is likely to be but please check if you are in doubt.

2. Your visit to the Kingdom of Thailand is for tourism purposes only.

3. You hold a confirmed air ticket to leave the Kingdom within 30 days direct from a Thai airport. Please note that you must travel by air and travel from an an airport outside of Thailand does not count.

This has been the rule for many years and nothing has changed in this regard. The only thing that has changed is that these rules are going to be applied more strictly than in the past. This means that you will not be allowed into the Kingdom of Thailand without a valid visa unless you can fulfil all of the above conditions. In addition to this anyone who has entered the three times in succession without a valid visa will be automatically barred from entering the Kingdom under any circumstances for 90 days from the date of the last exit.

Note that this enforcement of the current rules are intended to end the practice of a person without a valid visa going to the border every 30 days.

Please also be aware that Airlines often check if passengers have either a valid visa or a return ticket within 30 days and will exclude you from boarding a flight to Thailand if you have neither. The Thai authorities have asked Airlines to be more vigilant in this respect.

The last point is that this 30 days only applies if your total stay is up to 30 days. It is not a free 30 days which can be added to the length of your visa as some people seem to think.

Kind Regards

Geoff Howard, Hon Consul for Thailand.

Read my thoughts on this from a few posts back...

I am awaiting my visa and they require return ticket for visa also. I ended up buying a ticket.

You should be able to buy a cheap bus or train ticket and tell them you are leaving Thailand for Malaysia this way. Otherwise, the cheapest air ticket I found was Air Asia - BKK to Rangoon. Another option is Phuket - Singapore on Tiger Air. If you're dropping $1100 on Edu visa later, this is just a tiny additional cost. IMO - better to purchase and have a piece of mind instead of stressing out during the trip.

Arriving in BKK on the 9th.

Hi dc, read your post and it seems we're in the same predicament.

So if I'm denied entry I could book a flight from the BKK airport to Singapore, Phnom Pehn, or Vientine? I've read somewhere that Singapore requires a return ticket as well so not sure about that one.

It would be a nightmare having to fly back to America after spending the time and money for my hopes in Thailand. If worse comes to worse, and assuming I could book a flight on Tiger Air or Air Asia, I might just fly to Cambodia and pay for a 3-month or 1-year tourist visa. Little or no red tape, just that I've heard lots of bad things about the country.

I suppose I could use mail and/or email to apply for the edu visa from Cambodia, although now I'm not quite as motivated to learn Thai or teach Thais English. Especially if I like Cambodia and the internet happens to be good.

As soon as I read about the situation I emailed my travel agent and asked if he could get a REFUNDABLE return ticket. I might take a hit on part of the fare but for the peace of mind it would be worth it. No idea if it'll come through though since I'm sure he's off Monday.

Good luck to both of us...

you will know at the airport you are flying from if you need a ticket out or not. once they let you on the flight you are fine. they arent gonna deny you when you get to thailand. just go to the airport a little bit earlier than usual, try to check in, if they say you need a return ticket out or visa, say that you're getting a visa on arrival. if that doesn't work, use the extra time to book a $60 flight out of thailand on airasia or whatever. show them the e-ticket, get on the plane, and youre good.

I just flew to bkk from finland a week ago without a visa, and without a return ticket = no pombem.

The rule shave been tightened up just within the last week or so. In theory, you may still be rejected at the Thai Immigration, if you dont have a return ticket.

However, Phuket Airport Immigration have said, they will use common sense, to determine these things. Common sense in Thailand isnt always what is considered common sense to us though.

It's like the people who were deported and black listed from Thailand for stealing like 1 or 2 towels from their room - every so often, someone gets screwed with these semi-enforced rules.

I'm not a big fan of buying a tix at the airport if one is requested. Some airports have decent Internet cafes, but most others suck. They either have terminals but no printers, or there may be something wrong with the printer.

I got a visa in VTE on the 19th without having to show onward travel fwiw.

i just flew in to bkk on the 31st from seoul on a one way ticket. they asked me if i had a visa and i said i was getting a visa on arrival and that was it.

when you cant even get one

not that they know it

[QUOTE=AcesWon;28529825]Now I'm looking into taking a Thai language course. As long as I attend classes, learn the language well enough to pass the final test/QUOTE]

What Thai final test are you referring to? Many language schools don't even test their students, most have a go at your own pace kind of mentality. Immigration did "test" me by year 2, which was the officer asking me to tell a story in Thai to receive my edu visa extension.

Its very easy to fake an itinery, but the question is, will flight companies ever contact each other and confirm that tickets are real? And when you arrive, can they actually ask for return ticket there? If they do, can they call and confirm with the flight company?

And if they do confirm it, what is the worst that can happen?
I mean you should be able to say "I can book one online right now, no probem!".

The risk is really low, but that s not how you should think about the problem. if you cant afford a legit way to stay there when you have a few that are still available and that arent much more expensive than most solutions to cheat your way there maybe you should consider saving more money before going to thailand anyway.
Those new rules seems ******ed for backpackers who want to start with thailand and fly back home from another country, but maybe thai immigration will accept a ticket from laos or cambodia to home as a return ticket aswell.

Afford it I can, but it just feels wrong to pay for a flight ticket you are not going to use. Just like a backpacker, I am going to take a bus to Laos later, so the new rules really are dumb yes.
That is why the optimal thing would be to book a cancelable ticket and maybe just lose $5-10 instead of $60-100. AirAsia don't seem to offer this though if you haven't gotten a good reason like sickness (documented).

The thing is, you probably will lose a lot more than $5-10 on a refundable ticket. Those tickets are expensive, and while they refund your ticket fee, they will probably not refund the agent or booking or convenience fee or whatever bunch of fees that come with the ticket. I'm just guessing on this obviously, but I would be surprised if it is only $10.

You're probably right about that!

While I agree that the new rules may seem dumb, they make sense in the way, that most normal tourists stay less than 30 days, and will have a flight out of Thailand.

It´s only a problem if the various embassies/consulates will not issue tourist visas based on documentation for alternative ways to exit Thailand. But we have yet to see, how they enforce that rule.

Backpackers, who most likely have no set plans, regarding time schedule and destinations are pretty much f****d, though.

New changes are for 60 day visas.

When certain privileged nationalities come to Thailand without a visa they can get an a visa waver on arrival. If coming by air they can get a 30 day visa waver, or 15 days if coming by bus.