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As the title of this video suggests, we are comparing if you will current Thai Immigration policy against anecdotal information and evidence on Vietnam Immigration. I am not going to go too deep into the Vietnam side. I don't do it very often but occasionally I do kind of take a look around Southeast Asia and see what's going on in some of the other countries to do just kind of a quick video on just sort of a comparison sometimes. 

I have been hearing from folks that it's possible to get into Vietnam but staying there is rather cumbersome. I have heard this from a number of different people via correspondence; I have actually talked to a few people in person that I have just kind of met wandering around here in Thailand over the last few weeks and then I saw something here, again in the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand streets-ahead of competitors in the popularity stakes and I got to reading this except. I urge those who are watching this video to go check out this article, lot of good information in there, this is just an excerpt. Quoting directly: "UK travel agencies Dream Travel and Luxury Hols say the main limiting factor for travel to Thailand right now is shortage of flights rather than disinclination to take to the skies. They also point out that extending Visa stays in Thailand without leaving the country is a good deal simpler than in other competitor countries. For example Vietnam makes it hard to stay longer than 30 days." So yeah, I mean I have heard this and we talked about this before. Going back into sort of a year ago maybe even a little further, I can't remember off top of my head, but we were talking about where Vietnam was actually in the middle of all of this stuff; they were in the middle of some of the worst sort of lockdowns and everything, they were actually making people leave. They weren't giving them sort of extenuating circumstances visas. Thailand, it was kind of chaotic there for a while but at the end of the day, they did formulate a policy that allowed folks under extenuating circumstances to stay in Thailand. It appears Vietnam didn't do that and now it appears it is rather difficult to extend one's status within Vietnam. Meanwhile here in Thailand yeah it is possible under certain circumstances to convert to another type of Visa if you come into Thailand or to extend another type of Visa.

Now I expect that as time sort of moves a little bit further forward, we will likely see this tighten up, I think that's kind of inevitable but we haven't had high season yet, we are going into High season. I don't think the overall paradigm of Immigration is one of “tightening” at the moment, it's more one of "hey let's get some tourists in here so we can get the economy going and put things sort of back on track and I think that's the right overall mindset to have right now. Now that said, we don't know exactly what things are going to be like in the future and there are some things that are changing not particularly to the benefit of expats, for example the new insurance requirement coming online with respect to the O-A Retirement Visa, let me be clear on that O-A Retirement Visa not O Retirement Visa, coming up soon. So again, a lot going on but I do think it is worth noting that compared to a lot of places in Southeast Asia, Thailand is presently one of the easiest places to enter and depending on where you go, arguably the most relaxed place in Southeast Asia.