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Free Thai Tourist Visas for Indian and Chinese Nationals?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Tourist Visa and specifically we are discussing the notion of free Tourist Visas. 

There seems to be sort of a murmur if you will in the background here in official circles regarding tourism generally. The strengthening of the Thai Baht, combined with other factors has resulted in what some are describing is a rather lackluster tourist season here in Thailand over late 2019, early 2020 and there seems to be some discussion about possibly for lack of better term "goosing tourism", trying to stimulate tourism if you will. 

A recent article from the Nation, that is nationthailand.com, the article is titled Minister to Seek Free Visas for Chinese Indian Tourist Floats Eat, Shop, Spend Scheme For Foreigners specifically quoting:  "Minister of Tourism and Sports Pipat Ratchakitprakarn said on Thursday, January 23rd that the top priority measure is to grant free visas to Chinese and Indian tourists which should help boost tourism in 2020 substantially, he said. If the measure doesn't get approval we will seek to extend the visa on arrival period to the end of 2020 instead of April 30th."  

So clearly folks in positions of authority are taking the tourism issue seriously and this is just one manifestation of some of the policies that are being discussed. I suspect we will probably see this implemented in some form. Exactly how it pans out remains to be seen. Those who are watching this video should be aware that where once folks could basically live in Thailand effectively on a tourist visa or what is called a 30-day stamp, sometimes euphemistically referred to as a visa on arrival, but may not be a visa on arrival as it may be a Visa exemption stamp although depending on the nationality and in the case of Chinese and Indian nationals, Visa on Arrival is the correct term. In any case, it was much more possible five years ago and before to effectively live in Thailand using what can only be described as a tourism status. That era has come to an end. They have cracked down heavily on that and as a practical matter those coming in on tourist visas are really only going to be able to stay for a temporary period of time here in the Kingdom.

How exactly they implement changes to pricing for travel documents again remains to be seen but I suspect we are going to see some activity on this and when we do, we will do another video on it in order to update the viewers of this channel.