I've used OnwardTicket twice over the years (most recently 2023).

Both times, it was enough for both the embassy & immigration at passport control.

@Nick ***********

A cat cafe is a cafe which has lots of cats, which are enclosed in the cafe & cannot leave. It typically sells snacks you can feed them while you drink your coffee.

I never go to such places, even though I love cats. The cats are often over-pampered, over-bred, and don't want to be there, only interested in visitors if they've got snacks.

Instead of cat cafes, I prefer a cafe which has a resident cat or two, who can come and go as they please, who enjoys being around humans & just likes the attention/scritchies.

It is indeed not good, but neither is getting angry & confrontational.

I'd hope the cat cafe had an automatic closing mechanism installed on the door in question.

You cannot rely on every single one of the masses of people coming in and out of a cafe throughout a working day to always remember to pull the door shut behind them.

Its an extremely vulnerable system indeed if all it takes to cause a major problem is for one person out of the hundreds if not thousands of visitors to be in a hurry/absent-minded/texting while walking/having a bad day, and thus not pull the door completely shut.

You stated that Evisa being "not so easy to use" was the cause of this situation.

All Brandon did was point out that the system warns you repeatedly that the EVisa cannot be used at all entry points. The overwhelming majority of people buying EVisas have no problem understanding this, and planning appropriately.

He, on the other hand, clearly did. It is, as we say in the world of gaming, a "Skill Issue".

Illegal, but since the weed decriminalisation, its not unusual to find establishments literally selling them openly over the counter.

@David ********

And now you're getting abusive because you don't like what I'm saying. Absolutely pathetic.

You're a grown adult. Time to start acting like it.

@Tylah ***************

Also, regarding what you said, nothing changes for you on 1st January. Nothing gets "reset".

The immigration officer looking at your passport, whether on 30th December or January 2nd, is considering how high your *total amount of time spent in Thailand* is over the past 12 months or so, and whether your behaviour resembles that of a genuine tourist.

The only thing that *used to be* "reset" on Jan 1st was your allowance of visa free land entries. However, that no longer applies and land entries now have the same stipulation as air entries; no limit *on paper*, but prepare to be quizzed, let in with a "last time" warning, or denied if Thai immigration think you've had too many.

@David ********

It sounds like you don't.

180 days is half the year. Doesn't matter if *you* think thats not a problem, or whether, in your view, that *shouldn't* be a problem.

In the eyes of immigration officers, someone staying in Thailand for extended periods on back-to-back tourist visas and exemptions, is not behaving like a tourist.

Just ask around on here. Plenty of people have found themselves in the office being questioned by imm officers with far under 180 days of total time spent on tourist stays that year.

@David ********

Well, no, its not.

The question the imm officer is asking themself when they look at your passport is, "Is this person using the tourist visa exempt system for purposes other than tourism?", as in, is this person basically just living (and perhaps working) here?

As they see it, someone who lives here for more than half the year, staying in the same place in all that time, is not a tourist.

@Jason *****

No one here is "bitter". We're just stating the situation in Thailand as it is, and suggesting better alternatives than relying on tourist visa exemptions to spend of the year here, with all the risks of interrogation or denial at the border that entails.

As someone else said, a Multi-Entry Tourist Visa can, with well-timed border bounces, be stretched out into a total 9 month stay.

Theres also the Non-O Retirement Visa Nongnuch talked about, which you can easily get. Which once extended, would allow you to come and go as many times as you want in that year. Just need to have 800,000 Baht in the bank. Even if you dont have that much, there are ways around that requirement with agents.