We’re in Thailand and decided to officially extend our stay past the 30 days that we’re allowed to be here without a visa. In researching instructions online, everyone made it sound so simple, but my head was spinning after reading too much conflicting information.

We recently finished the process, so it made sense to document the process and make it more straightforward for others. In this post I’ll lay out all the questions we had and what we learned about extending a TOURIST visa. Our video, Top 22 Tips to Know Before Visiting Thailand, highlights this process as one of the top tips. For the other 21 tips, click the link above to watch that episode.

Background

Our plan was to spend 30 days in Thailand. If you hold a passport from one of 64 countries and intend to visit Thailand, you don’t need to apply for a 30-day tourist visa because you have automatic entry for that amount of time. Easy breezy, right? Yes, unless you don’t want to leave when your 30 days is up.

If you want to stay longer than 30 days, then you do need to apply for a visa. If you’re already in Thailand when you decide to stay longer, you need to go to a Thailand immigration office, fill out paperwork and wait in multiple queues. It’s not a hard process, but there are several steps to follow and you can’t do the process online because you have to have your passport stamped. If you think you might want to stay longer than 30 days, the easier option is to apply for a 60-day e-visa before you arrive in Thailand. It costs 1,900 baht whether it’s done in person or online. If it’s done in person, the immigration office requires cash instead of credit cards. You don’t need exact change.

Caveat to e-visa process: There are questions on the online e-visa request form that asks what passport you hold and what country you are in currently. There are restrictions to the e-visa extension process: You can’t use it if you are currently in Thailand and there are certain countries that are blocked from using the online e-visa process. We’re not sure why, but the website requests your “Current Location” and if I select France, it allows me to proceed, but if I select Vietnam, it won’t allow me to apply online.

From the Thailand Immigration website:

The tourist visa must generally be used within 90 days from the date of issue and allows an initial stay of 60 days. After arrival in Thailand, a tourist visa may be extended at the discretion of an immigration officer once for an additional 30 days with the total period of stay no longer than 90 days.

While miscalculations, flight delays, illness, and other situations could cause you to overstay, you really want to avoid putting yourself in that situation. What if you just don’t want to go through the hassle of applying for an extension and just want to pay a fine? That’s not a good plan.

Consequences of overstaying in Thailand

Overstaying your allowed time in Thailand is illegal, even if it’s only by one day. At a minimum you will need to pay a fine, but there is a possibility of legal sanctions resulting in imprisonment or deportation. Most of the time the issue will be caught when you are exiting through immigration control at the airport or land border, but on occasion immigration police will do random checks on the streets or at popular entertainment venues. If you are detained during a random check, you will be taken to an immigration detention center, which is something you want to avoid.

If your overstay is discovered at an immigration checkpoint at the airport, you will be fined based on how many days you’ve overstayed. There’s a possibility of being banned from reentering Thailand as well. If immigration puts a red stamp on your passport to indicate you broke Thai immigration laws by overstaying, it could impact future visits to Thailand and also visas and travel to other countries as well. The fine for overstaying your visa is 500 Thai baht (US$13.85) per day up to a maximum 20,000 baht (US$553.89). This article on the Thai embassy website lists all the additional consequences you could face. Let’s agree that it’s better to pay attention to how long you are allowed to stay, get an extension before your time is up, and you’ll have no problems.

Paperwork you’ll need to extend a tourist visa up to 60 days

The Thailand immigration website has a lot of good information, but some of it is confusing and incomplete. Let’s get started on what you’re going to need. Note that every single page needs to be signed at the bottom, including your passport pages. We’ve included a sample packet with each form so you know exactly how to complete it.

TM.7 Application for Extension of Temporary Stay in the Kingdom. (2 pages)
TM.30 Notification Form for Housemaster, Owner, or the Possessor of the Residence Where Alien Has Stayed. This form must be completed within 24 hours of your arrival by the owners of the lodging where you are staying. There is a fine if it is not submitted promptly. Your hotel or Airbnb should provide proof of this to you. If for some reason you don’t trust that your host has completed it, you can submit it yourself here.
STM.2 Acknowledgement of Terms and Conditions for Permit of Temporary Stay in the Kingdom of Thailand.
The Acknowledgement of Overstay Penalties.
Copy of the first page of your passport that contains your photo. We didn’t realize we needed a copy of this information, so we needed to detour to the immigration office’s onsite print shop to acquire copies. Save yourself time by getting copies made in advance if you have access to a printer.
Copy of the page of your passport with your arrival stamp on it and any additional stamps that you received from Thailand during your stay.
4cm x 6cm passport-style photo. Here are guidelines for your visa photo. Note that you need a 4cm x 6cm VISA photo, not a passport photo. The size of each are different, so if you are looking for the proper dimensions, make sure you choose 4cm x 6cm. An employee at the immigration office will look over your paperwork and will glue your photo to your application, so you don’t need to buy glue to affix it yourself. Do not staple it.
1,900 Thai baht (cash). (US$52.62)
Bring a pen. It’s easier if you have your own black or blue pen in case there are missing items you need to complete.

Helpful things to know in advance

*Photocopies and visa photos are available onsite*

Save yourself time and fill out all the paperwork in advance. Here’s a link to all the blank forms to download.
We got our visa photos from Maya Mall in Chiang Mai, but there’s a shop on the premises of the immigration office that will take your photo for a fee.
If you don’t have access to a printer, you can complete the forms online with software like Preview or Adobe and then pay a small fee for the same shop that takes your photos to also print your completed forms. You’ll still need to sign all the pages before you submit your packet.
If you don’t have your TM.30 from the person hosting your stay, but they have submitted the paperwork online, you can wait in a separate line as part of the extension process and they will give you a receipt that you THEN need to take to the photocopy shop to be incorporated into your paperwork. You need to hang onto the original receipt.
If you didn’t bring paperwork with you, there are hard copies of all the paperwork onsite and there is an area where you can complete the forms. It will take extra time, but it can be done.

A word of warning

We arrived at 9:40am and that was a mistake. Because we read conflicting information about whether we needed the TM.30 form, we didn’t have it and needed to wait in a few additional lines. We had all our paperwork in order by 11am, but the office takes lunch from noon–1pm. There were 16 people ahead of us and we were told to come back after lunch. While technically you can continue to wait, it’s a dead hour where all the lines are closed. It took until 2:15pm until everything was completely finalized. Had we arrived earlier, we might not have lost the lunch hour. Also, having as much ready in advance also would have helped, but we didn’t bring passport photocopies or know about the acknowledgement of penalty forms we needed. Our TM.30 process took additional time, too.

What to know about the Thailand Immigration Office

*Pick up tickets for main queue at the very first checkpoint!*

Note the hours of operation and arrive early. Our location opened at 8:30am, but we know people arrive up to an hour early to be first in the queue. The office is closed for lunch, so if your process takes a while because you are doing everything on the spot, you are going to be stuck until after the lunch hour. Conversely, if you arrive later in the day and everything isn’t finished before they close for the day, you have to go to a separate line the next morning to pick up where you left off.
When you first arrive, you should stop at the entry booth to get a ticket to the queue. You want to get that as soon as possible, even if you have other things you need to do, such as getting your paperwork printed, etc. The number is good all day, so even if you aren’t ready when your number is called, you can skip the line when you have everything completed. You don’t need to get a new queue number.
Assuming you have brought all the completed paperwork with you, your next stop is to the area where they will check your paperwork. The person who reviewed our paperwork was extremely nice. He glued our photos to the application and indicated a few areas on our paperwork that we intentionally left blank because we didn’t understand what to do. One of the key things we didn’t know to do was to add our signature to each page. We also didn’t know we needed the acknowledgement forms, so we had to pick them up and then fill them out.
If you don’t have your TM.30 document, you’ll need to go to the room that handles those. In our Chiang Mai location, that room shared a wall with the photocopy center. It was not in the immigration office proper. You need to get another queue number for that specific process. In order to get a queue number, you need to go to one of the available employees and request one. Then you’ll sit back down in the waiting area for your number to be called.
- When it’s your turn, you’ll sit down in front of the processor and hand over all your completed paperwork and your passport. The staff person asked to know where we were staying and we pointed out the information on our application. Our Airbnb had submitted the information into the system already, so the person assisting us took some time and eventually generated a hard copy for us of a receipt verifying the information. It’s the bottom part of the official form if you are completing the form manually.
- The receipt needs to be photocopied at the photocopy shop; they won’t accept the original.
You’re now ready for an official review of all your paperwork. Remember that ticket you got when you first arrived? That’s the queue you need to wait in. In Chiang Mai, that area is part of the covered outdoor area. Fortunately for us, we didn’t need to wait because our number had been called and passed, so we could wait behind the next person being helped and be next in line.
Someone will go through every bit of your paperwork to ensure everything is fully complete. They’ll staple it all together and direct you indoors where the visas are issued. You might have thought you were done, but sadly, no. But you’re almost there… unless you are like us and need to wait through the lunch break when the office closes.
You’re at the home stretch. When your number is called, you’ll submit your passport, your paperwork, and your cash. We didn’t have exact change and that’s okay. After we handed it off, we had to wait while the paperwork was being processed in a back room. They called us each up individually again just to get a photo taken.
Finally, the paperwork was processed! No queue numbers anymore. They called us up individually by the last name on our passports. We received our change from the cost of the process (100 Thai baht apiece), our passport, and a receipt for the payment. Hooray!

*Most of the process for your visa extension will be handled in this area*

Sample forms

Click on the images below and they will open up in a browser tab as a full-size sample that you can use as a guide. The downloaded forms from the official website will always be the most current blank forms to use. Use the forms below only to aid in understanding what’s necessary for each blank that requires completion.