What's the best way to prove ongoing transit for the purposes of Thai immigration for the least amount of money?

January 21, 2008 10:47 PM

What's the best way to prove ongoing transit for the purposes of Thai immigration for the least amount of money?
posted by matkline to travel & transportation (13 comments total)

Are you immigrating to Thailand, or is this just a poorly-worded question?
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 11:04 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]

Use photoshop to alter an existing eticket itinerary to show you leaving Thailand on some plane at sometime in the appropriate time window. For bonus points you can make it correspond to an actual flight.

I've never once had anyone check the details on one of those.
posted by tkolar at 11:07 PM on January 21

(theoretically, I mean)
posted by tkolar at 11:09 PM on January 21

Are you immigrating to Thailand, or is this just a poorly-worded question?

If I were immigrating to Thailand, why would I need ongoing transit?
posted by matkline at 11:46 PM on January 21

I believe tkolar has it. Haven't done it myself, but I follow a number of backpackers' blogs, and the photoshopping of fake itineraries seems to be the standard way of dealing with this.
posted by mumkin at 12:05 AM on January 22

I don't know about Thailand, but I was wondering the same thing when I came here to Korea. It seems that you can just tell them you'll be taking the ferry out to China or Japan and they would accept that. I'm sure Thailand has some ferries out so that should work also.
posted by bindasj at 12:15 AM on January 22

Why would you need to fake your return trip? Unless you're emigrating to Thailand, you're going to be coming home at some point. Why not just give them the real details?
posted by talitha_kumi at 3:13 AM on January 22

I think this question arises b/c with a Thai visa, you can only stay for 30 days. If you were backpacking through Thailand, doing whatever, you'd probably go over this 30 days, and it's totally inconvenient to have to leave the country and then come back again.

That being said, what about the passport stamps?
posted by unexpected at 3:33 AM on January 22

Yeah, this is the kind of question where matkline has been immersed in planning and reading travel blogs and forums and has gotten used to everyone already knowing what he's talking about, and you end up with a very terse phrasing that ends up being confusing.
posted by smackfu at 6:52 AM on January 22

Why would you need to fake your return trip?

Because you're traveling randomly and don't know where you're going next yet.



This reminds me, last time I went to Thailand I didn't have an ongoing transit lined up and they let me in just the same, even with a backpack. Immigration didn't even ask about it...

In retrospect I'm not sure why it wasn't a problem. It may have been the American passport.
posted by tkolar at 9:03 AM on January 22

Just purchase a full-price return ticket from any airline a couple days before, then after you're in the country, you can ask for a full refund. Works great without the risk.
posted by parttimeninja at 9:17 AM on January 22

And there are plenty of budget airlines in the region, so if you can't be bother to call up the airline to ask for a refund, you can just throw away the $20 ticket :).
posted by parttimeninja at 9:19 AM on January 22

what's the best way

With a real ticket. The immigration people see hundreds of travellers a day, and I assume that if you work at an airport looking at legitimate onward tickets all day you'd know flight numbers and when flights leave or arrive; you also don't know if they're entering the info into a computer of any kind, which might respond with some kind of error should you fudge the data or make something up.

Why risk getting noticed, and then being forced to answer some questions you might fumble, risking your job (if you're working under the table) and future entry into the country?

for the least amount of money

I checked some random days in March.

AirAsia can get you to Penang, Malaysia from Bangkok for $67 with taxes/fees.
Nok Air can get you to Hanoi, Vietnam from Bangkok for $60 with taxes/fees.

If you've already made it to Thailand in the first place, it's a pretty small price to pay, especially if you're proving onward transit without actually onward-transiting.

On preview, parttimeninja's idea is a good one too - lots of unexpected airlines from outside the immediate region (Ethiopian Airlines, Emirates, Sri Lankan, Royal Jordanian) do the Bangkok-Hong Kong run, which is often very competitively priced. On February 5, for example, there's a flight on Ethiopian Airlines from Bangkok to Hong Kong, for which Expedia is quoting $225 for a refundable one-way ticket. Just to be sure, I checked the fare rules: Section 16 (if you click on the "show me the rules" link, which I can't seem to link to) states that before departure, the fare is fully refundable.
posted by mdonley at 2:03 AM on January 23