August 2012, I had to apply for the extension of my one year Non-immigrant B visa for the private company I am presently working for. I am the only foreign employee and the company is owned by Thais. There were some difficulties when the one year visa was applied a year ago of the same month, but I thought extension processing would be much easier. I had informed the senior staff in the office in charge of processing my visa more than a month before the expiry date to give time for her to prepare the required company documents. The requirements on my side as an employee are easy to comply (copy of passport, last arrival stamp, departure card and last extension of visa) and so much of the bulk of the requirements are those papers from the company. In the list of 17 requirements, only 3 of which concerns me and the rest from the company.
But I was wrong with what I thought. The Thai colleague who took care of processing my papers had to go back to the Bangkok Immigration Office at Chaengwattana five times to complete the requirements and I had to be with her on the 1st, 2nd and 5th time of going to the Immigration. Perhaps it took a bit harder to process the papers because I am the only foreigner employee of our company. The Thai immigration officer carefully scrutinized each paper submitted and had to pay 1,900 baht extension visa for one week. Take note, 1,900 baht for one week extension of visa and it is the same fee for a one year visa.
Upon application, I had told the Immigration officer that I want to apply for an extension visa with a multiple entry permit which I know costs 3,800 baht. She told me vaguely that it has to be done on another department pointing finger to another direction. My thought was that in applying for the extension visa, one can apply just for it with a single entry or a multiple entry only to realize and learn later that it is not really the way as I thought. I had misunderstood the words used by others in referring to their visas, sometimes saying "single entry visa" and "multiple entry visa".
Here it goes then. A visa (Non-immigrant B) may it be a first time visa or extension costs 1,900 baht for one year and one has to apply separately for the re-entry permit with two choices: single re-entry permit for 1,000 baht and 3,800 baht for multiple re-entry permit. Application for the re-entry can be done immediately after acquiring the approved visa since the expiration of the re-entry permit is the same as with the expiration of the extension visa. However, if one has to apply only for the re-entry permit, it can be done at every Immigration checkpoint and at the Suvarnabhumi airport. As a suggestion though, it is best to apply for a re-entry permit at least a day before the scheduled flight to leave Thailand rather than applying at the Suvarnabhumi airport on the time of departure because as indicated in the Immigration website, the granting of the re-entry permit at the airport would depend on officers approval as deemed necessary. Getting out of Thailand without an approved re-entry permit for those who got a visa would mean cancellation of the visa and work permit. Another thing, the re-entry permit at the airport has a service charge of 200 baht making it 1,200 baht instead of 1,000 baht for a single re-entry.
