Can a Thai Tourist TR 60-day e-Visa be skipped in favor of visa exemption upon arrival?

@Frank-Steven **********

you are missing one important detail that makes it meaningless. In order to activate the visa you must leave the country and return. You can not activate that visa inside Thailand, so it makes no difference. If you use it you get 60 day stamp, then leave, come back and get 30 days, or get 30 days when you enter, then you leave, use the visa, and leave and return for 30 days. It makes no difference on the number of days you get.

Good point by Kool. It could only work if you fly at least once, to switch your passport. You cannot switch passport crossing a land border.

@Kool ******

that is what I thought. It doesn't gain anything.

@Frank-Steven **********

yes

@Frank-Steven **********

in theory you should be ok doing so. A visa is tied to a specific passport. Nice trick 👍

In general it is however not a good idea to exploit opportunities like this. Immigrations is in the end not gonna like it. Even if the passports have different names and everything, they will be able to recognize it's the same person based on fingerprints and face recognition. Now this time you could use the said trick to 'not' use a visa, which would work, but if you use the same trick for different purposes (e.g. long stay on tourism-purposed visas, to name an example), then I'm afraid it'll be quite a few malus points on the officer's considerations.

@Frank-Steven **********

no clue how the visa is associated, if it's by name or passport number or what.