I've never heard of cooking for ed visa. CM is famous for self-defense and muay Thai ed visa. Learning a language is also common for ed visa. If you are south Thailand there are other options like scuba diving. Price will be at least 25k baht on the very low end for any type of ed visa, but realistically 30-35k baht. If you use an agent expect a lot more total: 50-60k baht.

Plenty of ed visa school, etc, in Chiang Mai. You walk any street around old city or nimman and you will find many.

I strongly suggest that you research in advance or you will end up like thousand of people with not enough time left to switch to a long term visa. You do not need to pay 30-40k baht for an ed visa with an agent if you truly want an "education" on learning Thai, self-defense, or something else. An agent is mostly for people who want a visa without actually going to class to learn anything, volunteer, etc.

In this case you can ask here many people know. The two advice below are good.

Volunteer visa is a no-go for a little while now, unless you plan to volunteer for real.

Passport, money, and probably vaccination proof.

Entirely depend on your passport country.

@Wayne ********

Common sense is imply. There things that don't need precision unless if it's your first day in Thailand.

@Wayne ********

Your anecdotal evidence have nothing to do with what we are talking about. Bangkok is very strict as Brandon described, which is completely unrelated to what you are describing (completely different thing). 95%+ of denied cases are in Bangkok.

Yeah, Freudian slip or wtv, I was trying to say 2 by land.