If any officer asks you what you are doing in Thailand, you are a tourist. Maybe you happen to make a few videos about your experience in Thailand to share on youtube.

If you say you are "working on Youtube," then now you are going to be violating immigration law unless you have a work permit and a proper visa.

Regional airports such as Phuket or Surat Thani in the south are likely better. Bangkok is most challenging unless you have fast track. Islands are typically very easy entry but more expensive to fly to.

@Nick ***********

The OP asked about a "non O" visa. The law (link posted above) says "non-immigrant visa" without further restriction.

You're supposed to have 20,000 Thai Baht in cash on you to enter Thailand, but they never check unless they don't like you and want a reason to prevent you from entering (such as if you had a number of visas back to back.)

It's not a hard rule. Each consulate will have its own policy about this, or sometimes it will even vary by the individual agent or it will be a temporary tendency. Figuring out where to go to get another tourist visa to be able to come back in again is a part of the game of staying in Thailand, and is one of the main reasons the popular forum thaivisa came to exist. With perseverance searching thaivisa, these facebook groups, and through word of mouth, you are very likely to find another consulate that will grant you a tourist visa. You will then need to do the same research to figure out which port of entry is most likely to let you in with your situation.

Since you are already in Hanoi, you can try reading up on the current reports of recent experiences at Ho Chi Minh City, as probably the least expensive option to try again. In my experience with that one, they required some extra documentation but I never encountered a flat denial.

Get a Charles Schwab bank account and atm card. They reimburse all international ATM fees forever, and it does add up.

Get a local health insurance in Thailand or an international plan. No need for US coverage, and the international or local is the price or less. Or just pay cash bc everything is so much cheaper. Get a basic emergency travel insurance in case you're out cold and don't have the option to research hospitals but if you are conscious you can find affordable treatment for virtually anything.

When you arrive go to the US Embassy and write you address on a form and tell them that its correct and they will notarize it. You can use this to go to Bangkok Bank and get a local bank account and debit card without further requirements. The other banks all require work visas (unless you get lucky at some branch that waives that requirement.) With a Thai bank account you can pay with your phone "pay scan" and it makes transactions much easier bc many places don't accept credit cards for small payments or they charge a fee. Also you can shop on Shoppee which doesn't work for US cards, and more importantly you can shop at local vendors you find on instagram or facebook like the Thai, and get great prices on good stuff.

Prepare for visa runs every 3 months or put in the effort to arrange a medical tourism visa or thai language school visa.

Robert Lagas, I did not jump to the conclusion you are suggesting I am. I am not asking for a full legal determination of immigration law or policy or your personal conclusion of how to manage this situation. I am asking for your personal experience, as a starting point for forming my own conclusion. Thanks for providing that.

I'll be more clear. Do you have experience with being questioned about proof of onward travel when entering on a noninitial visit on a METV? If so, at which border?

Agree that "several" days of proof of accommodation is consistently acceptable as proof (and have heard stories that when you present a lease or email from a Thai landlord is it sometimes not accepted unless you show an official document), so the hotel booking is a more reliable thing to bring. The proof of onward travel documents is something I wonder about whether they tend to want to see it when you are on a metv, since the generally point of that visa is that you will come back into Thailand after a brief trip out.

My understanding is that you are legally required to have baht on you when you enter Thailand, but it is one of those things where they don't enforce it unless they are looking for a reason to deny you, and they don't tend to check unless you have a ton of sequential tourist visas and you are heading to the islands or some place where work visa abuse is common. I wonder not about the exact laws, but the current tendency to check for these particular documentation for metv holders entering via....which border are you entering Kim?