first time in TH? welcome

CaptivatingPeapod7461 you're anon i dont understand why you'd care so hard to make your case in a random internet forum.

@Elías *******

no

@Elías *******

no but it would be stupid if you double or tripled your income in 2 months.

@Marek ***********

The DTV rules explicitly allow soft power activities. If immigration accepts those applications and issues visas, the responsibility clearly sits with the policy, not the applicant.

Expecting people to second-guess whether a government-approved rules is “silly” isn’t realistic or fair. If Thailand doesn’t want one-month cooking courses to qualify, the fix is simple: change the rules, not retroactively blame applicants.

The government defined the pathway and approved it.

If there’s a “stupid” game here, it’s the one that was designed in the first place.

@Brandon ***********

agreed, actually i was answering it in my head to the much broader issue of how loads of people are paying the 400 usd for the visa application, asked to jump through tons of hoops and getting their visa denied.

I think there's a LOT of randomness to the process, and the same might happen when verifying the visa.

This is all of course part of being in Thailand, but I'd be pissed if I know I'm legit and being denied the visa in the first place or revoked for randomness. It's their country and their right but let's not delude ourselves they are always the letter of the law.

Anonymous participant 203 it's not the 400 it's the injustice of it that'll stick. But sure, aint the end of the world.

Anonymous participant 873 if 20 people in the room and 10 got denied that's not a non trivial statistic. I don't think dismissing this person's experience is right either. Thailand rules are always changing and this could signify a tighter scrutiny on re-entries.

Anonymous participant 203 if ur DTV visa is revoked and u lose the 400 usd fee, you might not be so stoic about it and understand how some people might look at the whole unfairness of the thing. I understand 'this is Thailand' but some people do end up getting the short end of the stick

@Luit ****************

passport privilege is a real thing.

Still, just keeping up with some of these stories I've seen similar happen to western applicants.