If landlord or hotel owner fails to file TM30 in time, it’s the tenant that gets fined when they visit immigration for extension/renewal. It’s so ridiculous. Why the average tourist and tenant have to pay the fine if it’s the landlord/owners responsibility to file the TM30? No action is ever taken against the owners, so why would they go out of their way to file TM30 for you? Hence you hear stories such as this all the time.
Most probably if overstay is only for couple days, you’ll only need to pay fine and they’ll put a overstay stamp in your passport and in their system. You’ll not get banned, but acquiring some future Thailand visas might become more difficult and they might ask you to come for an visa interview to explain your case before granting/denying you the visa you applied for.
Or you can try the Thai Soft Power route (Muay Thai, Medical Treatment or Cooking Classes). This would get you the DTV, and would cost much less than any agent's fees. Agents are quoting upwards of 100K THB for DTV now a days.
You're applying in Malaysia? I would highly recommend you stay away from that Embassy unless you have solid paperwork. It's one of the most difficult Embassies to apply from, that require a lot of documents and all documents needs to be stamped and verified from Ministry of External Affairs or your home country's Embassy. You'll have better luck if you apply from HCMC, Vietnam or Jakarta, Indonesia or Phnom Penh, Cambodia. If you want faster processing time, visit Taiwan but be ready for your documents to be scrutinized carefully and be asked a lot of questions in Taiwan.
You're right, but that's how Thai embassies work. You won't be able to have a logical argument with them on why freelancers don't require "remote working" permission when they ask you for this document. Although, I've heard people getting away with only providing Employment/Freelancer contracts as long as it mentions that you've permission to work remotely. Depends on the Embassy you apply to. But it's better to have this document rather than not have it.
Thai Embassy in Vientiane wants to see 500,000 THB in your personal bank account for at least 3 months. I've heard that they have accepted just 3 months statement, but I didn't wanted to risk it since they are stopping walk-in appointments and there are no further appointment slots available. Hence I submitted 6 months of statement just for them to have no reason to refuse me.
Though, Thai Embassy in HCMC, Vietnam seems to be okay as long as you have 500,000 THB in your personal bank account. They don't care how long you had 500,000 THB in your account, but they also want 6 months of statement as well.
As a freelancer, you need to have 1.) couple of invoices from the clients (preferably some companies) you billed recently. 2.) Letter from 1 or 2 client saying that you are allowed to work for them remotely on their company/business letterhead (you can use ChatGPT to draft up the letter and send it to your clients to just sign on it and send back a scanned copy). 3.) Employment or Freelancer contract from 1 or 2 clients stating that you're allowed to work remotely (you can use ChatGPT for the same). 4.) Your portfolio of previous works (it helps is you also have a professional website, include screenshot of your website or LinkedIn profile page).
The letters from your clients don't need to have stamps or be verified, they just need to have the client/company owners signature.
If you're putting all the components in a carry-on, just check the weight limit of carry-on baggage for your airline, or purchase excess carry-on from the airline before hand. Most airlines generally have 7kgs hard limit on the carry-on baggage weight.
I don't quite remember the exact amount because it was couple years ago. I purchased a cheap case for about 2K Baht. I think I only paid about 800 baht extra for them to assemble it for me and do a 10 minute stress test to check every component is working fine. They might have increased the rates now, but I'm not sure. However, any PC shop here will offer you PC assembling service as that's one of their core services. Just shop around for rates. Every mall in Thailand has at least a couple PC shops. JIB, Powerbuy and Banana IT are widespread. There are also many small individual players in malls such as MBK in Bangkok where you might find better rates for more personalized service.
Don't believe the customs of Thailand. Even if the item is clearly old, they'll charge you as if you're importing a brand new item. The price you declare in the shipping form is useless and you'll have no recourse to counter the amount they charged you as VAT, which can be as high as 33% of the "value" of the item you're importing. Here the "value" is what they find online for a same new item and will charge you VAT accordingly. Different PC components can cost different amount of VAT depending upon what category that item falls under. So essentially at the end, Shipping + VAT will cost you almost the same as a new PC build.
I was in a same situation. Here's what I would suggest. First purchase extra luggage from the airline. Disassemble your PC, pack the individual parts (motherboard, cpu, gpu being the bulky ones) carefully in a bubble wrap. Put all of them in a good quality check-in bag with sufficient cushioning with more bubble wrap or cloths. If you have extra space in your carry-on bag, then you can pack your GPU, SSDs and CPU (since these are usually the most expensive parts of a build) in your carry-on bag for better safety and peace of mind. Travel to Thailand, visit any PC shop such as JIB and buy a PC case with them and ask them to assemble the PC for you with the components you brought with you.
I assure you that all this would cost you much less than what you would end up paying in Shipping + Custom charges.
DO NOT, and I say DO NOT travel with your whole PC without disassembling it. If you do, you're sure in for a bad day once you land in Thailand. PC components and pins/connectors on your motherboard are fragile and are not build to stand the shock and stress they might experience while transporting them long distances. Hence you need to disassemble them before you travel with them. I learned it the hard way with my older PC.