Holger Mette crap, that’s actually a really good point. Most banks in the US are ok about refunding ATM fees, but lots are also sneaky with foreign transaction charges or just crappy rates, so Schwab tends to stand out as an ideal option. I have no idea who the best banks in Europe would be for international ATM use, though.

On the bright side, though, I think all of the European credit cards should work fine on Thai websites and apps. (They’re using the same security protocol that Thailand is using online, I think.)

@Stephen ******

does Wise refund that? A lot of banks do now — although some of them have foreign transaction fees on top of the ATM fees.

Schwab is the best ATM/debit card I’ve found for international travel. No foreign transaction fees, they refund everybody else’s ATM fees, and their customer service is available via online chat. A couple years ago, I was in Indonesia, and the ATM machines kept triggering security and causing my card to freeze. Schwab customer service found a local number that I could use to reach them, and then stayed on the phone with me for at least twenty minutes as I walked around the city to find a couple ATM machines that worked.

@Klaus ********

ah, interesting. Thanks for that info!

@Gino ********

I think there was an announcement last year about not coming in for extensions/renewals until shortly before your expiration date, so they could keep the number of people physically coming in lower during the height of the pandemic. So maybe the person you interacted with is still operating as if that's a thing? (Personally, I didn't run into the issue in Chiang Mai in December.) Or maybe they're expecting a surge of covid-related extensions over the next week, and trying to make everyone else take a back seat?

@Bobby *******

yes, but they do treat the first "extension" as a conversion to a new visa that starts your 60 days from the date of application, so it's a kind of a hybrid from a perspective of how long the extension really is.

I just extended this morning at the Bangkok immigration office. I arrived on November 30 on a 60-day tourist visa, and did a 30-day extension on that in Chiang Mai (they wouldn't let me do the covid visa until I'd done that extension). I did the 60-day covid visa in Bangkok on January 25, and that was treated as a conversion to a new visa, not an extension of my existing visa, so I only got 60 days from January 25. But today, I went in to do a 60-day extension of that covid visa, and it was treated as an extension -- 60 days added to my current covid visa.

So, not sure how things will look in other offices, but at least in Bangkok, it looks like you should be able to get an extension on your existing covid visa. The one thing I could see being an issue for that is if you have to wait a minimum number of days from your last visa conversion/renewal/extension before you can apply. Like, if you extended on February 28, then maybe it's too soon for you to try to extend on top of that.