Trips to Thailand just got easier with online visa on arrival system

Contributed by Mridula Dwivedi

A trip to Thailand always makes me happy. It so happened that the Visa on Arrival online application system was announced just before my Thailand trip came up (around October 15, 2015). This was my sixth trip to Thailand and I always availed Visa on Arrival
(VoA) facility by spending a lot of time in filling the form and exchanging currencies at the Suvarnabhumi Airport. As a result of which I would always be at the end of the long VoA queue. I would then have to join the fast track queue and pay a little more to get out faster from the airport. The VoA fee is 1,000 Baht in the normal queue and 1,200 Baht in the fast track queue.

This time, I went online and filled the form at the official website of the Immigration Bureau of Thailand (http://www.immigration.go.th/).

The online session is 30 minutes long so it helps to keep all the documents handy before you get started. After filling in all the details like flight, hotel address, name, passport details etc, I printed the form at home. The fields that are not marked compulsory can be skipped.

I had a 3:00 am Thai Airways flight from Delhi to Bangkok. The flight was almost full and on the flight, I watched two movies while enjoying the in-flight meal and wine. The plane landed on time in Bangkok.

I started my brisk walk towards the VoA counter. This time I had exchanged the currency in India itself. I had a photograph with me as well. There was a young lady at the head of the Immigration Counter. She looked at my form and asked me to sign it, which I had forgotten. I looked around and saw that the rest of the passengers were still sorting out their forms or currency. I had just four people ahead of me in the regular visa queue. As I had filled my form online, it took the authorities just a few minutes to wave me through. Within no time, I was running to the luggage carousel with happy thoughts of shopping in Bangkok!