The backpackers on Khao San Road, the Bangkok thoroughfare beloved by budget travellers, are waking up this week with an extra headache: the government is preparing to shorten the length of visa-free stays. Near the Tha Tian pier, where tourists catch ferries to the landmark Wat Arun, Irishman Alex Brady said the forthcoming 30-day limit would have affected his plans a lot — because he and his friends “initially came here with no plan at all”.
Brady and his travel companions were visiting for about five weeks, and the flexibility of the current 60-day visa-free scheme allowed them to see more of Thailand at their leisure, the 24-year-old said.
The new limits — announced on Tuesday for tourists from more than 90 countries in a bid to curb crime — would “really restrict you in what you can see”, said Brady.
After Bangkok, he and his group planned to get a bus and ferry to the diving hotspot of Koh Tao for about a week before travelling north to the mountains of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai.
“If you’re paying for an expensive flight ticket out here, you want to spend a good amount of time out here,” said Brady, a digital engineer.
