Friends,
On the nineteenth of May, the Thai Cabinet announced that Indian passport holders would no longer be granted sixty-day visa-free entry to Thailand. The phones in our office have been ringing ever since. Some families panicked, some cancelled their planned trips, a few WhatsApp groups went into full conspiracy mode.
I want to slow down and put this in perspective.
First, the country has not closed. Thailand is still open to Indian tourists. The change is that the entry method has shifted from the easy sixty-day visa-free stamp to a fifteen-day Visa on Arrival, or a longer e-Visa applied for in advance. That is the substance of it. Everything else is detail.
Let me walk you through what changes, what does not, and which Bangalore trips are quietly unaffected.
What was, and what is now
From November twenty twenty-three to May twenty twenty-six, Thailand gave Indians sixty-day visa-free entry. You landed at Bangkok or Phuket, the officer stamped you, you stayed up to sixty days, you left. This was a generous arrangement and many Bangalore families took advantage of it for long-stay winter trips, particularly retired uncles and aunties spending a month or more in Phuket or Chiang Mai.
The new arrangement, announced in May and likely to take effect within weeks of Royal Gazette publication, is a return to the previous system. Indians will now get either the Visa on Arrival at the airport — fifteen days, two thousand Thai baht (about five thousand nine hundred rupees at current rates), payable in cash at the airport visa counter — or the Tourist e-Visa applied for in advance, which gives sixty days for the same fee paid online to the official Thai e-Visa portal.
The Thailand Digital Arrival Card (TDAC) remains mandatory regardless of which option you choose. This is the post-COVID form everyone fills out, free, within seventy-two hours of departure, takes about ten minutes online.
The trips that are not affected at all
If you are a Bangalore family or couple planning a five-to-ten-night Thailand trip — Bangkok plus Phuket, Bangkok plus Krabi, Bangkok plus Chiang Mai — your trip is essentially unchanged. The fifteen-day Visa on Arrival is perfectly sufficient. The cost addition is the five thousand nine hundred rupees per person at the airport, paid in cash. That is genuinely it.
So if you are imagining a typical Phuket honeymoon, a Bangkok shopping weekend, a family Krabi beach trip with the kids, please do not cancel. The change is small. We will brief you to carry the cash, do the TDAC online, and you will fly as planned.
The trips that need rethinking
The change matters mainly for two groups. First, the long-stay traveller — typically a retired couple or solo retiree spending six to eight weeks in Thailand each winter. These trips now need the sixty-day e-Visa filed in advance, with bank statements, hotel bookings for the first week, and a return ticket. We handle this for our long-stay clients and it is a few-hour office task per traveller.
Second, the "digital nomad" type — younger travellers planning to work remotely from Thailand for two months. The sixty-day e-Visa is fine for this, but you cannot work locally on a tourist visa. If working remotely from a Thai address is your plan, that is the e-Visa to apply for.
The honeymoon question, since most of our Thailand bookings are honeymoons
Phuket and Krabi remain the top two Bangalore honeymoon picks in Thailand. For a couple doing the standard six-or-seven-night trip — say, three nights Phuket, three nights Krabi, with a Phi Phi Islands day trip in between — the new fifteen-day Visa on Arrival is exactly right. You carry two thousand Thai baht each, in cash, at the airport. The officer stamps your passport. You leave on day six. No change to the trip whatsoever.
The places we suggest right now for honeymoon couples — and these are unchanged by the visa news — are the Banyan Tree Krabi for the dramatic limestone setting, the Andaz Pattaya for the design-led modern feel, and any of the SAii or Centara properties on Maya Bay if you want pure beach. For couples who want more sophistication and less party scene, we usually push Koh Samui or Phuket's quieter eastern coast.
Costs, since they have shifted slightly
The Indian rupee has weakened against the Thai baht over the past year — at the time of writing, one hundred rupees buys you about thirty-four baht, down from thirty-eight last year. This means hotels, food, and shopping are eight to ten per cent more expensive in rupee terms than they were twelve months ago. A standard four-star double room in Bangkok that was eight thousand rupees a night last year is closer to nine thousand now.
Add the new Visa on Arrival cost — about five thousand nine hundred per person — and a typical Bangalore couple's Phuket honeymoon for five nights now lands at about ninety-five thousand to one lakh ten thousand rupees per couple, all-inclusive of flights from Bangalore, hotel, transfers, and one or two excursions. That is about six to eight per cent more than this time last year. Not crazy, not insignificant.
What our families have shared after their trips
A Hebbal couple wrote to me after their February twenty twenty-five Krabi trip about the four-island longtail boat tour. "We swam in water clearer than my mother's filter water at home, and the captain played Coke Studio Pakistan on his Bluetooth speaker, which was the strangest and best detail." That sentence I still smile at.
A family from Bellandur wrote about their kids being completely silent at the Tiger Kingdom in Chiang Mai for almost twenty minutes — the only twenty silent minutes the husband says he has experienced as a parent. These small unexpected moments are what Thailand still does very well.
The most common regret I hear has nothing to do with visas. It is that families did not budget enough Thai baht in cash for the small things — temple offerings, tuk-tuk fares, beach-side fruit. Always carry more cash than you think; ATMs in Phuket and Krabi sometimes charge two hundred and twenty Thai baht per withdrawal as a foreigner fee.
A small practical note
The new Visa on Arrival fee at the airport must be paid in cash. The visa counter does not always accept credit cards. Carry exactly two thousand Thai baht per traveller, plus another five hundred as a buffer. If you do not have baht when you land, there is an airport ATM and a money-changer right next to the visa counter, but they charge a worse rate than the city. We send our clients off with the exact cash counted out.
If you want to talk it through
If you have a Thailand trip booked already and you are nervous about whether it still works, send me a WhatsApp on +91 98805 72995. Tell me your dates, the cities, and the length of stay. I will tell you within five minutes whether you need the Visa on Arrival or the longer e-Visa, what cash to carry, what TDAC link to use, and whether the trip pricing has shifted with the rupee.
If you are thinking of a Thailand trip and you are now hesitating, please do not. The country is open. The visa fee is small. The change is administrative, not philosophical. The Thai welcome at the airport remains as it always has been.
With warm regards,
Dada Peer
Oyster Holidays, J.C. Road