Our troublesome story in Thailand
One of our troublesome situations in Thailand is related to TM 30 form – The form for the landlord to report that there are foreigners staying on their premises.
When you stay in Thailand for more than 3 months, you will need to file a report every 90 days. Normally, Wit and I will fly back to Vietnam to visit our hometown, so we may not need to care about this report too much. Unfortunately, the Covid 19 makes us stay in Thailand for more than a year, everything is fine until we moved to a new house and we were not aware that our new landlord has to complete the TM 30 form to report our stay in their apartment, so we can report 90 days smoothly later.
In some way, our landlord failed to register TM 30 online for us, so when Wit went to report his 90 days consecutive staying in Thailand, he was rejected. The immigration requested us to bring the TM 30 form, a copy of the landlord’s ID card, the certificate of house ownership (Tabien Ban) with his signature on it, and the rental contract. Surprisingly, he was rejected again because the name on the room rental contract and the name on the certificate of house ownership (in the Thai language) do not match. Upon checking with the owner, we found that the name on the Tabien Ban is the name of his wife and this name was in a typo as well. Up until this time, the TM 30 has been not completed and Wit is unable to file his 90-report.
After coming back and forth to the immigration Bureau, our TM 30 has been done with the support of the landlord and Wit could finally report his 90 days before the deadline. Our landlord was fined 1,600 THB for 2 of us due to late notification. This is a really bad experience for us but it taught us a lesson about how important documents are.
So folks, if you are about to live in Thailand for a long time and you are about to move to a new house, please make sure the information on your contract is correct and matches with details on Tabien Ban. Also, do not forget to ask your landlord to complete the TM 30 form for you as it is really important for your 90-day report or visa extension.
Good luck to you.
Check it out for more details about the TM30 form: