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I went to the Thai Embassy in London last week to get a Thai visa, the first one I’ve ever needed to get. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been to Thailand and I must have clocked up six or seven months of life there. A great country to travel too and one that is welcoming to tourists, as they contribute large amounts to the economy.

I’ve never needed a visa before, as the Thai’s used to allow visitors from Western countries to stay for thirty days, more than enough for most people. This has now changed and only visitors arriving by air get thirty days, while people entering the country at the land borders only get fifteen. This is supposedly to cut down on ‘long stayers’, travellers who take up semi permanent residence on a beach and contribute little to the economy, even though there’s no reason why these people couldn’t also fly into the country.

On my next trip I am entering Thailand twice on land borders and will be staying more than two weeks on each occasion, so I now need a visa. As a traveller, I will be criss- crossing the country, spreading my expenditure and putting more of it in locals pockets; benefiting the economy more than the tourists who spend two weeks in a chain hotel in Phuket. They of course fly in and usually only stay two weeks but have the right to stay a month.

Another irony is that Thailand is feeling the effects of the recession and the political unrest earlier in the year, so it’s doing all it can to encourage tourists to come. One of the ways they’ve done this is to scrap the fee for tourist visas over the busy winter season. So having created a situation where more travellers now need to get visas, they now incur the costs of issuing them without gaining any fees! With the problems in Thailand’s government, joined up thinking seems to be off the agenda.