Students should check the expiration date of their passport prior to traveling. Before they will issue a visa, embassies and consulates normally require that a passport should be valid for at least six months beyond the visa application date. However, in practice, your passport should be valid at least as long as you intend to stay abroad. If your passport does expire while you are abroad, you can extend your passport at the Royal Thai Consulate-General or the Royal Thai Embassy. Royal Thai Embassies in some countries, such as the United States, allow students to extend their passports via the internet.

Issued by a foreign embassy or consulate, a visa is a document, usually stamped in a passport, which enables the passport holder to enter, leave or stay in the country of which the embassy/consulate represents. When applying for a visa, you should request a “Student Visa.” You can obtain the visa application form and information from the foreign country’s embassy (in Bangkok) or consulate (in some provincial cities) through their embassies’ websites:

Remark: You can directly contact the visa staff of the above-mentioned embassies by telephone during 2.30 p.m. - 4.00 p.m. Outside of those hours, some recorded information is provided.

You should have some knowledge of customs and immigration. You can request such information from a private education center. Some embassies, such as those below, have their own education centers, which organize seminars for prospective students.

For the traveler, two types of insurance should be considered:

• Travel insurance: This insurance reimburses you in case of a specific loss, such as lost luggage. You can contact a travel agency or insurance firm for more information.
• Health insurance: After arriving, you should obtain health insurance from a company which is accredited by your university. To attend a college in Australia, you must pay for Overseas Student Health Coverage (OSHC) together with tuition fee to the university, then you will receive a Certificate of Enrollment.