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They were actually quite tolerant of the visa runners. I used an organised service where they drove you to a park on the Myanmar border, you exited Thailand, 5 mins later re-entered Thailand, had a coffee then got the bus back. They could be like Europe and ban you for 90 days after you've been there for 90 days if they wanted to.

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You can get away with this twice. Once you hit 180 days in the last year you'll face some probing questions as to exactly what you're doing, and you better have a good answer or they'll simply deny re-entry.

With this being Thailand, of course there's going to be some wriggle room and variation depending on who you get, but it's a pretty high risk roll of the dice.

It's always been fairly easy to just get a multiple entry "Non-B" visa instead of relying on visa waiver, and then no questions asked.

I'm thinking the real benefit of allowing people to stay given they do visa runs, is that it's a way of setting expectations. If you want to kick out someone who has lived in the country for a long time, you don't get as much resistance, since you were upfront about their stay being precarious.

Also I guess it makes it easy to do selective enforcement against troublesome people.

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