The Thailand arrival card, explained line by line

What the arrival card is

An arrival card is a short paper (or sometimes digital) form that collects basic information about you and your trip. It asks where you are staying, how long you plan to remain, and how you arrived. It is not a visa and it does not grant you anything on its own — it is a record that the arrival desk keeps. Because the questions look simple, travelers rush them, and that is where mistakes creep in.

Field by field

Family name and given name. Copy these exactly as they appear in the machine-readable zone of your passport. Do not shorten, translate or reorder them. If your passport shows two given names, write both.

Passport number and nationality. Watch the difference between the digit zero and the letter O, and between one and the letter I. These are the two most common swaps we catch during review.

Date of birth and sex. Use the format the form requests. If it wants day, month, year, do not write month first out of habit.

Flight or vehicle number. The number on your boarding pass, not the airline name. If you arrive overland, use the train, bus or vehicle reference.

Address in Thailand. A hotel name plus city is usually enough; if you are moving around, list your first night’s stay. Keep it short and legible.

Purpose and length of stay. Answer plainly — tourism, business meetings, visiting family. Give dates that match your onward ticket.

Where people trip up

Three things cause most of the friction. First, names that drift between the passport, the ticket and the form. Second, dates that disagree with the booking. Third, a scrawled address nobody can read. None of these are dramatic, but each one costs minutes in a queue you would rather spend elsewhere. Our review service exists precisely to catch them before you travel, and you are always free to check the same things yourself against Thailand’s own channels.