IVF in Thailand: The Law, the Costs and the Real Success Rates in 2026
Most guides to fertility treatment abroad open with prices. This one has to open with the law, because in Thailand the law decides whether you can be treated at all, and it says no to more people than any clinic website will tell you. Couples arrive in Bangkok having booked flights, a hotel and three weeks off work, and find out at the first appointment that the paperwork in their bag does not let them start.
The rules are not complicated, they are just rarely stated plainly. Thailand treats a legally married man and woman. It does not treat single women, and it does not treat same-sex married couples, even though same-sex marriage itself became legal here in January 2025. It does not allow you to choose the sex of your baby. It does not allow foreign couples to use a surrogate. And it does not let embryos leave the country, which quietly changes the shape of the whole plan if your first transfer does not work.
If you clear all of that, Thailand is a genuinely good place to do this, and the rest of the guide is about doing it well. You get 2026 prices from published clinic and hospital price lists, real live birth rates by age from national registries rather than clinic marketing, how the cycle actually runs day by day, whether to do it in one trip or two, which of the expensive add-ons are worth paying for, and what to do with the two or three weeks of waiting that nobody prepares you for.
Four Rules That Decide Whether You Can Come at All
Read this section before you look at a single price. Everything here comes from the Protection of Children Born from Assisted Reproductive Technologies Act B.E. 2558, passed in 2015 and still the governing law in 2026, plus the Medical Council rules that sit underneath it.
💍 Married couples, and nobody else
This applies to IUI, IVF and ICSI alike, and it applies to foreign couples exactly as it applies to Thai ones. If your certificate is not in English it has to be translated and authenticated, usually through your own foreign ministry and then your embassy in Bangkok, and that takes weeks rather than days. Start it before you book anything.
🏳️🌈 Same-sex couples cannot be treated
This is the one that catches people out, because the marriage equality headlines were global and the fertility law behind them did not move. The ART Act still says husband and wife. A draft that would replace those words with spouses has been written and consulted on, but it has not been promulgated, so clinics cannot legally treat same-sex couples or offer reciprocal IVF. A valid marriage certificate from another country does not change this.
🚫 You cannot choose the sex
Thailand had a reputation for this a decade ago and the internet has not caught up. Several medical tourism directories still list it among the countries where sex selection is available. It is not, the Medical Council prohibits using these techniques to choose a child's sex, and Thai clinics say so on their own websites. PGT-A will report the sex of each embryo as part of chromosome screening, but you cannot select on it. If this is your reason for travelling, Thailand is the wrong country and you should know that now rather than after a cycle.
📦 Embryos cannot leave Thailand
The quietest rule and the one with the longest tail. If you make six good embryos and the first transfer does not work, those embryos stay in Bangkok. You cannot ship them to a clinic at home, and you cannot bring embryos made elsewhere here. Factor two or three more trips into your budget before you decide where to cycle, because that is what a realistic plan looks like when the first attempt fails, and most first attempts do.
Commercial surrogacy has been banned since 2015. The altruistic route that remains requires at least one spouse to be Thai, so a couple where neither partner is Thai cannot use it at all. A revised bill that would open surrogacy to married foreign couples, and to same-sex couples, went through public consultation in July 2026 and proposes penalties of up to ten years and two million baht for commercial arrangements. As of September 2026 it has not reached the Cabinet and nothing has appeared in the Royal Gazette, so it is not law. Treat anyone selling you Thai surrogacy today as selling you a legal problem.
What a Cycle Costs in Bangkok in 2026
These are published 2026 prices from two tiers: a dedicated fertility clinic and the fertility centre of a full private hospital. Converted at roughly 33 baht to the dollar. Note that the cheapest package in the table is the one most patients are not eligible for, which is the single most important thing to understand about how this market is priced.
| Package | Baht | USD | Who it is actually for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clinic, entry ICSI | 150,000 | 4,550 | Age 35 or under, AMH 1.2 or above, 2,400 IU cap |
| Clinic, mid ICSI | 170,000 | 5,150 | Age 37 or under, AMH 1.2 or above, 3,000 IU cap |
| Clinic, no age limit | 230,000 | 6,970 | Any age, 4,000 IU cap |
| Clinic, top tier | 350,000 | 10,600 | Adds AI embryo grading and sperm selection |
| Private hospital, package A | 335,000 | 10,150 | Stimulation, retrieval and one fresh transfer |
| Private hospital, package B | 456,000 | 13,820 | Adds genetic testing, freezing two embryos, one thawed transfer |
All figures in US dollars. Hospital package prices are stated as valid until 31 December 2026 and exclude the medical clearance done before treatment starts.
The common add-ons are priced separately almost everywhere, and they are where a quote grows:
| Add-on | Baht | USD | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| PGT-A chromosome screening | 37,900 | 1,150 | Often covers up to 5 embryos |
| Frozen embryo transfer, each | 40,000 | 1,210 | What every attempt after the first costs |
| Advanced sperm selection | 12,500 | 380 | Sperm sorting plus PICSI |
| Premium sperm selection | 34,500 | 1,045 | Adds magnetic cell sorting |
| Embryo glue and growth factor | 25,000 | 760 | Evidence is weak, see the add-ons section |
| Donor egg cycle, frozen eggs | 250,000 to 315,000 | 7,500 to 9,500 | Anonymous donor, non-commercial by law |
| Donor egg cycle, fresh | 300,000 to 365,000 | 9,000 to 11,000 | Higher again with genetic testing |
All figures in US dollars.
- Check the eligibility gate on the cheap package. Entry tiers are commonly capped at age 35 or 37 and require an AMH above a threshold, which means the women most likely to need several cycles are the ones excluded from the advertised price. Quote yourself the package you actually qualify for.
- Check the stimulation medication ceiling, stated in international units. Packages cap it, and going above the cap is billed to you. A woman with a low ovarian reserve on a high-dose protocol can pass a 2,400 IU cap comfortably.
- Ask what a cycle means in that number. Some quotes end at egg retrieval, some include one fresh transfer, some include freezing. The gap between those three definitions is easily 100,000 baht.
- Ask the price of the second and third transfer before you start, not after. Frozen transfers are the attempts most people actually need, and they are almost never in the headline.
- Ask what happens if the cycle is cancelled during stimulation because you are not responding. Some clinics credit part of it, some do not. It happens more often than the brochures suggest.
Against the markets people compare with, Bangkok sits in the middle rather than at the bottom:
| Where | Published cycle price | Approximate USD | What it usually excludes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bangkok, clinic | 150,000 to 350,000 THB | 4,550 to 10,600 | Medication above the cap, PGT-A, extra transfers |
| Bangkok, private hospital | 335,000 to 456,000 THB | 10,150 to 13,820 | Pre-treatment medical clearance |
| United Kingdom, private | 3,500 to 7,000 GBP | 4,400 to 8,900 | Medication, 1,000 to 2,000 GBP on top |
| United States | 20,000 to 35,000 USD | 20,000 to 35,000 | Varies widely, testing sometimes included |
All figures in US dollars. A useful detail from the UK market: only about 40 of the 109 licensed clinics publish a readable fee schedule at all, and the true average cost of a cycle once medication, tests and storage are counted lands close to 6,900 GBP rather than the advertised figure. Compare all-in totals, never headline packages.
Success Rates, and the Four Ways They Are Made to Look Better
Nothing in medicine is quoted as creatively as an IVF success rate. The number that matters is the live birth rate per cycle started, for women of your age, using their own eggs. Almost nobody advertises that number.
| Age | Live birth per cycle, own eggs | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Under 35 | About 38 to 48 percent | Most will succeed within two or three cycles |
| 35 to 37 | About 30 to 35 percent | Plan for two cycles, hope for one |
| 38 to 40 | About 20 to 26 percent | Three cycles is a realistic plan, not pessimism |
| 40 to 42 | About 15 to 22 percent | Donor eggs enter the conversation honestly here |
| 43 to 44 | Around 8 percent | Own-egg odds are now low whatever a clinic says |
These bands come from large national registries rather than individual clinics, which is exactly why they are lower and more useful than the figures on a clinic homepage. Thai clinics are not obliged to publish outcomes to a public registry the way UK and US clinics are, so treat any Thai clinic's own number as a claim rather than a statistic, and compare it against the bands above.
Per transfer instead of per cycle started
The most common one. Cycles that were cancelled during stimulation, produced no eggs, or produced no embryo worth transferring simply vanish from the denominator. A clinic quoting sixty percent per transfer and a clinic quoting thirty percent per cycle started can be describing identical medicine. Always ask which denominator, and ask what percentage of started cycles reach transfer at all.
Pregnancy rate instead of live birth rate
A positive test is not a baby. Between a biochemical pregnancy and a live birth sits a meaningful rate of early loss, and quoting the first number rather than the last inflates the figure by a wide margin, more so with increasing age. If a clinic will only give you a pregnancy rate, you have learned something about the clinic.
Donor egg results blended into the average
Donor eggs come from women aged twenty-one to thirty and carry much higher success rates at any recipient age. Mixing donor and own-egg cycles into one clinic average lifts it substantially and tells you nothing about your own odds. Ask for the own-egg figure for your age band specifically, as a separate number.
Selecting who gets treated
The subtlest one, and it connects directly to those age and AMH caps on the cheap packages. A clinic that declines difficult cases will publish better numbers than one that accepts them, without being better at anything. If a clinic has a strikingly high success rate, the useful question is not how, it is who they say no to.
Say this: for women my age using their own eggs, what percentage of cycles you started in the last two years ended in a live birth. If the answer is specific, the clinic is confident and organised. If it turns into a conversation about technology, you have your answer, and it is not a reason to walk away on its own, but it should stop you paying a premium for that clinic over another.
How the Cycle Actually Runs
An IVF cycle is not one procedure, it is about five weeks of biology of which two or three weeks have to happen where the clinic is. Here is the shape of it.
Before you fly, testing and paperwork
Hormone bloods including AMH, an antral follicle count on ultrasound, a semen analysis, infectious disease screening for both of you, and the marriage certificate translated and authenticated. Most of this can be done at home and sent ahead, and doing so saves you a week in Bangkok. The authentication is the slow part, so begin it first.
Days 1 to 3 of your period, the cycle starts
A baseline scan and bloods confirm the ovaries are quiet, then stimulation injections begin. This is the point the calendar locks, and it is why fertility travel cannot be booked like a holiday: your body sets the dates and you get roughly two weeks of notice. Book flexible flights.
Stimulation, 8 to 14 days
Daily injections, with a scan and bloods every two or three days to watch the follicles grow and adjust the dose. This is the longest stretch and the least eventful. You feel increasingly bloated and heavy towards the end, which is normal, and you are asked to avoid anything that twists or jolts because enlarged ovaries can rotate. Gentle walking is encouraged, running is not.
The trigger, then retrieval 35 to 36 hours later
A precisely timed injection matures the eggs, and retrieval follows a day and a half later, usually around day twelve. It is a twenty minute procedure under sedation, through the vaginal wall, with no incision. You rest a few hours and go back to the hotel. Cramping and spotting for a day or two is expected. The male partner gives his sample the same morning.
The laboratory days, 3 to 6 of them
Eggs are fertilised, usually by ICSI, and the embryos are grown to blastocyst around day five. You get a call each morning with numbers that fall at every stage: eggs collected, eggs mature, eggs fertilised, embryos still growing. This attrition is normal and nobody warns you how it feels. Ten eggs becoming three blastocysts is an ordinary result, not a failure.
Transfer, or freeze everything
A fresh transfer happens three to five days after retrieval and takes minutes, with no anaesthetic. If you are having PGT-A, or if your hormone levels after stimulation make a fresh transfer a poor bet, everything is frozen and the transfer waits for a later, calmer cycle. Freezing is now so reliable that a freeze-all plan costs you very little in odds and often gains you some.
The two week wait
Nine to fourteen days between transfer and a blood test that gives a real answer. You can fly home during it, and most people do. Home pregnancy tests during this window mislead in both directions because of the trigger injection and the timing, and the blood test is the only one worth trusting.
A minority of women respond too strongly to stimulation and develop OHSS, which ranges from uncomfortable bloating to a genuine medical problem. The risk peaks in the days around and after retrieval, exactly when you are in a hot country. Dehydration makes it worse, so drink far more than feels necessary, stay in air conditioning through the afternoon, and tell the clinic immediately about rapid weight gain, a tight abdomen, breathlessness or much reduced urine. Do not fly with untreated symptoms, and do not book anything strenuous in that week.
One Trip or Two
There are three ways to structure this and the right one depends mostly on whether you have a clinic at home willing to monitor you.
🇹🇭 Everything in Bangkok, one trip
One team sees the whole cycle, which removes every handover and every disagreement about protocol. It is also close to three weeks of hotel and time off work. This is the cleanest option medically and the one most fly-in patients choose.
🏠 Monitor at home, fly for the end
You start injections at home with your Bangkok clinic directing the protocol remotely, then fly in for the last scans, retrieval and transfer. It halves your time away. It also depends on two clinics communicating accurately about dose and timing across time zones, so it works best when your home clinic has done it before.
🧊 Freeze all, transfer on a second trip
Required if you are doing PGT-A, since results take time, and preferable if stimulation has left your hormones high. The uterus in a natural or lightly medicated cycle is often a better place to put an embryo than one that has just been through stimulation. Two trips, better conditions.
📦 And the constraint behind all three
Because export is prohibited, the country you cycle in is the country you keep returning to. That is fine if you like the idea, and it is a real cost if you do not. It is also the strongest argument for making enough embryos in one stimulation to cover several attempts, rather than doing a minimal cycle and repeating the whole thing later.
Donor Eggs, and the Point at Which to Discuss Them
This is the conversation most clinics have too late and most patients want to have on their own terms. The honest framing is that donor eggs are not a last resort, they are a different set of odds.
📉 Why age changes everything
A woman of forty-four carrying a pregnancy from a twenty-six year old's egg has success rates close to a twenty-six year old's, because the chromosomal errors that cause most failure and miscarriage come from the egg. This is why donor cycles change the arithmetic so sharply, and why the decision is really about how you feel rather than about whether it works.
⚖️ What Thai law requires
Donors are screened for medical history, infectious disease, genetic carrier status, ovarian reserve and psychologically. Matching considers ethnicity, colouring and build as preferences. There is no legal requirement that a donor share your nationality, despite what some summaries claim, and that particular confusion comes from the separate surrogacy rules.
💵 What it costs
Roughly double an own-egg cycle, with a success rate that is often three or four times higher for a woman past forty. Measured per baby rather than per cycle, it is frequently the cheaper route, which is an uncomfortable way to put it and a true one.
🕰️ When to raise it
Ask early even if you are not ready, because knowing your own-egg odds and your donor odds side by side is what lets you decide how many attempts to fund. Nobody should discover the difference after spending their entire budget on the lower number.
The Add-Ons, and Which Are Worth Paying For
Fertility is the branch of medicine with the most paid extras and the thinnest evidence behind many of them. This is not a reason to refuse everything, it is a reason to know which is which before someone reads you a list at a consultation.
PGT-A, chromosome screening of embryos
Biopsies a few cells from each blastocyst and checks the chromosome count, so you transfer embryos most likely to be viable. It genuinely reduces miscarriage and shortens the path for older women with several embryos to choose between. It does not create good embryos where there were none, and for a woman with only one or two blastocysts it can cost more than it gives. Useful over about thirty-seven, or after recurrent loss. About 37,900 baht
ICSI, injecting a single sperm into the egg
The default in Thailand and in most of Asia. It is clearly the right answer for male factor infertility and for previous fertilisation failure. Where sperm is normal it does not improve live birth rates over conventional IVF, so if you are being charged a large premium to upgrade, ask specifically why it applies to you. Usually included in Thai packages
Sperm selection: PICSI, MACS, microfluidic sorting
Different ways of choosing which sperm to inject, based on binding, on membrane markers or on swimming behaviour. Plausible mechanisms, modest and inconsistent evidence for live birth. Reasonable to accept where there is high sperm DNA fragmentation or a history of failed fertilisation, harder to justify as a routine upgrade. 12,500 to 34,500 baht
AI embryo grading and time-lapse incubators
Cameras photograph embryos continuously so they are never disturbed, and software scores their development. The undisturbed culture is a real benefit. Whether the algorithm picks better than a good embryologist is not settled, and it is the headline feature of the most expensive package tier. Nice to have, not worth choosing a clinic for. Bundled into top-tier packages
Embryo glue and growth factor media
A transfer medium containing hyaluronan, sometimes with added growth factor, intended to help implantation. The evidence is weak and the effect, if any, is small. It is cheap enough that people accept it to avoid wondering later, which is a legitimate reason to buy something and not a medical one. About 25,000 baht
Immune therapies, intralipids and steroids
Offered widely for repeated implantation failure and supported by very little. Some carry real risks in pregnancy. If a clinic proposes these, ask what specific test result justifies it in your case and what the evidence is, and be willing to hear a thin answer as a no. This is the category where desperation is most often monetised.
For each add-on, ask what it would change about your live birth rate and what evidence says so for a patient with your specific diagnosis. A clinic that answers precisely for two items and says the rest are optional is being straight with you. A clinic that recommends all of them to everyone is running a menu, not a treatment plan.
Choosing a Clinic in Bangkok
Fertility clinics are harder to compare than most medical providers because the outcome is probabilistic and everyone can point to babies. These are the checks that actually separate them.
- Live birth rate per cycle started, own eggs, your age band, last two years. The one number that matters, phrased so it cannot be substituted.
- What proportion of started cycles reach embryo transfer. This exposes the gap between the two denominators immediately.
- Which doctor sees you at each visit. Continuity matters more here than in one-off surgery, because dose adjustments depend on someone remembering your last scan.
- Who runs the laboratory and how long they have been there. The embryology lab, not the doctor, is where most of the variance between clinics lives. Ask about their blastocyst rate and their embryo survival rate after thawing.
- The full price of a second and third frozen transfer. Budget for the attempts you will probably need, not the one you hope for.
- What happens to your embryos if you stop responding to email. Storage terms, annual fees, and what consent they need from you both. Ten years is a long time to be casual about.
- Whether they will tell you not to proceed. A clinic that has declined patients this month is a clinic with a threshold.
On the choice between a dedicated fertility clinic and the fertility centre of a large private hospital: the clinics are usually cheaper, more specialised and more used to fly-in patients, while the hospitals have every other department in the same building, which matters if OHSS or another complication turns into something needing admission. For a straightforward first cycle in a healthy woman under thirty-eight, a good clinic is the sensible choice. Where there is a medical history, a hospital is worth the difference.
The Waiting, and What to Do With It
Nobody warns you that fertility travel is mostly waiting. Two or three weeks in a city, structured around short appointments, with a great deal of unfilled time and a very large question sitting in the middle of it.
Couples handle this in two wrong ways. Some fill every day, exhaust themselves and arrive at retrieval frayed. Others sit in a hotel room for three weeks reading forums, which is worse. The middle path is one gentle thing every day or two, indoors, cool, close by, and finished within a couple of hours.
The medical constraints are specific and easy to work with. During stimulation the ovaries enlarge, so nothing that twists, jolts or bounces, and no running. Around retrieval and after transfer, nothing strenuous, no heavy lifting and no saunas or hot tubs. Throughout, heat and dehydration are the enemy, which in Bangkok means the afternoon is for air conditioning. Everything below fits inside that.
The easiest possible outing and a good one for the middle of stimulation. Entirely indoors, flat the whole way round, cool, and finished in about an hour, in the basement of Siam Paragon directly on the BTS. No walking in the heat to get there, nothing that jolts, and you can leave the moment you have had enough.
A calm daytime option for the long empty stretch before retrieval. It is a sightseeing boat on the river rather than a fast one, shaded, seated throughout, with snacks and drinks included, which solves the drink-more-water problem while you are at it. Choose a covered seat and go in the morning rather than the middle of the afternoon.
An indoor observation floor reached by lift, with almost no walking involved once you are up there, which makes it one of the few big Bangkok sights that works late in stimulation when you are bloated and uncomfortable. Go in the hour before sunset and stay behind the glass rather than out on the open roof in the heat.
An evening on the Chao Phraya is the one thing we would tell a couple to book properly rather than leave to chance. It is after dark so the heat is gone, you are seated at a table for the whole of it, the boat is large and steady rather than fast, and it lasts a couple of hours and no more. Mostly, though, it is the one evening in three weeks that is about the two of you rather than about a scan result, and couples who do this consistently say it was the part of the trip they remember. Book it for the night before retrieval or a few days after transfer, not the day of anything.
Included for a specific group: couples going through this who already have a child. Secondary infertility is common and rarely talked about, and bringing an older sibling on a three week trip creates a problem at about four in the afternoon every day. This is an indoor play space in the same Siam Paragon complex, so one parent can hand over for two hours while the other rests, which during stimulation is not a luxury.
- Speedboat island trips and any fast boat. Repeated hard impact on the water is the clearest thing to avoid with enlarged ovaries, and it is the single most commonly booked wrong thing.
- Theme park rides. Jolting, twisting and sudden deceleration, all of which the stimulation phase specifically rules out.
- Elephant riding, quad bikes, zip lines and anything similar. Impact and heat together.
- Saunas, steam rooms, hot springs and hot tubs. Raised core temperature is a problem around transfer, and these are often bundled into spa packages without you noticing.
- Deep tissue and traditional Thai massage. The vigorous stretching and abdominal pressure are not appropriate during stimulation or after transfer. A gentle foot massage is fine and is the thing to ask for instead.
- Full-day outdoor tours. Ayutthaya and the floating markets are long, hot and dehydrating, which is exactly the combination that makes OHSS worse. Save them for a trip when you are not cycling.
The Honest Arithmetic
One full cycle at a Bangkok clinic, in one trip, for a couple flying in. Priced at the tier most patients actually qualify for rather than the advertised entry package.
| Line | Low | High | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| ICSI cycle, no age limit tier | 6,970 | 10,600 | Entry tiers are capped at 35 or 37 |
| Stimulation medication above the cap | 0 | 1,500 | Depends entirely on your protocol |
| PGT-A, if you are having it | 0 | 1,150 | Usually covers up to 5 embryos |
| Return flights for two | 1,000 | 2,200 | Cheaper outside December and Songkran |
| Hotel, 19 nights near the clinic | 760 | 2,280 | 40 to 120 USD a night, serviced apartments help |
| Food, transport and a SIM for three weeks | 450 | 1,000 | Bangkok is inexpensive to live in |
| A few gentle outings | 60 | 150 | The evening cruise is the expensive one |
| Total, one cycle | 9,240 | 18,880 | All figures in US dollars |
Now the number that matters more. At thirty-eight to forty, a cycle has roughly a one in four chance of a live birth, so an honest plan budgets for two or three. The second and third attempts are frozen transfers rather than full cycles, at about 1,210 US dollars each plus flights and a shorter stay, which is far cheaper than starting again. That is the strongest argument for stimulating properly once and banking several embryos, instead of buying the smallest package and repeating everything.
Set against the United States at twenty to thirty-five thousand dollars a cycle, Bangkok is dramatically cheaper even after three trips. Set against a UK private cycle at a true all-in average near seven thousand pounds, the first cycle is roughly comparable once flights and three weeks of accommodation are counted, and Thailand pulls ahead only across repeated attempts. Set against a good clinic in your own city, if you have one, the honest answer is that travelling for a first cycle rarely saves money by itself. It makes sense when your local option is a long waiting list, when you want several cycles' worth of embryos banked at once, or when the clinic you want is here.
There is a version of this where a couple picks the country first and the clinic second, because the flights were cheap and the photographs were nice. It is the wrong order. Pick on the live birth rate for your age, the laboratory, and whether the plan survives a failed first transfer. Then, once that is settled, it is genuinely worth something that the waiting happens somewhere warm and inexpensive where you can eat well and be distracted, rather than at home surrounded by everyone who keeps asking.
FAQ: IVF in Thailand
Do we really need the marriage certificate?
Yes, and it is not a formality a clinic can waive. The ART Act restricts treatment to legally married couples, and clinics ask for the certificate plus signed consent from both of you. If it is not in English it needs translating and authenticating, generally through your own foreign ministry and then the Thai embassy or your embassy in Bangkok. Allow several weeks and start it before booking flights.
Can a single woman be treated?
Not for IVF. Egg freezing is available to single women, which is a genuinely useful option and a reason plenty of women come here in their thirties. But the eggs cannot later be fertilised in Thailand without a marriage, and they cannot be exported, so think carefully about where you intend to use them before freezing them here.
We are a married same-sex couple. Has this changed?
Not yet, despite marriage equality taking effect in January 2025. The fertility law was written around a husband and a wife and has not been amended, so clinics cannot legally treat you, and a foreign marriage certificate does not help. A draft amendment replacing those words with spouses has been consulted on but has not been promulgated as of September 2026. If it passes, this answer changes. Until it appears in the Royal Gazette, it has not.
Can we choose to have a boy or a girl?
No. Elective sex selection, including for family balancing, is prohibited, and only selection to avoid a serious sex-linked genetic condition is permitted. Several international agency sites still list Thailand as a destination for this and they are out of date. PGT-A does reveal the sex of each embryo as part of chromosome counting, but you may not choose on that basis, and a clinic that offers to is offering to break the rules it operates under.
Can we take our frozen embryos home afterwards?
No. Export and import of eggs and embryos are both prohibited. Whatever you freeze in Thailand stays in Thailand, for up to ten years, and each future transfer means returning. This should influence which country you cycle in more than most people let it.
How many eggs should we expect?
It depends almost entirely on age and ovarian reserve, and the honest answer is that the numbers fall at every stage. A reasonable rough shape: of ten eggs collected, perhaps eight are mature, six fertilise, and three reach blastocyst. Of those three, how many are chromosomally normal depends heavily on age. Knowing this in advance takes some of the sting out of the daily phone calls.
Is the egg retrieval painful?
It is done under sedation and takes about twenty minutes, so you feel nothing during it. Afterwards expect cramping like a heavy period and some bloating for a day or two, occasionally longer if a lot of eggs were collected. Most women are comfortable enough to go out for dinner the next evening, and should not do anything more strenuous than that for several days.
Can my husband come later and just give a sample?
Yes, that is common. He needs to be there on the morning of retrieval, or the clinic can freeze a sample on an earlier visit and use that, which removes the timing risk entirely if his work makes a three week trip impossible. Frozen sperm performs essentially as well as fresh with ICSI. Arrange it in advance rather than assuming.
What if the cycle gets cancelled?
It happens, usually because too few follicles are developing. Ask the refund and credit policy before you start, because it varies a lot and nobody wants that conversation mid-cycle. A cancelled cycle is disappointing and it is also information: it tells your doctor something real about the protocol, and the next attempt is usually planned differently because of it.
When is the best time of year to come?
November to February. You will be in Bangkok for close to three weeks, heat and dehydration make OHSS worse, and the cool season makes the whole thing considerably more bearable. Avoid Songkran in mid-April, when the city is both hottest and largely shut, and be careful in December when flights and hotels are at their most expensive.
Check You Are Eligible Before You Book Anything
For most treatments the first question is which hospital. For this one it is whether Thai law lets you be treated at all, and that question is answerable in an email rather than after a flight. Tell us your marital status and what documents you hold, and we will tell you plainly whether Thailand works for you, including if the answer is no.
If it does work, send us both ages, any AMH or semen analysis results you already have, how many cycles you have had before and what happened, and whether you want everything in one trip. We will come back with which clinics and hospital fertility centres fit your case, what each publishes for your age band, a full cost including the medication and the second transfer that quotes usually leave out, and how long you actually need to be here. There is no fee and no obligation, and if we think you should cycle at home instead, we will say so.