If you are planning to go to Thailand for any amount of time you know that you are going to need a Visa. The country will issue you a 30 day visa on arrival but after that brief month, everything changes.
Can't stress this enough. If you are from the United States you can ask for and receive a non-immigrant visa for one year. But, you can only do this from the United States. Ugh, a 20 hour flight (25 hours door to door) is enough to make you want to stick it out and do whatever is necessary to stay in Asia.
So here's what happened to me. Hopefully you will be able to avoid some of my mistakes and use a few things I accidentally discovered to make your time overseas more enjoyable.
I had been in Thailand my first 30 days and needed to extend my visa. As I write this, from Phuket there are only a few countries you can fly to directly, included are Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.
I chose Singapore because the ticket was dirt cheap 2,770 baht, that's like ninety dollars U.S. In Singapore you have to wait 26 hours for your visa to be processed. This is key, this means you need to stay 2 nights in Singapore. Beers are like $12 to $15 so expect to cut down on your drinking. Food is also pretty costly but the place is cleaner than pretty much any place I have ever visited.
Thai Embassy in Singapore opens at 9:30am but people start lining up at around 9:00am. You submit your application and they give you your approved visa back the next day after 2pm.
So I get my visa and head back to Phuket. On my way back in the immigration office somehow did not notice my visa and only gave me 30 days instead of 90 days. At the end of 60 days I was going to go to Burma to renew my visa and the visa tour operator noticed my visa had expired twelve days earlier. At 500 baht a day fine that sure did not feel good.
Everyone was telling me I just have to pay the money and leave the country. Ouch, that would be at least 10,000 baht and three and a half days out of my life. I got the number of an attorney in Phuket town and went to see her. Miss Duan really helped me out.
She sent one of her attractive employees to visit the guys in immigration. She came back with instructions that I needed to go to the airport and explain that they had made a mistake. You have to be humble at the same time because bureaucracies hate to be wrong.
I met a great officer on the way in and he got me over to immigration. Immigration spoke decent English and they understood the issue. I explained that I had been to see Mr. N. in immigration and he had sent me over to meet with them.
They were free to call over there if they liked. Well, twenty minutes later I was out of there with no fine and a big smile on my face. That afternoon I celebrated with an awesome massage at an outdoor Sauna. An hour of total pampering in an awesome environment for all of $13 (not a typo, thirteen dollars).
So my recommendation with this article is to bring a professional into the mix and let them go to the plate for you. They can accomplish in just a few minutes what might take you hours. Plus, the extra feeling of knowing someone is on your side is priceless. I only paid 500 baht or $16 to have them help me out. Your US or UK money goes a lot further here.
If you like articles like this and you want to learn more about making money online to have long-term perpetual travel, take a look at the man and the business behind the stories. Matt Gerchow is an inventor, teacher, internet marketer and real estate investor.
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น