Day 26

Phew, we eventually arrive in Bangkok! It was 5:30am in the morning so the bus station was still quite quiet. First thing we do - TOILET! The one on the coach was pretty grose......

We already had a hostel booked so got a taxi straight there and arrived there at about 8am. We couldn't check in until 12pm but could leave our bags there until that time. As we had this spare time we decided to go to the Embassy to get our visa sorted and this is when the fun began.

Right. After doing some research we now realise that NOBODY on the internet tells the truth about the correct way of getting a Thai visa. Either that or Anth and I just imagined what we had read or seriously misinterpreted it (hmmm the latter probably...)

We knew we had to find the Thai Embassy and we still don't realise why there isn't a Thai Embassy in Thailand, is it because countries don't need their own Embassy in their own country? What is a freakin Embassy anyway? The vein of our lives I'd say...

Anyway we thought 'it's ok, we'll just go to the British Embassy to get one instead.' So we turned up there and in the visa department there were two Thai women sitting there which we thought they must be in the queue so we just sat behind them.

After an hour we sort of thought, 'this isn't right where's the receptionist?' but still did nothing just sat and waited. An English man came in at this point and sat down behind us. About 15 minutes later he asked us 'where's the receptionist?' our answer - 'don't know', Thai woman's response 'you need to ring the bell to get assistance', our facial expressions - just gormless (somebody get us a couple of dunce hats).

OH! So that's what that bell is for!! And we thought it was just for decoration! Ha so anyway we pressed that blimin bell only to be told that to get the 90 day visa that we want you don't got to the British Embassy (derrrr)you go to the Thai Immigration Office which unfortunately has moved from next door and is now in a nice new building 20 miles away. Get in there.

So we leave the British Embassy, rather flushed, and call down a taxi to take us to the Immigration Office. The taxi driver seems to understand perfect English when it comes to football as him and Anthony were chatting away but doesn't seem to understand IM-MI-GRAT-ION OFF-ICE and drops us off in the wrong place although we don't realise this straight away because everything is written in Thai. Only after the taxi has gone and we ask someone we realise that the office is an hours walk away and we can't get another taxi because the roads are grid-locked.

Off we go then in the sweltering 10.30am heat in search for Building B, 2nd Floor, Immigration Office. Man it is so hot! Finally we make it, just...

Now one bit of research we had read was that when you go to get your visa you can get refused through appearance alone so dress smartly, brush hair, etc, etc. Picture this, Anth and Kay turning up in yesterdays clothes after a 7 hour wait in an outside, smelly bus station, an 11 hour bus journey and an hours walk in the unbearable heat. We didn't look our best anyway. Actually we couldn't even stand close to each other our fury teeth and rubber tongues didn't give us the freshest of breaths plus the flowers weltering as we walked pass them wasn't really giving off the 'yes we showered this morning' impression either...

So we get in this nice, new building and it's about 11:30am now. After 10 minutes we find the office we need, queue for another 10 minutes to get the forms we need and find out that the office closes at 12pm for lunch. Oh please since when to offices close for lunch? Things can only get better right?

So we go back out of the office, sit in the food area that is in the building to fill the forms out (we had to search for a pen first - oh we are so prepared!) and once completed head back to the office only to find that a nice, big queue has formed in our absence.

We wait half an hour in the queue for the doors to re-open and when they do everyone is given a ticket with a queue number on it. We get numbers 6 and 7 and think thank god we're near the beginning. What we didn't realise is that the people who were there before lunch kept their tickets so really we are more like numbers 32 and 33 and each application can take up to 10 minutes to complete and there is only 1 person processing the applications...

Finally after another 2 hour wait we get called. We go in to the little booth area together, sit down and the visa man takes our forms. He glances over them, looks at us, smiles, glances over them again and then says as bold as brass "you can't get visa here".

Oh no, no, no to get the visa WE want you have to go out of the country ha yes OUT OF THE COUNTRY!!! I mean come on, throw us a fricken bone here!!

Apparently, you can only get a 7 day visa extension at the Thai Immigration Office not a 90 day visa and you can't get a 90 day visa extension anywhere anyway because they don't exist you can only get a 60 day visa!

So up we get and off we go out of the Thai Immigration Office with a feeling of self satisfaction and accomplishment HA HA HA where did we put those dunce hats again?

For those that know Anth and I well you are probably thinking oh god here comes the massive argument of whose at fault here but luckily (and surprisingly) we found the whole thing highly amusing and what makes it funnier is that we now had TWO DAYS to get out of the country so had to do the same trip we had just done but in reverse! Surely this is what backpacking is about!?!!?

Fortunately we could get the 600 mile journey back to Malaysia via train rather than bus, oh no sorry, there's a train strike isn't there hahaha of course there is! So we book the 23 hour bus journey for tomorrow evening - I hope tonight goes quickly because we are really looking forward to that!

Anyway back at the hostel, after a long shower and 7 or 8 vodka and cokes, today's excitement seems a thing of the past.

If anyone would like any advise/information on how to obtain a Thai visa in the future Anth and I are now fully fledged pros, you can contact us on www.letsdothingsthehardway.com

Day 27

After yesterday's shananigans we didn't want to do anything over exerting so we simply had breakfast and, get this, bought ourselves a Lonely Planet - Southeast Asia on a Shoestring! Our dreaded bus journey was not until 7pm so we stayed at the hostel all day and read the LP and were surprised when it had all about visas in there. For some reason we read this section out loud to each other and there was alot of 'ah so that's where we went wrong' going on.

We stayed at the hostel until 5pm then got something to eat and went to the bus station.

This time the bus was not so good, no freebies and Anth had a big fatty who every half an hour mumbled some sort of prayer to himself behind him so he couldn't put his chair down.

I won't bore you with the bus journey, very repetative - street lamp, street lamp, stop sign, street lamp, so on. After 23 hours of looking at street lamps I can now tell you that they are definately all pretty much the same.

Oh yeah one bit of excitement that did happen on the journey was that after about 6 hours there was a food and toilet stop where everybody got off. Anth and I quickly grabbed some food, ran back on the bus and put our chairs right down before the fatty got on so he had to go the rest of the journey all scrunched up, we laughed for a good old 10 minutes about that one, how childish hahaha........