ThailandVisas!!

Bad news from Thailand today. Thailand has reduced their land-border visas from 30 to 15 days. For a country that gets 6% of it's GDP from tourism they sure are doing a bad job of promoting it! The government has said it's to stop people renewing the 30 day visas and staying in the country indefinately but as part of the new measures they've also scrapped the maximum number of times you can renew a visa!

All this means that we now have to make our way to the Singapore border BEFORE going to Ko Tarutao for three days. Once we worked out the new route it's not much hassle for us, but it's been a wake up call. The realisation that a country could do something like this with no warning, while we're actually away has opened our eyes a little more to how difficult this trip could be.

There have been many posts on message boards from people already in Laos who have only message board rumours to go on as the Thai government has not updated any official websites. This is why we've called it an adventure and we wouldn't change it for the world but living in Britain I think we just expect a certain fairness from our government and a right to complain if we don't get it!