Thursday, December 18, 2008

Visa Run

One of the big hassles of living in Thailand is the struggle to stay legal. Richard and I knew we'd have to do a visa run at some point. We got a 60 day tourist visa before coming to the country, but we need a non-tourist visa to legally work. We were always planning to get this visa in Bangkok. It takes about three weeks to process, so we were planning on putting in our paperwork, and then dashing to the Myanmar border for a stamp to renew our tourist visa while the non-tourist visa finished processing.

However. Our coordinator here insisted that we needed to go to Laos to get our visa. This was news to us, and was going to be a much more expensive trip than we had budgeted for. After explaining that we really couldn't afford to go to Laos, our coordinator offered to pay for a van to take Richard and me, along with the three other teachers from our program who are in Hua Hin. to Laos.

So, here we are in Laos! We took the van overnight, got to the border at 5 am, and spent the day until about noon waiting in various lines to get into the country and get our visa processed. After a nap, some food and some coffee, we're ready to explore Vientienne, but we've only got a night here. We pick up our paperwork tomorrow, and head back to Thailand.

Laos seems pretty cool. There are baguettes everywhere. Good bread is hard to get in Thailand, so this is very exciting. Apparently northern Laos is beautiful, but we have no time to see it. Hopefully we'll get a chance to come back. That's my only insight so far. Bread! Mmmm. I'm pretty sleep deprived.

No comments: