Prepro
I recently had the “pleasure” of renewing my short term visa, a journey that took 7 hours. Tourist visas in Thailand last for a standard 30 days. If you need more time, the 2 most basic options are either 1. leave the country and come back or 2. go through the visa extension process. Documents-wise, extension is pretty straightforward. Everything else-wise, it is not.
1. 2000 Thai baht (about $55 USD)-1900 is for the fee to the government, the other 100 is for…
2. Passport page photocopies and pics, which you can get at 2 shops directly next to the office. You need 1 photo and copies of your main passport page and your most recent visa stamp page.
3. 3 pages of forms that you pick up and fill out at the office asking for passport and lodging details.
For some reason, the Immigration office is farrrr from the city center. We’re talking 45 minutes in a car, easily over an hour via public transportation. The usual “save time by taking a scooter” Bangkok strategy also does not apply; you must take the highway/tollway where scooters are seemingly not allowed. I considered taking a scooter to a closer, more direct train station, but only after I had waited 25 minutes for a car to arrive and then sat in it for another 45.
Your Illustrious Destination-An “IT Mall”
What’s an IT Mall? Well, if you arrive at 830 am like I did, its mostly a dark, creepy, abandoned place that looks like it’s from a survival horror video game. Later in the day, it’s a shopping center that’s still mostly abandoned but has some stores selling cell phones, CRT monitors, and random desktop PCs. I learned later in my 7 hour chill sesh that the basement did house a relatively busy food court.
Lines, Lines, and More Lines
The easiest way to break this down is via a timeline of my journey.
645 am: Wake up
726 am: Call Grab car
805 am: Finally enter Grab car after walking 1/2 mile in the wrong direction to meet him in the road. If I would have waited for him to make it to the apartment, it would have been 830 easy.
830 am: Immigration office officially opens.
905 am: Arrive at the IT Mall and quickly make photocopies and snap pics. The mob is unruly.
914 am: Start of standing in line #1. There’s 3 lines for line #1. Turns out some of them go to 2 registrars, 1 of them only goes to 1. They don’t tell you this, you only learn once you get to the front. Guess which one I was in.
1049 am: I have finally reached the front of line #1. My paperwork is flawless, as per usual. I am given card #236.
1130 am: They are processing #170. Again, I am #236.
12 pm: Lunch break so the whole office shuts down for an hour.
1227 pm: I am served BBQ pork and egg custard bao by a robot waiter. This is by far the highlight of my day.
141 pm: #236 has been called and I am finally paid and through line #2. At this point, I’ve given up my passport, photo, money, and copies. On to line #3 (technically step #4), waiting for my passport to be returned.
236 pm: Line #3 complete and my passport is back in my hands with the appropriate extension stamp.
340 pm: My grab driver, 1/2 mile from the apartment, hits a scooter. The scooter even honked at him before it passed him, dude still swerved right into it. We pull over briefly to “discuss” the interaction; I think this was mostly the scooter driver cussing him out in Thai. Google Translate couldn’t keep up so actual words shared are unknown.
400 pm: I am finally home and making a stiff cocktail.
Closing Advice
After spending 9 hours with transpo, I am loathe to go on this journey again. My advice to anyone going on the same excursion, get there earlier or later. 30 minutes after open was about the worst time to arrive. If you read around online, you’ll see folks mentioning that if you show up 30 minutes before open you’ll be done in 20 minutes; I doubt that. I’d suggest getting there at least 45 to an hour before they open with extra time built in for transportation. If not early, then wait until 11 or even 1 pm; the line #1 lines were only about a dozen people long at that point. The other option is to schedule an appointment. I have no idea the success rate with an appointment. There wasn’t a special line for them that I noticed. I may have heard “priority appointment #31” at one juncture, but who knows.
