One of the oddities of being in Thailand is the visa system for foreigners. Having an Australian passport gives me the privilege of getting a 30 day 'visa waiver' on arrival in Thailand. I presume citizens from most other developed countries enjoy the same privilege.
Unlike a proper tourist visa (that one applies for from a diplomatic mission before departure) the 30 day visa waiver cannot be extended. I did really give much thought to visa matters before departing the UK, and even if I had I would not have had sufficient time (or inclination) to spend going to and forth to the embassy before leaving for Thailand. The school didn't manage to get my visa converted to a 'Non Immigrant B' visa with work permit before the visa expired, so a trip outside the country, to get a new visa was necessary. I was initially rather excited by the prospect - a good chance to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia or Pagan in Burma. Alas...
For a combination of reasons - Myanmar visa hassles, lack of time and difficulty in justifying the cost of a weekend sojourn in Siem Reap - I opted for a day trip to the border and back.
Getting there was a near debacle. I set 2 mobile phones to go off at 3.45 and jumped out of bed with a fright at 4 am with both having failed to go off. I flew through the shower, opted not to do a double check of an email from them, grabbed my passport - complete with passport size photo, and rushed downstairs to catch a taxi to Sukhumvit in town. 5 mins along Ramkhamhaeng Rd I was dismayed to see the the clock in the taxi at 1.40.... no glasses on when I checked the time in the morning - therein the explanation for the alarm not going off.... I weighed the pros and cons of returning home to come back 2 hours later against going in and hanging about Sukhumvit for 2 hours, each passing second was a bit closer to Sukhumvit and I figured I may as well find a newspaper and a noodle shop....
Arrived in there to find lots of foreigners milling about the 7-11 and a table of passports that had been handed in. It looked rather underworld.... and I wondered if there was a secret 2 am border run.... I asked the departure time and was told 5. There were loads of passports already there so I added mine to the pile and was about to set off to find somewhere to pass the time when the bus pulled up.... 'Everyone on the bus'... Confused,I pulled out my mobile, put on my glasses and got a shock to see it was 4.55 - the taxi driver's clock was wrong....
Unlike a proper tourist visa (that one applies for from a diplomatic mission before departure) the 30 day visa waiver cannot be extended. I did really give much thought to visa matters before departing the UK, and even if I had I would not have had sufficient time (or inclination) to spend going to and forth to the embassy before leaving for Thailand. The school didn't manage to get my visa converted to a 'Non Immigrant B' visa with work permit before the visa expired, so a trip outside the country, to get a new visa was necessary. I was initially rather excited by the prospect - a good chance to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia or Pagan in Burma. Alas...
For a combination of reasons - Myanmar visa hassles, lack of time and difficulty in justifying the cost of a weekend sojourn in Siem Reap - I opted for a day trip to the border and back.
Getting there was a near debacle. I set 2 mobile phones to go off at 3.45 and jumped out of bed with a fright at 4 am with both having failed to go off. I flew through the shower, opted not to do a double check of an email from them, grabbed my passport - complete with passport size photo, and rushed downstairs to catch a taxi to Sukhumvit in town. 5 mins along Ramkhamhaeng Rd I was dismayed to see the the clock in the taxi at 1.40.... no glasses on when I checked the time in the morning - therein the explanation for the alarm not going off.... I weighed the pros and cons of returning home to come back 2 hours later against going in and hanging about Sukhumvit for 2 hours, each passing second was a bit closer to Sukhumvit and I figured I may as well find a newspaper and a noodle shop....
Arrived in there to find lots of foreigners milling about the 7-11 and a table of passports that had been handed in. It looked rather underworld.... and I wondered if there was a secret 2 am border run.... I asked the departure time and was told 5. There were loads of passports already there so I added mine to the pile and was about to set off to find somewhere to pass the time when the bus pulled up.... 'Everyone on the bus'... Confused,I pulled out my mobile, put on my glasses and got a shock to see it was 4.55 - the taxi driver's clock was wrong....
The trip to the border was non eventful. Despite good intentions to read, I slept the whole way.
Someone had described the border to me as 'Pol Pot's Vegas'. The description seems rather apt. I think there is ripe ground for a thesis on border towns in Thailand. We were driven to the border, got off the bus and walked through immigration showing our passports. Our passports were then collected and taken to the Cambodian authorities while we were shuttled to Vegas...
The Thai side of the border was dusty, and wouldn't have been out of place in A Town Like Alice but was basically just a town. The Cambodian side was quite different. It was a no mans land of gaudy 4 star hotel meets RSL club establishments where there were poker machines, all you can eat buffets and low grade duty free shops stocked with whiskey and cigarettes. It was a surreal background to the streams of very poor Cambodians lined up with carts waiting to pass through to the other side of the border. I couldn't work out the situation of people pulling the carts - I could only think of trucks lined up at the silo as a comparison, except the wheat trucks are there to sell wheat, and these people had empty carts and didn't look like they had the means to be stocking up in Thailand to bring things back to sell. I asked Noc about it and she explained that they go through to the other side and get paid a little for bringing goods back into Cambodia for someone else.
I arrived back in Bangkok with a Cambodian visa taking up a whole page in my passport, sometime around 2.30 and was quite proud of myself for being able to catch a bus back home rather than a taxi.
Note - the photos have the Thai flag, but they were on the Cambodian side of Thai immigration. I am not sure how it works exactly, but I think they have a 'buffer zone' of several hundred metres.
No comments:
Post a Comment