Thailand Visas

I finally got my passport back today with the 12-month visa extension. My mistake (in not having the right amount of money in my name only for the right amount of time) ended up costing me 6,500฿ (500฿ per day), more than double the original amount the lawyer quoted. I am still annoyed with myself for missing that kind of detail.

Anyway, the Thailand visas ended up costing a lot more money because we did not plan well ahead of time (maybe for the lack of or confusion over the details). If I could do this over again, I would have done it differently.

Retirement Visa (Non-Immigrant O-A: $200)

Well, if I had done one thing right, that was for Gary’s retirement visa. I read the requirements multiple times when we were still in the U.S. and checked some of the details with the Thai Consulate in Los Angeles via email.

I applied for a 12-month multiple entry O-A visa for Gary. In fact, this will allow Gary to stay in Thailand for up to 24 months with at most one trip traveling outside of Thailand, on or just before the day this 12-month visa ends, and he will be able to stay for another 12 months inside Thailand without leaving. He just needs to report to Immigration every 90 days, which he can do via mail (we hire the lawyer to do that for 1,500฿, about $50). Apparently, this visa is only available if you apply outside of Thailand. If you are inside Thailand, you can only get it for 12 months.

Student Visa (Non-Immigrant ED) and Caretaker Visa (Non-Immigrant O)

For Samantha’s and my visas, I applied for a 12-months multiple entry O visas while we were in the U.S.  However, with these visas, we have to leave the country every 90 days unless we get an extension. If I have planned better, we could have save some money if we do one of the following:

1) 12-month multiple entry visa leaving every 90 days (applied outside of Thailand): Samantha’s school has 3 breaks (she’s on a two-week break since this Monday). If I have timed our entry better,  we could leave over the breaks to explore different countries around us and to satisfy the 90-day requirement. The visa costs $200/visa.

2) Single entry visa ($80, outside of Thailand) with 12-month extension (1,900฿, ~$61, inside Thailand): whenever you get an extension, it voids the previous visa you hold. As such, when we got the 12-month extension, the previous 12-month multiple entry visas were no longer valid. In order to leave and come back to Thailand during that 12-month period, we had to apply for a multiple re-entry permit, which costs more money, another 3,800฿ (~$123). Then since we hired a lawyer to do it, there are also the fees paid to the visa company, 2,000฿ for Sammy’s extension, and 5000฿ for mine, and another 1,000฿ per person for the 90-day reporting. Maybe for next year, I will just do these myself. Of course, if you don’t plan to leave Thailand within the 12-month period, then there will be no need for the re-entry permit. You don’t need to get this upfront, but get it before you leave for a trip.

Like I’ve said, if I have planned better, I would probably go with option #1, just simpler and I know how to do it myself. Well, it was a good though expensive learning experience.

A Brave New Day

We made it into the city (Chiang Mai) today and back, without having any accidents. We consider that a big achievement!

We went to see Rhys at Assist Thai Visa today to get the work started on visa extension for Samantha and me. Gary has a retirement visa which allows him to stay for 12 months without leaving Thailand, but Samantha (on Education visa) and I (on Caretaker visa) can only stay up to 90 days without leaving. Our visas do allow us multiple entries within a year, so if we don’t mind doing border runs or plan to visit somewhere every 90 days, we don’t need an extension, but we don’t want to deal with the hassle.

Anyway, it was supposed to take only 40 minutes or so to get to Rhys’ office, but Google Maps did not quite do its job this morning and we kept getting lost (definitely not an operator problem as I was the one operating this). For someone who hadn’t been driving on the “wrong” side of the road for many years, Gary was doing a good job driving and hadn’t turned onto the wrong lane at all so far, so let’s hope that continues! It made me nervous just sitting in the passenger seat and seeing how close the mopeds, bikes, and the other cars were. There were even people walking across the highway with their bikes, and people multi-tasking: driving a moped and smoking! We got stopped by policemen a couple of times during our journey but once they saw the passengers, they just waved us to move on. Well, our supposedly 40 minute journey ended up taking us about 2 full hours, with Rhys sending someone from his office on a moped to lead us from the Shangri-La Hotel to their office close by.

After talking to Rhys and had a quick lunch close by, we set our target to visit Tesco Lotus, a British supermarket along the super-highway. We wanted to get a few things to make our place more livable and stop eating out all the time. We were hoping for a British Tesco experience, but the Tesco Lotus here was more like a department store with a large food section as well. We found almost everything that we needed to get, except for garbage bags and cereal. I used the Google translator to translate “garbage bags” into Thai and Gary showed it to a staff there and we found our bags. For the cereal though, Gary was led to an aisle for grains, not quite the box cereal we had in mind. Anyway, we had enough of this and decided to check out.

As the cashier was scanning our items, she stopped when she reached the 3 beer bottles that Gary wanted. She pointed to a sign to Gary and put the beer aside, not into our basket.

Apparently in Thailand, you cannot buy alcohol early in the morning, nor in the early afternoon. I don’t quite understand why but I was not unhappy with this outcome!

As we were getting ready to leave Tesco for the Resort, I finally got Google Maps working properly and now a nice female voice was giving Gary the driving instructions, instead of me monitoring the little dot on Google Maps and trying to tell him to turn left or right. This had a very calming effect on Gary. I wondered if I could borrow that voice to tell Gary to do other things, such as giving up on alcohol.

When we got back to our rental, we saw an army of men working in our house, with all the doors and windows wide open, inviting in the ever friendly bugs and mosquitos. Oh, I forgot to mention that the pipe in the kitchen sink that was “fixed” yesterday did not really work and water was coming out from the pipe this morning when Gary tried to use it. Needless to say, Gary contacted Robin immediately and asked him to send someone else (who knows what they are doing) to fix this ASAP. As we all know that quantity does not equal quality, the many men working on this issue haven’t fixed the problem today. As I am typing right now, the pipe that was installed yesterday has been taken off and there is a bowl sitting at the bottom of the open kitchen sink pipe to catch any water should we be foolish enough to turn on the faucet. Gary declared that he would find a new place in town for us tomorrow and move out, never mind the money we’ve paid. I think we should ask for a discount.

Samantha has been a pretty good girl all day, mostly staying quiet when her parents were arguing about driving directions, and only occasionally burst into singing. Her only complaints today were the same complaints she had for the last few days: Robin and Daddy were talking too much, and her mosquito bites are itchy. She was doing her “Itchy Mosquito Bites” dance for us in the bedroom, rolling back and forth on our bed and chanting “itchy, itchy, itchy”, but that was too entertaining to catch on video and she made it clear that she did not wish to share that with anyone else.

So another mundane day in Chiang Mai with very little achieved. Our plan tomorrow is to visit the bank and to look for a more suitable long-term rental. Wish us luck…