A Minor SNAFU...

Chiang Mai, Thailand

August 1, 2007
N 18°47.209
E 098°59.602

We aren’t sure if we jinxed ourselves in our six month milestone blog when we mentioned no mishaps, or if we just finally ran into a stumbling block. I am sure this probably got your attention. You want to know what could have gone wrong for Marc and Laura after six months of pretty much nothing.

Well, let me begin by telling you about yesterday (7/31). Yesterday was one of the two days during the week the U.S. Consulate in Chiang Mai is open to provide services such as adding new pages to passports. This was our critical path item since Marc doesn’t even have a square to spare, let alone a whole page for his India visa.
The trip to the U.S. Consulate was a breeze… we arrived early, short wait in line, and in less than an hour we had several new pages sewn into our passports. It was still way before noon and we thought we would hit the Indian Consulate to apply for our visa.

This is when things started to get a little frustrating. We confirmed the address for the consulate on at least 10 different local Chiang Mai sites—they all had the same address. We walked the mile or so from the U.S. Consulate to the address on the Internet to find absolutely nothing at the location. There was a sign on the gate, in Thai, and of no use to us.

We had another address from a very old Lonely Planet that was nearby, or so we thought, and we staggered another mile or two to another dead-end. We were defeated at this point and the whole experience was very reminiscent of the ordeal in Sydney to get our Vietnam visa. Exhausted, hot, tired and thirsty we grabbed a tuk-tuk back towards our hotel, stopping at the tourist office on the way.

The lady at the tourist office gave us a map showing the new location of the Indian Consulate; nowhere near the locations we just visited. However, she was unable to provide a physical address, but promised it was located at the small red dot on the map. We put our trust into the map and solemnly walked back to our Guest House, not really convinced we were going to find the consulate the following morning.

That brings us to today where we started the whole routine over again, with the exception of the long walk; we jumped into a tuk-tuk right away. Marc pulled out the map and showed our tuk-tuk driver our destination. No problem, he knew exactly where the Indian Consulate was located (at least a mile north from the location we tried yesterday).

There wasn’t a lot of activity in the office and the only people waiting were a couple of nuns. We walked right up to the counter, got an application, filled it out, and walked back to the counter with our two passport photos and passport. We were asked to sit down and wait. Wow, this is going to be great, we will be out of here in an hour with visa in hand!

We waited twenty minutes before the lady called us back up the counter. She told us to pay half of the fee and the rest would be due on the 9th when we return for our actual visa. “What do you mean the 9th?” we asked, trying to stay calm. The lady explained the process takes at least five business days. We quickly asked if we could pay to expedite it. “No, no, we don’t expedite.”

Marc and I turned to each other trying to figure out what to do. We have a flight booked on the 4th to go to Krabi (far south Thailand) for 10 days… there’s no way we can fly back to Chiang Mai on the 9th. And, we definitely don’t want to stay in Chiang Mai for another eight days waiting for our visas.
“You’re sure there’s no expedite process?” “Yes, I’m sure. No expedites.” The lady politely asked us to step back from the counter and discuss this matter amongst ourselves.

The way I saw it we had two options: 1) Process the paperwork in Chiang Mai and change all of our flights; or 2) Fly to Bangkok ASAP (only changing one flight segment), go to the Indian Embassy in BKK and apply for our visas, and then pick up our visas when we return from the Krabi on 8/14.

I preferred the second option; however, the big unknown was if the Indian Embassy in Bangkok would keep our passports while processing our visas. If they kept our passports we couldn’t go anywhere and would be spending at least five “heavenly” days in Bangkok waiting for them. Marc went back up to the counter to ask this simple question. We were provided a piece of paper with the Indian Embassy’s number on it and told to give them a call. Gee, thanks for all your help.

After several minutes of back and forth, I made a quick phone call to the Indian Embassy in Bangkok and confirmed we could indeed keep our passports while they processed our visas. We advised the paper-pusher we decided to submit our application in Bangkok. She just smiled and said OK. We thanked her (for nothing) and walked out of the building, completely defeated. How could we let a mistake like this happen?

We got back to our room and changed our flight for tomorrow to Bangkok, found a place to stay for two nights, and called the Indian Embassy at least three times to triple confirm everything we were doing. We could keep our passport, go to the beaches in Krabi, and come back in 10 days for our visas.

Yes, maybe a phone call in the first place would have helped, but we never thought the visa process would take five full business days—never, ever! For example, our visas to Vietnam (a good ol’ Communist country) were processed in less than two days! And if two days wasn’t fast enough the Vietnamese Embassy was more than happy to charge you handsomely to expedite your visa.

We’ll let you know how the adventure goes in Bangkok on Friday. Thank goodness this is the last visa we need to apply for on our trip. Unless we add on a few more countries, who knows…