Bangkok to Burma - the debated visa process uncovered!

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I apologize for the lateness of the entry. I didn't give myself a big turnaround between the end of my holiday and the start of work so this project was put on the 'back burner' for some time...

I left for Bangkok on the morning of January 15th. I flew from Dalian to Guangzhou to Bangkok. Other than a few delays and the longest immigration line in Bangkok the trip was pretty uneventful.

We stayed at the King Royal Garden Inn. It was more expensive than what I normally like to pay in Bangkok BUT it was the location of the hotel that I was looking for. The next morning was BIG morning: getting our visa's for Myanmar.

For weeks leading up to my trip to Myanmar I had been reading countless blogs, news articles, and travel guides on the visa process for Myanmar. It seemed like there was so much information out there that didn't necessarily agree with each other. I had read about getting it on arrival, paying a company, getting it in Beijing instead, getting it from Canada, etc., etc., etc. Needless to say, I was a bit nervous and gave myself an entire extra day in Bangkok JUST in case something went wrong. Everything went smoothly.

We walked from our hotel to the embassy in under 10 minutes. I would recommend grabbing a coffee on the way and getting there by 8am. The line was big and getting bigger by the minute! The embassy opens at 930am. You wait in a line to have someone check that you have all of the documents:

Passport

Photocopy of your passport

Filled out application form

2 passport pictures (they didn't seem to care about the size)

You can get ALL of this just down the road from the embassy but we ended up just buying the form from them for 5 baht each.

Once we got the OK from the man, he gave us a number. We then waited for our number to be called at another booth. When that happened, we gave all of our documents and 1260 baht each over and were told to come back at 330 that afternoon with our reciept to pick up our passports. Easy! If you have any questions, let me know!

Myanmar, here we come!!!

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