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Published: March 23rd 2010
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According to Agi this is a "mother proof" pic
At least compared to the one that was taken beforehand... nice buckets of thai cocktails :-) Here we are, we arrived to Thailand, back to civilisation and western world. But the arrival was a bit more tricky than expected.
Immigration headache
You would think that Thailand is a hassle free country to travel to, you can get in visa-free or get your visa on arrival. This was in our mind when heading towards immigration at Bangkok airport. Yes, we knew that the immigration rules got stricter 2 weeks ago, as the financial/travel crisis is over, so Thailand restored its immigration rules that were in place pre-crisis...
Being an Eastern European proved to be a disadvantage this time. While citizens of most Western countries still get in visa-free, we, last joiners of the EU got pushed back to the non-exempted list. All right, applying for a visa on arrival does not sound a difficult thing, but the fact that you are at no-mans-land adds some complications... First requirement: passport photo: could have had one in my wallet but no, so we exchanged some dollars to baht and got my passport photo in the photo booth. Apparently I am not the only one who needs this. Went back to immigration and then the officer
An other one for the parents...
This time Agi with a big smile. This is how most of our nights were spent in BKK... revealed the full list of requirements for me to enter Thailand, the trickiest being a return or onward flight ticket from Thailand within 2 weeks. Well, of course I did not have this as our plan was to continue to Laos overland... Well, our plans have changed significantly, dear friends.
Revamp your route!
How the hell can you get an outbound flight ticket when you are at no-mans-land in an airport? Well, we were lucky enough, as Bangkok airport has Internet services in this part of the airport, so we hooked ourselves to the Air Asia website and decided to favor Malaysia this time. We saw no point for flying to Laos, as this is not cost effective at all. So Malaysia. Reason: no damn visa is required for Hungarians and Malaysian Borneo hosts one of the top dive sites of the world: Pulau SIPADAN!!! Did not take much time to buy a ticket, accept the fact that our plans have changed again and as it looks we give a miss to all Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Bangkok in 6 days
Sitting in an internet cafe every day for a few hours
Agi's Thai souvenir...
Okay, it's only henna, but looks like a real one :-) we are quite busy with routing ourselves towards South America. You would think this is simple as any other travel, but just think again: the Pacific Ocean covers one third of the Earth and to cross it is not so simple. Most of the airlines favor the route through Europe to South America, but I am not taking this. I wanna have the 360 circle... Yes, stubborn I am, Chris tried to convince me to turn back towards the West (read: Africa is from our point of view also in the west), but then again, looks like I could convince him to continue East. So we will let you know of the outcome soon.
But in Bangkok we do not do much, besides watching Alice in Wonderland in 3D (it was damn good!), eating Western food most of the time, mainly to restore my body functions as Asia did some damage and planning the road forward. We see less and less chances to finish this trip in 12 months... Will see.
Oh yes, and cheered up ourselves with a new camera, which is basically the same as the one we lost in India, just a version better. Hopefully this one stays with us still the end of our trip...
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Patrik
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The solution to your problems...
... search for the local Las Vegas and get married, so Agi can take on the name Zilverberg and mayby a dutch passport... Ok a big sacrifice that is but you're surviving Chris day in day out now for allready 6 months so how much worse can it get? And you can hold the big party for after you get back from your travels ;-) no seriously, too bad you'll be missing cambodia and vietnam, but those are quite touristy countries so chances are you'll still get there some time eventually. And by the way, hosting a little gettogether with Gijs and Marjolein this weekend, will have some beers cold just in case you should decide to fly to south america over europe this weekend, feel free to stop by then ;-)