Bye bye Thailand

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We had a really fun last night out down Kaohsan Road where we met a group of Thai girls who showed us a really good club to go to and we spent the night drinking buckets and dancing the night away.

The next day we chilled at a pool on a rooftop down Khaosan and then had a nice meal out near to our hostel as we were shattered and couldnt bear the busy walk down the main strip.

The next morning it was time to leave for the airport! Our travels had come to an end!

We got up at 7 and had breakfast and got a cab to the airport for 9am. Went to check in and after a few moments of the lady studying both of our passports she told us that we had 'overstayed by 6 days' ....

erm..sorry? I told her we hadnt as we had both got 3 month visas and they were valid for another month still. She then told us that the stamp that the thai man had stamped on our passports when we arrived at the border said we had to leave on the 5th february!!! We both stood there trying to understand how on earth this works as surely if you pay for a THREE MONTH VISA you should be able to stay for three months?

Anyway, she then informed us that the immigration would charge us 3000 baht each (500 baht for each day overstayed) which is about £60 altogether. We had both got absolutely no money left, Sean was on his last 500 baht which we were saving for snacks and goodies at the airport. We told her this and she said that we wouldnt be able to leave the country unless we could come up with the money. This would have been an easy task had the time not been 3am in England and we knew that everyone would be fast asleep and impossible to reach.

We tried to make it through immigration to see if we could somehow get away with it but man was very stern and told us we were not leaving the country without paying the fine. Time was ticking and the boarding gate was due to close in about 20minutes. We rushed back down to some internet place where we had to buy a 100baht phone card which gave us 6 minutes to call both of our familys to ask for some money to get us out of there! Feeling extremely stressed and trying to rush was bad enough but then having to use this useless phone card that had the longest pinnumber and stupid codes you had to input before each call made it even worse! We called and called but nobody would wakeup and with 10mninutes until the gates closed we admitted defeat and just had to give in and find out what was next.

We were told we could re-schedule to the next flight which wouldbe at 11.45pm that night and would haveto pay a 50euro re-booking fee. So we had a long old 12 hour wait in the airport and then finallllly made it onto our flight after begrudgingly paying the 3000baht 'overstay' fine... grr!

Touched down in Istanbul 11 hours later after a horribly turbulent flight and had a two hour wait before the last leg of the journey to Heathrow!

Although we were both sad to finish the adventures, after our last few weeks of terrible luck, stepping off of that last flight was a bit of a welcome relief! We had an absolutely amazing adventure though and have got so many memories and stories to share! Now to start preparing for the next one!!!

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