A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Hat Yai, Thailand

Thailand has some inexplicable rules governing tourist visas. On the one hand they generously offer free 30-day visas upon entering the country, unlike the time-consuming and very expensive visa requirements in most of the rest of Asia. If you end up staying more than a month, however (as so many do) you have two choices -- either find a local immigration office and purchase an extension (about $16.50) or leave the country for a few minutes and come back in for your brand-spanking-new 30-day free tourist visa.

At this point, you might be thinking "$16.50? Shoot, that's a no-brainer. Head to the immigration office, Katy!" If this was your thought, well then you're right, that would have been the logical move. As you might expect, I went to the Malaysian border. I'm just that kind of planner.

In my defense, I had a couple of reasons for doing it this way. First, the closest immigration office to Ko Lanta was in Krabi, and that town always put me in a bad mood. OK, maybe that reason was a bit weak. The second reason was based on somewhat faulty information. I was under the impression that we were less than four hours from Hat Yai, the Thai city near the border, while Krabi was two hours away. It really seemed like two hours was a small price to pay to: a. avoid the inevitable crabbiness in Krabi; and b. save $16.50.

As it turns out, the trip to Hat Yai was five and a half hours, plus the 40 minute back-of-the-pickup ride in the rain on the rutted dirt road from Kantiang Beach to the minibus station. And once I got to Hat Yai, it was an additional hour and 15 minutes to the actual border. So lets do the numbers, shall we?

Time Spent:
Krabi Immigration Office: 2 hours
Malaysian Border 8 1/2 hours

Transportation:
Krabi Immigration Office: back of pickup to minibus; minibus to Krabi
Malaysian Border back of pickup to minibus; minibus to Trang; tuk-tuk to minibus; minibus to Hat Yai; tuk tuk to minibus; minibus to border station; back of motorbike to Pradang Besar (border town); minibus to Hat Yai

Cost:
Krabi Immigration Office: $5 transportation + $16.50 visa = $21.50
Malaysian Border: $13 transportation + $0 visa = $13.00

As you can see, I saved an impressive $8.50, and spent an additional 6 1/2 hours, which by my calculations is right around $1.31 an hour, and that's when I round up. It's so nice to know what your time is actually worth. Of course, this doesn't take into account the incalculable benefit of being able to take a photo of the "Welcome to Malaysia" sign.

I also got to see Hat Yai, which I've got to admit is far worse than Krabi, for which my dislike is kind of arbitrary rather than based on the city's actual features. Late on my first night in Hat Yai I killed what I strongly feared to be a bedbug crawling across the mattress in my seedy guesthouse room. Although I had been relentlessly terrorized as a child by my mother's menacing "Night night, Sleep tight, Don't let the bedbugs bite" mantra, this was actually the first one I'd seen in the flesh. Had I noticed it before one a.m., I would have asked to switch rooms, at the very least. As it was, there were no hotel staff in sight, so I put the pillow (about which I had dire suspicions) across the room and tried to sleep without constantly slapping myself when I felt the slightest thing on my skin.

In the end, it may have been a false alarm -- I had no new bites in the morning -- but I moved anyway. Mom said not to let the bedbugs bite, after all, and I could surely take her advice in this small matter.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 3:31 AM