Government Formalities
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007Well, I am in Chiang Mai now once again and staying at one of my favorite guest houses so far on the trip. Nuan Pranee House. Great staff and they have been really helpful and the rooms are awesome. My plan was to head to Laos tomorrow but due to poor planning on my part I need a few more days here. U.S. citizens are granted a 15 day visa on arrival to Laos for around $20. The problem is that I need a 30 day visa. I knew this before I started my trip but I guess over time with other things on my mind I let that small fact slide out of memory. So, now I have to go through the red tape. I am sending my passport to Bangkok tomorrow morning and it should take 3 full days so on Saturday I will have my passport stamped with a 30 day Laos visa and can make my way north. I would have preferred to do this in Bangkok so that I just left my passport at the Lao embassy rather than mailing it off but the agency I am using for the visa is responsible if anything happens to it.
I can think of worse places to be stuck for an additional few days and this sticks to the pattern of the rest of my time in Thailand. I may look into some excursions outside of Chiang Mai for the weekend and I will probably be leaving on Monday now. This gives me plenty of time to read up on my Laos book. There is a great night market here that I can use to get any last minute items since it will be much more difficult to find once I’m across the border. Luckily the Lao language is very similar to Thai so I can use most of the stuff I have learned. The numbers are all the same so I can proudly say that I can count to 100 in both Thai and Lao now. For the next few days I don’t foresee any major updates so maybe check back early next week or over the weekend.
Joey