Nightmare at Nong Khai / Vientiane border

Alright. Let’s talk about our visa run… Living in Thailand generally has more ups than downs. However, there are some days when it feels challenging. It may seem like the world or an immigration team is working against you!

Visa background #

We arrived in Thailand, with a 30-day tourist visa. We were allowed to extend this one time (which we did at the หลักสี่ immigration centre). This allowed us to stay in Thailand until September, while our NON-IMMIGRANT visas could be issued.

My business visa (NON-B) and work permit were issued a few days before the tourist visas were due to expire. This is needed before any dependant visas (NON-O) could be issued. To apply for the dependant visas, they required 14-days of visa validity, to ensure the visa would not expire during the issuing of a new one. Which meant that as their current extended tourist visa may expire before the NON-O could be issued,they wouldn’t start the process.

… At least this is how the visa agent explained it to us a few days before their visa expired! I began looking at options to leave Thailand, and return to get them a new 30-day tourist visa. My passport had already been submitted to Immigration for 14 days. This was done to process my business visa. It would only be returned to me the day before their tourist visas expired..

So, we had a window of two days to exit and re-enter the country… Which is not a whole lot of time

The plan #

I made three plans.

1. Fly to Da Nang (Vietnam)
2. Train to Siem Reap (Cambodia)
3. Fly/Bus to Vientiane (Laos)

A beach weekend in Da Nang was the obvious winner. So, I checked entry requirements, applied for my e-Visa, which would take ‘up to 2 days’ to process, purchased the required COVID travel insurance and booked everything that night. The flight was affordable and had a convenient schedule. It departed on Friday, after school or work ended. We would arrive back home on Sunday afternoon.. That evening, my wife’s e-Visa came back, but our applications were still marked as ‘in process’. I emailed the embassy, to ask what had happened but got no response. Our applications have just disappeared!

On the day of travel, we still didn’t have all the e-Visas. I wasn’t too concerned, as I have used Vietnam’s visa-on-arrival process a few times (just annoyed that it would cost an additional $50USD each). We arrived at the airport that evening. I checked one more time to see if our e-Visas had been processed…. Nope. So, we head to the check-in counter. Meanwhile, I start scouting for a place to exchange USD. This way, we’ll be prepared when we land.. At check-in, I was told that a pre-booked visa was required, as Vietnam was no longer issuing visas-on-arrival due to COVID.

Shit.

The new Nong Khai plan #

Two options… My wife could enjoy a relaxing weekend on the beach, while the kids and I come up with a plan B… Or we all come up with a plan B and forfeit the whole Vietnam holiday. … The Vietnam holiday was forfeited.

Next problem… It was getting late in the evening, and we were at Bangkok’s secondary airport (DMK). There are no more international flights and switching to the main airport (BKK) would take hours and there weren’t many more options there. We had one day visa validity left and needed to get this done now! There was no time to return home, re-group and re-plan another trip. Several stressful minutes later, I booked flights to a domestic airport in the far north-east of Thailand (Udon Thani). This was within an hour or two drive of Laos (a country which was allowing visas on arrival still).

We flew to Udon Thani that night, jumped into a taxi to, Nong Khai, the Thai border town, and during the hour-long drive, I found a hotel to stay at that night, and a flight from Vientiane to Bangkok, which departed at 1:30pm the next day. We arrived and checked into the hotel without issue and I was feeling confident that the worst was behind us.

… Spoiler, it wasn’t :)

The big day in Nong Khai #

The next morning, we waited for the cafés in Nong Khai to open for breakfast at 9am. We got food into everybody, and caught a taxi to the border checkpoint (Thai-Laos Friendship Bridge… Funded by Australia!).

We got to the Nong Khai land border, had a brief discussion with Thai immigration about why we didn’t have a hotel booked for Laos, and made it through shortly after. We all caught a vibrant shuttle bus across the bridge and arrived at the Laos immigration point around 11am… Not only that, but we were cutting it close to make the hour-long drive to the airport, and arrive 90 minutes before our international flight…

There was a small queue here, and when we got to the front, I realised:

1. We had to fill out a lengthy application form (we don’t have the time),
2. Submit passport photos (we don’t have the photos); and
3. Pay the visa fee in Thai Baht (we didn’t bring cash, and card/QR is not accepted)

Double shit.

Operating in the grey #

Pulling out cash from everyones hiding spots, we scraped together just enough for one visa. I quickly filled out my application form and returned to the line to see what could be done.

He asked for the passport photo and my heart sunk… A strange conversation (or game of charades) later, the immigration officer accepted my story and handed me a Laos visa!

One visa achieved!

Leaving the family behind, I crossed into Laos, and of course, there were no ATMs dispensing Thai Baht. A frantic conversation later with a complete stranger, I was taken to an ATM, where I withdrew 3 million Kip (fun fact 1 Laotian Kip is less than 0.0001 Australian Dollar… Almost Zimbabwean levels of inflation and ZERO ability to covert it back to any other currency outside of Laos). And was then taken to a currency exchange booth, where I got the worst conversion rate imaginable but now had enough Thai Baht for visas.

I raced back to the Laos border crossing… Smiled and waved at Laos immigration as I just confidently strolled past them. I am uncertain if they would rather not deal with an irate westerner, or just assumed I knew what I was doing. I returned to Thailand, found the girls, submitted the applications and got everybody over to Laos.

I still have no idea how we were able to make it through. None of that should have been possible… But we were back together and in Laos (mostly legitimately).

The race against time #

But, the time was now our biggest enemy. While doing all of the above, I used the last of our Thai mobile signals to check-in for our flight. It was now just before midday. Our flight departs in a about 90 minutes and we were a 45-60 minute taxi ride away from the airport.

I took the first taxi tout that waved us down. He asked for an ‘insane’ 600 baht baht ($24 AUD), but we did not care. We told him to just get us to the airport as fast as he could.

The driver decided to show us the sights on the way to the airport… So a prolonged and meandering trip later, we finally arrived 75-minutes later (now 1pm!). Despite being a capital city, the airport was more akin to a rural tin shack and we made it through check-in, customs and immigration very quickly. We boarded the flight just as the gate was closing and I had the first chance to stop and think about how none of this should have been possible.

Welcome home #

It was just a 1 hour flight back to Bangkok and upon landing, and my family went through immigration without issue… But then I got pulled up.

My passport now looks like a Thai stamp catalogue. I have half a dozen tourist visa stamps, an couple of unusual tourist visa extension, a few business visas (which have enough stamps to take up three pages each) and one business visa cancellation. The agent wanted to follow my path in and out of Thailand chronologically over the past few years to work out what I had been doing.

An apprehensive hour later (ok, it was probably 5 minutes, but given my stress levels over the last 24 hours, it felt like an hour!) he let me through.

Reflection #

What started as a relaxing weekend in Vietnam, eating Banh Mi and Pho, whilst sipping poorly made cocktails on the beach turned into something else!

In total, we spent about 60 minutes ‘overseas’… Less than 24 hours away from home, but this one trip was THE most stressful thing I have experienced… But we were home again and the family had their new tourist visas, with enough time for the dependants visa to be issued.

Lets never do that again!