Tom Cahill

You should also know that you are more than likely to have at least one paedophile within spitting distance of you at any given time! So remember to spit.

Is there anywhere I can look to verify this or is it just your experience? I'm not doubting what you say. I'm just curious (I'm presuming you're talking about native paedophiles and not ones in tourism areas, right?).

customs.jpg

Nice one for this. A picture tells a thousand words.

I've downloaded this.

Please explain, do they have the Thai version of that on the other side?

I'm just planning ahead in case I ever need to send anything, as my feeling is they rip themselves off more than white people as they know they can be twikincwewer.

There's several options. There's the simple option but that has a downside. Then there's the other options, which have many more downsides. The question is: how long do you think that you want to stay there?

Border runs seem cheap and easy, but they actually can end up costing you a lot as even on the busses, there's paying out for all kinds of stuff and boredom speinding to take into account. They will let you do two without any problems usually. However if you go away for a while, you'll not get any real preferential treatment, over just border hopping over a short period.

Your visa will probably let you extend, so you can go to an immigration office and get an extra month for not too much money, so you'll get three months for the effort and price of three + the difference. Get some passport photos done before and keep them, as they charge you there, and for these parts it's extortionate.

If you want to get the easiest extension, you should get onto the train network and get the train from BK to KL, but get off at Penang. That's a very good option for you. You can border run at the border at Padang Bassar, but if you want to stay longer, I'd go to Penang.

In Tulia Street in George Town (you will get off the train at Butterworth, which is integral to the ferry terminal to Penang Island), there are many places that will do you a visa, which will take a day or two. You hand it in in the morning (before 10.00), then you pick it up at 16.00, or, should I say they'll pick it up, so you just have to kill time there. Sometimes there's hitches with this process or you get up late or something, but overnight train (there's two per day) passes the border at around 07.00-08.00, so you may be able to get there and get it in that day, but I'd not count on it, as the border's about two hours from Butterworth, and the ferry and all that's going to take a little bit longer, but it's not a big trip and you can get a taxi so you won't have any trouble with baggage being hauled all over the place.

Malaysia costs more than Thailand, but off Tulia Street there's a place called The Budget Guesthouse (between the two conveneice stores, near the fancy cafe called The Mug Shot, near Crystal Guest House and Banana Guest House (both of which will do the visa service, have air con and internet), which is about £3 per night. They accept Thai money there as well.

The simple option, which a lot of people do, is you just overstay and plan to pay the fine at the point of visa check when you leave. That's no problem and it saves you all of the messing about. There's a lot of scams here and in Malaysia where they deliberately mess your entry and exit up to get fines, and they rely on fear of 'getting in trouble' to extort money out of people. They did this to me once, so I'd got a visa, but despite them taking the card with my stay details and pretending to stamp me out of Malaysia and then again into Thailand, they didn't do any stamps. This is impossible to be an accident as they should have told me to go back to the Malaysian point at the Thai part, but didn't, took my arrival slip and set me up for a fine.

The fine is capped at THB20k, which is less than £400, so if you don't want to go out of the country to explore or anything like that, I'd say you need to consider that option. They do not care one jot if you've got the money to pay.

However, Thais are gossipers. They don't normally know the visa rules, but the ones in tourism areas do often. You need to keep this totally to yourself, or you'll hear them rabbiting on about pat-errr-portsz-ttt all of the time, and they will be trying to work out how much they'll get to tell the immigration police (but again, they're not in most areas). You can in theory be impounded if you're caught by these people, but don't worry as they don't want to catch you, as they want to get the fine on the way out. Most of them don't have any idea how any of this works, including almost all of the police, so unless you get in some major bother, or someone you're with does, as then they'll start doing some checking and want to see your details and will go through them properly. Most people in this country don't have passports, as when they travel in the adjoining countries, they just skip the border or get a day pass, where they only need their ID cards.

It's all about perspective. If you want to sit on a bus, all squashed, sweating, having to watch your stuff (as they steal), and all of that stuff, and being messed about potentially and regularly at ever juncture, and all of the money you'll end up spending, then do the run, but if you want to stay and hang about, I can help you with some advice to get places to stay cheap in a load of places, and you'll keep your costs down, and no one will bat an eyelid.

Do not go to an immigration office. Go to the airport check in for your flight and pay the 20k baht fine at departure immigration.

You will not have a problem re-entering the country after your trip home.

The immigration won't help you. They will give you problems or just be unhelpful and say it's not their problem. You need to do as this person says. If it's only three months it's nothing. One issue you may have is returning, but what you can do if this doesn't work out back in Botswana, is:

1. get them to issue you a new passport, then come back with no stamps in it;

or, easier and cheaper,

2. book a flight to Penang or KL and then don't come right back in, and get a visa in Penang for two months, which can be extended for one more.

I'm not sure how this works with your new job, but it will get you back in and won't cost you any more money really, and you won't have to wait around at home, bribing people to get your passport replaced.

You are lucky you are a US citizen. If British they have put so many obstacles in the way of bringing your Thai family to the UK for many it is now almost impossible.

Of course I can understand why - they need to leave space for all the illegal immigrants together with the so called refugees/IS supporters flooding in to Europe.

God Bless the United States

He's lucky she's not white. If she was they'd've impounded her. That's what they did to Australian I knew, who was married and had even been operating a business for years in the UK when they wanted her husband to leave her with them so they could get back to him. Europe and the US aren't good places for white people any more.