NorthernRyland

Having nice staff that isn't stressed out would be amazing. There's just no way though with the volume of people they need to churn through daily. I still remember the guy who does the intercom from all the way back then and got to talk to him before when it was more casual. I can't believe he's still there for 19 frickin' years dealing with that madness everyday and hasn't gone postal.

how's the service over there?

if only you could trust the drivers to stop when the lights are red. Still have to be careful and rush across before the hordes get restless.

Sounds like from all these stories the problems in the past were ineffective staff so it didn't matter how busy it was. Sounds like the staff is more efficient now even though there's orders of magnitudes more people. I never had this problems because of my visa category so I missed the old one simply because it was smaller and had so many fewer people.

yeah that's the legal way to do it but that guy was suggesting he broke the law (somewhere just assumed CM because this is a CM topic).

100% chance 0% of people here would know who he is or especially watch his channel.

well then immigration in CM is corrupt and taking bribes to file false documents.

If they check your 90 day report during the extension they see it's expired, you pay 2000 baht and do that every year. In theory this works but maybe you piss them off is my guess.

They don't know any better. Imagine taking your average Thai and placing them into America and on the roads. They would have a collision or get into a fight within an hour. So your average American comes to Thailand and has the opposite reaction. I think we all went through that phase but a tourist is still going to be in their old mindset. My wife drove a couple times in the US and it literally took no less than 10 minutes to get honked at because she slowed down and blocked traffic because she saw some person on the side of the road and assumed they were going to come out. This is normal defensive driving in Thailand because you can't trust other people to follow the rules.

Never saw this in the US. I thought they weren't changing their oil or something. So many people have nice cars but it's all debt so can they really afford to maintain the cars? Probably not is my guess.

I'm a cyclist in Thailand and I get blasted with smoke in the face all too often (twice today actually!) and the worst is when you're going up a mountain going slow and breathing heavy. Usually it's just people that can't afford to have a truck but need it for work and are hauling heavy things. These things are so run down it doesn't surprise me. The ones that get me are all the SUVs that don't even look that old yet are spewing smoke. Of course this is illegal they like everything else they simply do not enforce it. If you can afford that SUV you should be able to maintain it or be taken off the road out of respect for the rest of us.

Those cities are filled with immigrants and just random people from everywhere so sure low trust I bet. In the rest of established America if the light fails people revert to the rules at any intersection without a light, which is taking turns, i.e. first in last out. That's what Thailand doesn't have. Any interaction without a light defaults to pushing and shoving. That's just how they are.

I don't blame them it just shows the stress on the system. I've always been treated well but there's a tension in the air, tourists included. The influx of Chinese was unexpected also but they did respond nicely by having on-sight translators for them as many seem to not speak English. That must be really frustrating for the IO's too.

Thailand really needs to have queues otherwise people swarm and get anxious. Ever see an intersection where the traffic light fails? Suddenly people have no idea how to take turns and it becomes a total free for all with pushing and shoving. It's a really interesting insight into the culture and how well they trust and respect each other.

Man that's horrible. I wonder why I never had problem. All I had were various kinds of tourists visas back then so maybe they allocated enough of those. Glad to hear immigration is now working better for you guys at least.

You can move to other places besides CM though so it's good to consider these things. It's not just immigration, all manor of things become less tenable every year so it's good to keep an eye on the trend and act accordingly.

It's been a while now so I don't remember if there was queueing outside but that does kind of ring of bell. I don't understand the early arrivers unless that's just their schedule anyways. Worst case is you arrive late and miss the lunch break and have to come back. This sucks too because it's another hour of waiting but that's what I'd prefer. Actually I found out for simple extensions I was able to arrive in the afternoon and this beat the crowds because most people were so determined to be the first ones there. Maybe this only works for tourist visa extensions though. I just started doing non-O marriage extensions two ago so I don't have much experience there.

Yeah I remember it was on the ground floor but within glass. I don't see how they couldn't have AC in there. It would be unbearable otherwise.

That's interesting thanks. Do the guys way out in Fang all go to the same immigration? That would really suck, you'd have to make a full day trip.

It was inside the mall in its own room surely it had AC. They had overflow in the outside area but that was inside the mall too. I remember it all having AC as you would expect in a mall. EDIT: if you had a long wait you could walk around the mall too and get coffee etc.. so there was always space somewhere. That's the nice thing. Had a Rim Ping in there too so you could do some shopping even.

it's not even about that. It's just the sheer volumes of people and the lack of the space. Same for the roads and general congestion.

People keep mentioning this long wait times when there were 10x less tourists in Chiang Mai so how is this even possible? Maybe 10x less staff? Keep in mind I only had a tourist visa back then (or the non-O which they extended improperly) and was doing extensions (like the old METV). Yes it was crowded at some times of year because the small space but it wasn't hectic since the volume of people was so much lower. Less stress and more personal too.

They're stressed for sure. Everyone is edge trying to get in before the lunch break. The C.F. branch has limited service though right? Pretty sure I asked they said it's only has a limited subset of services.

I need to reset mine to not be in December where it's packed. Mine takes hours and unless I get up early enough it can spill over in to the afternoon. It's packed then with people waiting outside and sitting on the stairs.

Promenada was great. You could get up and walk around instead of waiting and always had air con because it was in a mall. For most expats it was more convenient too because it was outside the city but much worse for tourists. I don't know why you were coming so early. That's the part of the problem with CM though isn't it? You're in full panic mode and waking up in the dark to do your visa. Other places are just a simple walk in and forget about it. The vibe in 2006 was much more like this too albeit yet it was swampy and hot but it was a small crowd and not hectic. They needed the bigger building but as soon as it was built tourism exploded and it was back to being fuller than ever. People living hours outside the city must have to stay the night in order to do their visa.