This post is in two parts. First is purely informational, to be of help to those going to Samut Prakan immigration, second is a bit more documentary and entertaining, I suppose.

 

When you approach the SPI building, you'll notice there are NO SIGNS ON ANYTHING. You'll see various groups of people doing whatever, and you prob won't have a clue. Here's the deal. To the left, under the tents, is only for local foreigners, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. Try waiting here, and you'll get chased out. To the right, you'll see queues going to metal containers with little windows. Here's where you get your copies made. Bring plenty of change, and make several extra copies of your passport info page, last visa stamp, landlord's ID, and tabien baan. Yes, they are still asking for those, despite reports to the contrary, even if you say you're just a tourist. Then straight into the main building is where all other countries go. Get your head temperature scanned upon entry. Sanitize hands. Then proceed to the big window straight ahead. They'll check your documents, tell you if you're missing anything, and give you a queue number. That's as far as we got.

 

Now here's the fun stuff. DO NOT DRIVE HERE as we did. There's NO parking. Take BTS to the new Pak Nam station. There were cars packed into every space imaginable. Not only that, there was a "Big Cleaning Day" going on for the virus. This was utterly absurd. You can't do any cleaning with all the cars in the way! They were blasting with fire hoses trying to clean around all the cars. One was held by a little boy who could barely control it. I was waiting for it to carry him into the air, or take off and smash a car window. There was a bigger, older guy behind him who could've helped, just holding the hose. Amazing Thailand.

 

My wife and I had no idea where to go, so a worker in a uniform directed us to the tents. We stood in line here awhile. Then, a large, chubby young lady approached me and started chattering in some foreign language. She was wearing jean shorts and an anime t-shirt. I thought she was another foreigner, so I motioned her to get in back of the line behind me. She shook her head, then started speaking to my wife in Thai. We were in the wrong line. Oh, so you work here? Could've fooled me! They're always on us to dress nicely for immigration, how about the workers huh?

 

As said before, get your landlord's ID and tabien baan copied, doesn't matter what you're doing. Some were doing extensions, others just 90 day check ins. You'd think for the virus they'd let up a bit, but no. We just rented a condo and brought the contract, they didn't like it. Make sure the address is clear, spelled out with everything, address number, room number, soi, main street, tambon, amphoe. We gotta get the landlord to do it again. But for now, we couldn't take any more of this nonsense. We're headed upcountry to escape the BKK lockdown, do my extension there, and hopefully be back when this blows over, hopefully sometime next month.

Ive never known an immigration office to be as pedantic as Samut Prakarn. Its like they have a KPI of 80%+ to find fault with any and all styles of applicants. Just when think you are done are they still sending people back to copy shop to photocopy the receipt when you tell them they can keep the damn original?  

Edited March 23, 20206 yr by dsf9