Vientiane Visa Run, Feb. 10, 2011

[Jawnie]

I'm a US citizen living in Bangkok. This is my first tourist visa after being in Thailand for three months on the visa exemption. I flew into Vientiane on Thai Air. The airport is small and low-rise with the immigration section a short two-minute walk from the plane. Visa-on-arrival was popular and everyone was processed quickly, in about 10 minutes. Most people paid with US dollars, but I was able to pay in Thai baht (1,400). Once I had the Laotian visa, I walked to the immigration agents, who are in the same room. There were no lines and I waited only a minute or two. I was processed through into Laos within 15 minutes of walking off the plane.

I arrived at the Thai consulate a few minutes after 9:00 am the following morning. I shared a taxi with an Israeli couple who were turned away the previous morning and not allowed to submit their applications as consulate staff said they had too many applications for that day.

Approaching the processing area, it looked really busy, with lots of people. This being my first time, I eventually figured out I needed a queue number. I walked to the machine where a visa agent was pulling numbers and had a small stack in his hand. I gave him a "what the hell" look, so he gave me his lowest number, #208. I looked at the queue counter and they were processing #14 – freaked me out a little.

I went to the window anyway and the guy looked at my application and pointed out what was missing; he told me I still needed to wait. I was really worried that I'd be there for hours, but pretty soon they started racing through the queue numbers – maybe they were batch processing agent visas. In any case, the counter was jumping over large chunks of queue numbers. My number eventually came up. I submitted my application and did NOT have to provide any information about my current financial status (which I had with me) nor did I need to show an onward plane ticket out of Thailand (which I did not have, anyway).

The reality is that I waited only about 20 minutes to submit my application. I had written in "Double / Multiple Entries" on the application, but the guy said there are no multiple entries and scratched that out, "double entry only," he said. He then directed me to the next building to get my collection receipt. Again it looked like it was going to be a long wait because the queue number was at #40 and I still had #208. This line went quickly also and within 10 minutes, I had my collection receipt. The total time I was inside the Thai compound was slightly over one hour.

The following day, I returned at 1:30pm and got in a line of about 40 people. The line moved quickly and I was out of there with my 60-day, double entry visa in about ten minutes. All is well.

Edited February 12, 2011 by Jawnie

[Maestro]

Changed "Vientaine" to "Vientiane" in the topic title to facilitate searches.