Trip report Vientiane DE TR visa - from ED visa to TR visa

[stoicccc]

Hi,

as a thank you to all of you who helped me, I wanted to share my trip report from changing to ED Visa to Tourist Visa. Not sure if there is anything new or particularly useful, but I'd assume a trip report never hurts.

So I've been on an ED visa + extensions since ~March 2014 and since I am moving with my girlfriend 1 hour outside Bangkok I decided to switch to a Tourist Visa for now. I studied Thai for the most of 12 months at Walen school, learned a good bit of the language within that time and always got the 90d extension at Chaeng Watthana, last one being 12th of November 2014.

My girlfriend booked us a Laos holiday as an Xmas gift since she knew that I had to go there to apply for a Tourist visa. Flying to Udon Thani Friday morning early, crossing the border, applying for the visa, off to Vang Vieng for the weekend and back to pick up the passport on Monday and then directly back to Thailand.

On Thursday morning I started browsing this forum again for anything that I might have missed, at that time I was under the impression that I could just go in with my valid ED visa extension + multiple re-entry permit and they would just be cancelled when I get the Tourist visa. Browsing the forums I quickly realized that I was wrong since I was to cross the border at Nong Khai by land and I was not taking the plane directly to Vientiane. Nong Khai immigration requires a valid ED Visa extension to be cancelled prior to leaving the country to apply for a Tourist visa. Mario2008, the forum moderator, was kind enough to give me immediate assistance on my problem, as I had to cancel my ED visa asap. So I called Walen Sukhumvit, asked the ladies to provide me with a termination letter asap as I needed to go with the letter to immigration that very same day within 6 hours. I called them around noon, picked up the letter around 2:45pm and went to Chaeng Watthana N2 section where they handle the cancellations. The visa was promptly cancelled with that same date as the letter indicated that the termination was effective immediately. I had requested a termination date of "tomorrow or next week", but I forgot to check the letter when I picked it up. So the immigration officer said that I would be on a 1 day overstay since I was to leave the country the next day, I said "OK, I hope that won't be an issue tomorrow or later on", she just replied "No problem.". As I was cancelling the ED visa a male officer came by and asked me what I was gonna do now since I had no valid visa and I was on overstay, I replied "I'm going to Laos tomorrow and apply for a Tourist Visa". He just nodded and went away. I was at the immigration for max 15min and headed back to my condo. By the way, I arrived at Chaeng Watthana immigration around 3:30pm (Thursday afternoon) and it was like a ghost town, maybe 5 people sitting waiting for other people from different sections and the officers had nothing to do. The last time in November I was there on a Thursday afternoon, it was busy until very late in the day. Not sure if that's indicative of anything.

So next morning we caught the 7:30 flight from BKK to Udon Thani and grabbed the minibus to the border. I immediately went to the overstay section, briefly explained to the officer what was up, he mumbled something, started doing the documents and after a few minutes said "500 baht" and I paid. I asked him "Was it necessary for me the cancel the visa when I'm goign to get Tourist Visa from Laos now?"...he didn't reply, just handed the passport and I was ready to go to the Lao immigration. I had all documents, cash and photo prepared for the Lao visa, it took about 5min to get that done and then we immediately took the taxi to the Vientiane Thai consulate. The taxi driver said that Monday and Thursday are easily the busiest days, Friday is the quietest because of the downside of being able to pick up the passport only on Monday afternoon. It was Friday, we arrived there at 10:45am and there was nobody there but the employees. Again it took like 5-10min at the consulate to apply for a double-entry Tourist visa and I was out. So all in all, everything went very very smooth even on a slightly tight timetable.

Then we took a private taxi to Vang Vieng for the weekend. Damn it's a lot of Koreans there, was quite surprising! We had a nice villa and it was a very relaxing weekend.

On Monday we showed up at the Consulate around 12:30pm, went for lunch in the restaurant across the Consulate...delicious food, the sundried beef is amazing! A few people lined up around 1pm, they opened the gates...I wandered in around 1:20pm, got number 36 but as I got in, people were already being handed their passports, no one cared about the numbers and everyone was just standing in the line. I got my passport in about 10min with the appropriate visa and we took off back to the border.

At the border entering Thailand there was no problems whatsoever, the officer browsed through all the 15 used pages of my passport, looked at the extensions, cancellation of extension, multiple re-entry permit and all before finding the new Tourist visa, then he just stamped it and I was happily on my way back to BKK.

That was my experience, the Thursday hassle with the cancellation made me a bit nervous but in the end it all worked out very smooth. Lesson learned, I should have done the proper research way in advance.

Again, million thanks for the forums help, it's invaluable.

Cheers

[Hostile]

Thx

Usefull

[troublemaker69]

nice TR son. the forum could use more of these ~

[leob]

I can add something to this since I had a similar situation/experience recently.

I was unaware of having to cancel the ED-visa until they said that I can not leave the country at the Nong Khai border, which meant that I had to sort out the cancellation

at the Nong Khai immigration office. I strongly recommend choosing to do this at the Nong Khai immigration office if that is the route you are taking, because

they are very quick, proffessional and helpful. Just note that there are two different immigration offices in Nong Khai on google maps, I remember the correct

location is at the side of a large highway coming in to NongKhai.