Travel Log #1: Bangkok and the Quest for Long Stay Visa

The flights to/from Texas to/from Bangkok are long and exhausting. By the time you add layovers, it’s 26 hours of travel time at best (each way). It typically consists of a domestic flight to the US west coast (LA, SF, Seattle), layover, then to Japan or Taipei with another layover, then on to Thailand. Then, once you arrive, you find yourself in a completely upside-down time zone: 12 hours ahead of Texas: night is your day, day is your night. I’m finding myself sleeping a lot. That’s also what happens when you get old!

I’m staying at a guesthouse that bills itself as a hostel. It’s real nice, basic, super clean place with fast wifi, great air conditioning in each room, free laundry service and in the heart of the trendy business district in BKK. I arrived the night of August 24 at about midnight to the big international airport Suvarnabhumi and got a taxi to my accomodation. Another thing that I like about Thailand is that taxis wait outside of baggage claim in an organized fashion; a supervisor greets you and he enters your destination in his computer stand and directs me to the waiting taxi. Without asking, they turn on their meter, so there is no question about the cost of the journey. No surprises! No monkey business. (This driver knew no English, so he gave me his phone to type in my accomodation address on his google maps. It came up right away on his phone, in Thai language and we were off.) The driver will ask “Highway?”—which means he’s requesting to use the toll roads. Say yes! Altogether, a 20 mile trip from the airport was about $18 including tolls. That’s gone up quite a bit in 10 years.

When I got to the closed entrance of my accomodation at about 1 AM, but there was a sealed envelope with my full name on the outside taped to the front door. It had my electronic key card for the entrance and the key to my room inside. Nice! Very Thai style! I slept OK. 

My room (but no stuffed bear) and the entrance to Pan Pan

So, my first few days were walking around the central business district called Si Lom road. I’ve stayed in this area of Thailand many, many times and it’s familiar to me. Here’s some pictures so far; sorry that I don’t have many yet:

Some Local Pictures of My Current Neighborhood (Click to enlarge)

My Root Canal

A few months ago, I had a crown installed on one of my molars (without a root canal) in TX. It turned out that the nerves under the crown got inflamed and caused me really bad pain. My home Dentist gave a dosepak of Prenisonol, a steroid, that worked to calm the inflammation and pain for about a month. It became clear that I needed a root canal, which is a special procedure to drill through a permanent crown. I was referred to an endodontist in TX who gave a phone estimate of $2400 to do the root canal. It was then that I decided to get my travel plans in place to have this done in Thailand. I needed another dosepak of prednisonol to make sure I wasn’t in pain during travel.

So my first order of business after arrival was to see a Dentist at the nearby Bangkok Christian Hospital. They have an entire dentist suite. I got a crown there many years ago. It’s interesting, you just walk in the hospital, make your way to elevators and go directly up to your desired floor. No one is challenging you in any way. That’s freedom! Thai people know freedom.

The marble plaque at Bangkok Christian Hospital from 1965

I arrived in BKK late on Thurs, August 24th. On Friday morning the 25th I went to BCH and went to the dentist suite and they saw me right away as a walk-in. Easy-peasy! The dentist gave me an xray, some antibiotics, some pain medicine and he booked an appointment with me and an Endodontist there the next morning. So, Saturday morning at 10am, a super nice doctor (who spoke great English and listened to Western classical music during the procedure) successfully drilled through the ceramic crown without fracturing it and cleaned out all the “pulp” inside the tooth and roots. I never felt a thing! It was pain free. The cost was about $220 USD. I will need a followup in two weeks to remove the temporary filling and antibiotic solution and put the final filling in. I figure that that will be about another $100 to $120 USD more. So once again, I’m reminded that medical or dental costs are about 5 to 10 times cheaper in Thailand—and it’s been that way since 1997.

My Long Stay Visa Ordeal

My last contract work (as a Principal Facilities Engineer) in Lagos, Nigeria in Africa was a 6 weeks on and 2 weeks off schedule. In my case, I spent each 2 week off period in Bangkok. They gave me all business class seats for all of the flights—which was nice.

When that contract was finished early in 2011, I ended up staying on in Bangkok for 2 years ending in 2012 on Long Stay Visas before returning to Texas and my condo there.

This time, now 11 years later, I came to Thailand having already searched for all of the procedures and documents necessary for obtaining a one year visa— the Long Stay OA visa. I’ve have obtained this visa before both at a consulate in Texas and in Bangkok.

I started the application at the consulate in Texas, but came to a stumbling block: the Houston police department no longer provides a letter stating that you have no serious criminal offenses. Instead, I used a Texas State government website, paid $3, and did a statewide criminal record search for my name. In my case, I searched myself and I copied the output of the search to a JPEG showing that “there are no records.” Thinking that was going to be enough, the local Thai consulate said that it WASN’T enough and that they won’t accept that. Kabosh!! The criminal search is not required when applying in Bangkok, so I just came to BKK to apply for the visa.

Once in BKK, I made some calls to some immigration law firms and chatted with one lawyer about the current “environment” at immigration. For decades, the procedure has always been, for the one year “long stay” visa, one must prove that you have adequate funds in savings AND/OR a monthly pension checks to meet their minimum requirements, prove that you’re not a criminal, and get a statement from a doctor that you have no communicable diseases. Sounds easy, right?

The requirement is that you have about $2100 per month in regular gov’t pension income or $800,000 baht in savings—about $23,000 in savings. I have both of those things.

So, the Thai lawyer told me, that now in BKK that they don’t accept the $2100 per month income (which I have the printed Social Security benefit verification letter on my laptop showing that amount). Furthermore, Thai immigration has evolved to where the 800,000 baht in savings now must already be transferred to a Thai bank prior to a visa application. (Before it was enough to show that quantity in your home accounts.)

The ridiculous thing is that one can’t open a Thai bank account either in advance or as a tourist in Thailand. This is also true for all countries in the world. So, the requirement is entirely irrational. Futhermore, I don’t trust Thai banks; I’ve known people who’ve had their money stolen (but long ago). Maybe UOB or HSBC would be OK, but I’m not doing it.

Moving On!

Anyway, with dealings with governments, there’s always some single surprise and/or unofficial change that puts the Kabosh on everything. So I’ve decided to give up playing games with Thai immigration. So, I’ll stay my one month as a tourist, then either go Angkor Wat or maybe Phnom Penh in Cambodia (by air) late in Sept and return back to BKK & receive a fresh 1 month tourist visa.

Ultimately I plan to travel down to Kuala Lumpur and stay for at least one month in an ultra modern, furnished high-rise apartment that one can find on Airbnb for $500 to $600 per month (discounted for month long stays) — right in the best area of KL! US citizens get 3 months automatic tourist visas. And KL is like Singapore, but it’s ~4 times cheaper and has the same diverse cultures and food. Malaysia is a great place. They have the same warm and welcoming feeling that is similar to the rest of SE Asia. KL is cheaper than Bangkok now. It’s super safe too. Thailand is also safe.

From KL, I might go for a quick trip to the Philippines—maybe fly to Cebu city and return to KL. Nepal, who gives a 6 month tourist visa on arrival, is also on my list for continuing travel. I’ve been to Katmandhu and Annapurna area before and it’s really excellent there! I stayed a month, during my 2nd around-the-world trip in 1999.

With that I’ll close. Let me know if you like this kind of travel log. I’ll be sure to share more photos. I know that’s what’s really interesting. Let me know if this is boring or too long.