Terrific Thailand

Hello everyone! Greetings from Bangalore, you will be happy to know that we got our visas issued in Bangkok and made it back to India safe and sound last week. We arrived in beautiful Thailand on the morning of October 18 and after dropping our bags at our hotel went straight out to find the Indian Embassy. We were in quite a hurry as applications for visas are only accepted from 9 AM-12 PM and we wanted to get our applications submitted before we flew off to Phuket the following afternoon. We arrived at around 10:45 and waited in line until we were able to speak with someone who told us that the gentleman who gives the interviews was out of the office, but would be back in 5 minutes and we would be called when he was ready for us. I found this pretty funny since this guy basically works only around 4 hours a day and he can’t even manage to be his office during that time. And, not surprisingly, 5 minutes turned into around an hour and a half before this guy came back (hey, you can take the government official out of India, but you can’t take the India out of the government official). Luckily though, even though it was after 12, we still got our interview. Eric and I went back and met this fellow and gave him the letter from the NCBS explaining why we were there and why we needed a visa. He glanced at it and immediately said, “No, we can’t issue a visa based on this.” I immediately just started shaking with nerves and asked that he please just READ the letter. After he read the letter he asked why we hadn’t applied in India and I told him that I had but hadn’t received the renewal yet and that Eric was told that he couldn’t even apply until my visa arrived meaning that at minimum his visa would expire and leave him (and maybe me) essentially stranded in India. He then agreed to forward our request to the Indian Consulate in Chicago since they were the original issuing entity and leave it up to them. Whew, at that point we were pretty sure that it would be okay, but until the visa is in your hands, it is difficult to relax. It takes 5 business days to process visas, so we set off to try to relax anyway.





The next afternoon we took a short, one-hour flight to Phuket, the Pearl of the Andaman. We arrived at our hotel in the evening and were blown away by the resort, it was grand on a scale that I have never experienced before. We made our way to our villa, which was also spectacular and mostly spent the week relaxing by the pool gazing out on the beautiful Andaman Sea. We met a wonderful Irish couple who we hit it off with really well, and by the end of the week they had invited us to come visit them in Ireland and we asked them to visit us either in Bangalore or Chicago. We hope to take them up on the offer! We hired a driver for one day and he took us all over the island showing us the sights: beautiful beaches, amazing temples, a gigantic Buddha, stopping along the way to pick up snacks from the local street vendors. We also stopped and took an elephant trek, where we rode an elephant up the mountain and back down again. It was an amazing experience, but I was pretty terrified most of the time. The path was quite narrow and very steep and muddy and I was so afraid that our elephant, Lemon, would get a huge foot stuck in the mud and tumble over with us strapped on top of her!
I also made friends with Charlie, one of the gibbons (a small ape), while we were at the camp and took some time to groom him, he was so friendly! The food was amazing the entirety of the trip, we both just loved the Thai dishes and ate plenty! Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and the week was over before we knew it, and we made our way back to Bangkok on Friday.




We spent the weekend in Bangkok visiting the sights; the Grand Palace, the Golden Buddha (I've included a pic), the Marble Temple, and the Reclining Buddha at Wat Po (another pic). We also learned that Bangkok is a FANTASIC place for shopping. I bought silk pillow covers that would easily cost $20-50 for $3, silk prints, figurines, all sort of stuff for our home once we return to the States. Bangkok is also a wonderful place to have high quality tailored clothes made for cheap, so Eric had 4 shirts and 3 slacks custom made for a real bargain (and who says men can’t shop). I also bought 2 beautiful pashminas for $3, I think the one I bought in the U.S. a couple of years back was around $50. If you ever get a jones for shopping, I think that Bangkok is probably the best place in the world to go; you get the best of the West and the East, Western quality in a modern and clean city with Eastern prices. A couple of notes on the country: first, the prostitution is insane. You couldn’t walk for very long before seeing some middle aged or older Westerner with a beautiful Thai girl on his arm. You, of course, aren’t certain that she has been hired by him, but I am pretty sure that most of the time that he has paid for her company. It wasn’t terribly in your face, but I did sometimes get a bit disgusted when seeing these mismatched couples walking together. Another thing that is even more obvious than the sex trade is the outright worship and reverence of the King. His picture is up everywhere, and people wear yellow polo shirts with the king’s emblem emblazoned on them almost as if it were a uniform. Some days around 50% of the Thais that you met on the street would be wearing this shirt, and it was a bit surreal. One thing is certain in Thailand, don’t mess with the king.



On Monday we made our way back to the embassy to see if we would be getting our visas and we dropped our passports off with no problem (they keep your passport for a couple of hours to actually put the visa into it) and picked them up later in the day with our beautiful new visas!!! We are legal in India for another year! I was so happy and kept opening my passport to look at the new visa to make sure that it was really there. It was such a battle to get it, that finally having it was such a sweet reward. We spent the next day at a tech mall to take advantage of Thailand’s cheap prices one last time before finally coming back to Bangalore, and maybe for the first time, I was happy to be coming back. Not that I didn’t like Thailand; I loved it, but our kittens and friends were waiting for us to come home, and maybe Bangalore is becoming just that, home (even if just for a while).




In the interest of full disclosure, one week after we left for Thailand I received notice that my visa renewal filed with the FRO in Bangalore had been approved (notice was given 5 days before my visa was set to expire) so it was too little too late.