Morning. WhatsApp from my Thai accountant:
“Big big problem! need to cancel you and wife visa this week already. No have solution for you. ”
I try to understand what’s happening through her. She contradicts herself within three messages.
I realize I’m on my own with this.
The next day, I go to Immigration. Explain the situation to the officer.
He calmly tells me: You need to leave Thailand by midnight today.
I remember hearing that in this situation, you can get a one-week extension for 1,900 baht per person.
I ask.
Yes.
I pay.
I breathe.
I ask the school if we can switch to dependent visas based on the kids’ student visas without leaving Thailand. They say yes.
A friend in the same situation is told by his school that he has to leave.
I go back to our school.
Turns out the reality has changed recently.
Now we have to leave too.
A long-term visa requires depositing half a million baht in a Thai bank account for a month. We don’t have a month. We have a few days.
We buy time.
Flights to Singapore two days later, so we can re-enter on a 30-day tourist visa.
The kids stay with friends - they’re on student visas.
We fly for one night.
Standing in line for passport control on the way back, I remind myself and Lital again and again: make sure the officer sees that the long-term visas have been cancelled.
The whole trip is for that 30-day tourist stamp.
The officer checks my passport and shows me I can proceed.
She missed the cancellation.
If I go through now, the entire trip was for nothing.
I show her the mistake.
Get the 30 days.
I breathe.
Deposit the money in the bank. Get the documents for the dependent visas from the school.
We pull the kids out of school in the middle of the semester and fly to Vietnam for three weeks for the process.
While we wait for the visas, the kids build reputations and network in the playgrounds of Hanoi’s shopping malls.
We return to Thailand with a temporary 90-day visa.
I want to start the one-year extension immediately.
They explain that I can only do it when there are less than 45 days left.
We make an appointment for a month and a half later.
While waiting, I keep checking the procedure and the list of required documents again and again.
Appointment day.
According to plan: we’re at the bank first thing in the morning, get documents with that morning’s data.
I check everything three times.
Put every document in its own folder.
At Immigration, we submit the documents and sit down to wait.
Three hours later, the officer comes over.
She asks for my bank document.
I brought it.
A hundred percent, I brought it.
She says I didn’t.
Suggests I go to the bank and get a new one.
Forty minutes until Immigration closes.
At the bank - the officer who issues the document is already gone for the day.
I go back to Immigration.
Lital’s documents are fine and already being processed.
Mine - lost.
They can’t proceed.
The officer says:
“Come back tomorrow. I’ll take you.”
I make sure with her that the only thing I need tomorrow is the bank document.
That same evening, I go to another bank branch and get a new one.
I arrive at Immigration the next day.
My officer isn’t there.
She’s my only connection to this process. Nobody else here knows the story about the lost document and yesterday’s appointment.
What if she’s sick?
What does that mean for my visa?
I go downstairs, to where they manage the appointments.
Maybe I’ll just start from the beginning, like yesterday.
The officer asks what I want.
I tell him I’m applying for a long-term visa.
He says I came too late - that for this process I need to come 45 days before my visa expires, bring the kids, and that there are no appointments available for the next month.
My temporary visa will expire before then.
My shoulders drop.
I hear myself mumbling that my wife was here yesterday without the kids and everything was fine.
I know that means nothing.
He gives me back the documents, tells me there are no appointments and that I should book one.
I go back upstairs.
Sit.
Wait.
The officer comes.
She remembers me.
Takes the documents.