There's nothing like a free visa when you're traveling to around a dozen countries in a row. Visa fees can add up fast, something that's easy to forget when you're trying to calculate expenses. Visa costs are all over the place: free for the UK and the Netherlands, $30 for Turkey (3 month), $15 for Egypt (1 month), $30 for Nepal (2 months), and around $60 for India (6 month). Thailand is the one of the few countries in Southeast Asia to offer a free 1 month tourist visa on arrival.
Unfortunately for us, we used up our free month and didn't extend our visas in Bangkok. Not wanting to leave the beach early, and not wanting to pay the hefty 500 Baht per day overstay charge, we were left with only one option: the Visa Run.
A visa run is a trip to a neighboring country for the express purpose of renewing your visa. Thailand will give you the free one month tourist visa a few times, so all you have to do is leave the country and come back, even on the same day.
Koh Lanta has lots of long-term scuba instructors and dive masters, as well as plenty of beach bums like ourselves looking to stay for weeks and months. It is also relatively close to a border crossing in Malaysia. As a result, there is a visa run service available on the island. It's not cheap at 1200 Baht per person ($40), but beats leaving the beach when you're not ready.
We were told to be at the front desk at 7am on the day of our visa run. The good news was that they were supposed to provide breakfast. We turned up bleary-eyed and caffeine-starved at the appropriate time, but ended up waiting around for about 45 minutes before the van pulled up. There were already a couple of people in there when we hopped in, and we drove along the strip filling up the van before we stopped and the driver said, "Breakfast."
Breakfast consisted of a cup of Nescafe and two pieces of toast. At around 8:45, we finally loaded up the van again and took off for Malaysia. Why they didn't just pick us up at 9 and tell us to fend for ourselves, we'll never know. Two ferry crossings and some crazy driving later, we were on the mainland and speeding towards our destination.
With the exception of one young Swedish guy, everyone else in our van (10 total) looked like they'd been in Thailand for years, and it was not the first time they'd done the visa run. Some of them had pillows and plenty of supplies (they must have known not to rely on the free "breakfast"), and one guy even brought his laptop. It turned out to be a godsend, because the trip took much longer than quoted. We were entertained by half of Seinfeld Season 8 on the way there and back. There were some classic episodes, the soup nazi being a standout.
Once we actually got to Malaysia the process was fairly straightforward: you simply get stamped out of Thailand, walk across the border to Malaysia, get an entrance stamp, promptly turn around and get an exit stamp, and then walk back into Thailand and get a fresh visa. There's a duty free store in between, so we stopped and bought some snacks and drinks in Malaysia (but paid in Baht).
An hour later everyone had their visas and our crazy driver treated us to more twists and turns and a little bit of motion sickness. There's also a prominently mentioned stop at Tesco's in Trang. Before doing the Visa Run we didn't know why that was necessary. And then we walked inside. It was a wonderland, like finding a Wal-Mart in the Himalayas or something. They had everything we'd been looking for (the island doesn't have any big shops) at low prices and in large quantities. And they had a KFC, which was patronized by every member of our visa run mission (including us). For those foreigners living on Koh Lanta making their monthly visa run, the Tesco's stop is a chance to load up on anything and everything, and eat some fast food.
They told us we'd be back around 5pm, but they dropped us off at around 8. It was a very long day, sitting in the back of a hot van hurtling down windy roads, watching Seinfeld, fighting nausea. The things we do for a few more days at the beach.
