Let Me In

Our visitors were gone, and we had lots to do.  At the top of my list was applying for my China visa for my trip in January with my brother.

Tim and Mike left on Sunday, and Wednesday Mick and I were headed back to Bangkok - his favorite place to drive (not).  I hoped I had all my paperwork in order (thank-you, brother Paul, for your good advice).  I needed a passport photo, and thought I had some extras left from when we first came to Thailand, but it turns out we'd used them already.  Unfortunately, I waited until the night before to discover that fact.  I hoped we could print some more copies somewhere along the way.

I got up and dressed with Tim in the morning, and rode to work with him.  It would be much easier to head to Bangkok directly from there, rather than having Mick come all the way back to Pattaya to pick me up.  The drive to Ford was just over an hour, then the drive to the China Visa office in Bangkok, which seemed to take forever.  We were on the lookout for photo shops along the way, but didn't have any luck.  I'd checked online and found a location in Bangkok, but it didn't work out so well.  Eventually I said we should just head to the visa office - perhaps they could direct us to a shop nearby.

Bangkok traffic

The office strictly dedicated to issuing China visas is separate from the Chinese embassy - it is located in a shiny high-rise, Thanapoom Tower.  We had to drive up several floors in the parking structure, and Mick dropped me at the entrance on level five.  This turned out to be the entrance to the 4th floor, but I quickly found my way up to the 5th floor; a stranger walking past me said, "China Visa this way."  I guess farangs are only there for one thing (I feel so conspicuous sometimes!)

After I waited in a small line, a very busy woman at the desk told me there was a shop on the second floor that did passport photos - phew, got lucky!  A nice Thai lady stood me in front of a white wall and snapped a photo just inches away from my face, or so it seemed.  I waited a few minutes, then she printed off six copies, I paid my 150 Baht (about four dollars), and zipped back up to the fifth floor.

The woman at the desk looked over all my paperwork - passport, copy of passport, travel itinerary, flight info, invitation letter from the travel agency...but something was missing.  She pointed to a letter in an acrylic stand and said I needed one of these.  It was a letter stating one's intent - where you were from, where you were going, why you wanted to go there, and who was paying for it!  She led me around a wall to two public computers, and set me up to type my letter there.  When I'd finished, I had to go back around and get her, so she could load the letter onto her memory stick and take it back to her work station to print it off.  I was not happy to leave this document open while I went to get her, as there were lots of people milling around, but what choice did I have?  She printed it off, had me sign it, and gave me a number, pointing out the rows of chairs where I should wait until called.

Once I was called to a window, the woman there very meticulously went through each document, highlighting and checking off information, triple-checking everything.  She found a spot where I'd missed a digit from my passport number, and had me write it in.  She questioned where I was going, where I would be staying, etc.  Very thorough, but not too painful.  She finally said she would give me a ten-year visa, with a limit of thirty-day-stays at a time.  I was given a slip of paper and told to return in five days to retrieve my passport with the new visa attached.  The whole process was done in about half an hour.

Back in the car for the long ride home.  It was after 1 p.m. by the time we arrived back at the condo.  We left at 7 a.m., which means we were in the car for nearly six hours.  I could have driven from Brighton to Terre Haute in that time!  I was glad to have that task checked off my list.

The following Wednesday we repeated the routine - I rode with Tim to work, then we drove back to Thanapoom Tower.  The traffic was much lighter this time, for some reason, and we arrived about forty minutes earlier.  Since I'd been let off a floor below last time, I asked Mick to go up one more level in the parking structure.  But when we drove around to the building side of the structure, there was no door to go in!  I guess only certain levels have passageways across to the tower.  We had a good laugh, and wound our way back down to the level with the entrance.  In less than ten minutes, I had paid for and picked up my visa, and we were on our way.

On the drive home, Mick pointed out a guy on a bicycle carrying a big tree trunk on one shoulder.  He said, "Look - for krathong."  The traditional krathong is made from the banana tree.  The trunk is sliced into one- or two-inch discs, which are then decorated with flowers, banana leaves, etc.  These become the krathongs, the vessels that are launched into the water to thank the goddess of the water and to symbolize the negative things in your life being carried away from you.

That night was the Loy Krathong festival - the celebration of lights that had greeted us on our very first day in Thailand.  I'd picked up a krathong made of bread from the grocery store, as I'd heard the fish could eat these, making them better for the environment.  My driver said he wasn't sure the fish in the sea could eat the stuff, thinking it was more for rivers or lakes.  We decided to give it a shot anyway.

A steady, driving rain pounced as evening fell.  The festival takes place after dark, so the rain undoubtedly dampened the plans of many.  We decided, rather than trying to join the revelers on Beach Rd., we would just launch our krathong at our condo's beach.  The rain finally dissipated by 8:30 or 9, and Tim and I took our krathong and headed down to the water.  Tradition says that couples put clips of their hair and nails into the krathong before sending them off into the water to bless their union, so we each contributed our DNA.

Last year the sky was dotted with chinese lanterns, those little paper lanterns that float up into the sky when they fill with hot air.  Sadly, the lanterns have been banned this year, and I understand the police were actively enforcing the ban.  I guess they might have caused fires, or interfered with air traffic.  I heard that air patterns over Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, were actually altered for the festival, to avoid the risk of lantern vs. plane.

At the beach, we lit the candle and the incense, expressed our gratitude for the gifts of the sea, and our candle promptly blew out.  We had to light it several times, as it was quite windy.  We finally just launched it into the water and watched it slowly bob in the water as the mosquitoes pounced.  Not quite as romantic as we'd hoped, but a nice memory nonetheless.

We spotted several krathongs in the water the next morning...