Diary : 25 Aug 2011 (Day At Immigrations)

Much of today was spent hanging around the immigrations department and I arrived at 8am. I was the 5th on the queue. Not bad I thought.

I thought wrong. I only managed to see the officer at 11am. Almost a 3 hour wait.

Next I was told that the visa 1 year extension process will take 1 month, as such I can only leave the country on 12 Oct or forfeit my visa !

This was terrible. We're scheduled to be in Singapore for project lives together with Puu & Tim, and worse, our air tickets are booked on 8th !

The immigrations officer heard our case and said with a blank face "Yes, you must clear immigrations before booking any flights" But her next line brought a glimmer of hope, "But you can try coming about 1 week, maybe...just maybe the visa will be ready"

Now, as incredulous as it sounds, especially when we are flying to Singapore to help raise funds to help Thai locals. We're subjected to more incredible amounts of red tape and the government seems to be happy just the way things are; Where NGOs do the bulk of the social work, while the government almost have their hands off completely.

We overheard an officer saying "Foreigners are only helping Thais because they enjoy staying in Thailand, so we let them help" But they fail to understand that foreign aid comes in only because there is a lack of aid & support within.

Not only is there a lack of support for foreign NGOs helping Thais, it seems that certain policies were meant just to confuse you and keep you running in circles. Ie, when you ask the immigrations about a policy, they refer you to the district office, and they will refer you to the provincial office and the provincial office will refer you to the immigrations.

Talk about infinite loops.

Little is done to facilitate the paperwork, instead you hear the nonchalant response so frequently "Sorry, you just have to be physically present and you have to put aside all plans to get your visa approved."

I remembered that we used to have to make special efforts just to be in Chiang Mai for months in a time, just to wait to be inspected or for the paperwork to clear, while everything on the ministry end pulls to a halt.

At least we're in better shape now, with more staff to run the programmes while i'm in Chiang Mai.

Really, I'm not looking for gratitude or a privileged treatment. But surely people can do more to facilitate aid within their own countries !

So yes. Its frustrating.

Did I mention that the types of documents (Range from 14-18 documents, each with their own processing time), processing timelines, the number of copies of each document varies with the wind ?