Headed for Malaysia

So, if you are a US citizen (when people ask where I'm from here, I say "Obama Land" and always get a good response) you get 30 days on your passport when you fly in. As I said in an earlier post, that used to be true if you come in overland too. But that changed to only 15 days. So we decided to take a mini-vacation and fly out of the country. Vietnam, our first choice, was out because we need visas and there wasn't time to do that. So we figured we'd go to Luang Prabang in Laos. There's a non-stop flight from Chiang Mai. It's not far. But that turned out to be THB18,000 for the two of us or about $515. And since we've been there once I decided to look for other flights from Chiang Mai out of the country. Air Asia had a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for THB12,560 or $360 for the two of us. It ended up almost $400 because my credit card wouldn't work on line and I had to go to the airport and their price was higher.

I eventually, thanks to Thaivisa.com, figured out how to call the US collect from my Thai cell phone (Dial 00199911111) to check on my credit card. They said they block overseas air and hotel reservations to prevent fraud if you don't warn them in advance now. Fortunately there was an ATM nearby. My credit card is working again.

So that's where we're headed tomorrow (Friday in Thailand) and we'll come back Monday. Then Tuesday night I'll go to Bangkok with my office as the leaders prep for a meeting with the Prime Minister and the farmers prepare to demonstrate if they aren't satisfied with the meeting. AJWS doesn't allow volunteers to take part in political action like that, but I can be around and take pictures. Monday is a holiday in Thailand, so J only misses one day of her Thai class. Which has about 18 men and much smaller number of women. According to her, most, if not all, of the men in class have Thai girlfriends. And some of the women have Thai boyfriends.

And when I got home with the tickets J told me her classmates said you can extend your passport for 30 days near the airport for about THB1000 each. Maybe in March we'll do that.