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Thai Visa Run to Vientiane/Laos

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Thai Consulate Office

Opening Time:
8:30 a.m. - 12:00 a.m.
1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Open at workdays only. Care about Thai and Laotian holidays! There are many of them (20?). You find a list here:

Thai Consulate / Embassy Holidays

Thai Consulate Vientianne

The Thai Consulate in Vientiane. Image: Asienreisender, 2011

For visa applications don't go to the Thai Embassy; it's elswhere in Vientiane. Visas are given only at the Thai Consulate Office! Here you find a map:

Thai Consulate / Embassy Map

Applying for a visa requires two workdays. On the first day you have to appear with all the required documents (e.g. passport, application form (which you get and fill in there), two passport photos and the visa fee). You leave the documents there and get a receipt. Next workday between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. you must come again to pick up your passport with the visa.

The whole procedure takes a lot of time and is no pleasure at all. Be prepared to wait several hours. There are every working day hundreds of applicants.

For more information visit the official website of the Thai Embassy:

Thai Embassy

About the place

Asienreisender - Thai Consulate in Vientiane

Waiting outside of the Consulate 30 min before opening time. The queue is much longer in the back. Image: Asienreisender, 2011

The whole procedure is a big annoyance. It's an atmosphere like in a prison. And the applicants are actually treatet like criminals. Queuing in long lines in the bar sun, or worse, in the rain. They have too little staff for all the applicants (sometimes there are hundreds per day). So the procedure takes hours. You have to wait two times, first for the application, than for paying for all the nonsense. The authorities demand many useless things. Why do they need two passport photos for a visa application? They also want photocopies of the passport and the temporary Laotion visa. Upstairs a guy makes the photocopies. It's an additional business. He likes to make too many photocopies, so he can charge more. It's a fraud, covered by the authorities. They could hand out the visa immediately, as it is the case in other embassies or consulates. But they don't. It's the decision of the Embassador how to deal with these things. For the Thai Consulate the Embassador decided it's fine for you to come next day in the afternoon to pick up your visa. That makes you not only more trouble, but after you have eventually the visa, it's too late to leave Vientiane on the same day; so you have to stay there for one more night. And it's neither a nice nor a cheap place.
Be aware of the fact, that you as an applicant for a Thai visa have no right to get one. It's completely the decision of the embassy. If they don't want to give you a visa for any reason, they don't need to explain themselves. It's just so. If you have already paid for your application and you nevertheless next day do not get a visa, you don't get your money back.
Besides, what is all that for? Actually they sell you, what is a natural human right. To go, wherever you want to go. People migrated over hundred thousands of years. Now it's restricted by borders and states.

Info from July 21st, 2011; updated December 8th, 2011

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