Big Fish and Buddha Bling: Tales of Immigration

Recently, I went to Immigration for my very last visa extension (3 months, taking me through to April).  I was complaining to my friend Liz about having to get up so early and elbow strangers for a spot in the queue, and she suggested that I liveblog the experience – or, rather, write down my observations live and then post them when I had internet access again.  So, enjoy my Immigration adventures in real time, with added flashbacks looking back at two years of mishaps, insanity, sleepless nights, and assault by small children.  Warnings for strong language…

4.34 am:  Oh fuck.  Oh, fuck.  I’m freezing and exhausted, and my stomach feels lousy.  The temptation to do this on Friday instead is intense, but that’s cutting it fine, considering that my visa expires on Monday.  Okay.  Maybe just… sit up for a little bit, try and get properly awake?

5.12 am:  Fuck.  Okay.

5.28 am:  I run into my local 7-11 for drinks to sustain me (of the water/electrolyte drink/M150 variety, although, believe me, those little pocket-sized bottles of Sam Som whiskey are tempting).  I toy with the idea of trying to explain to the clerk why I’m up this early, especially since we just went over these words in Thai class – bpai taw maw, to go to Immigration; taw visa, to do visa/get a visa extension – but I’m not really in a fit state to banter in another language, and it’s not like he bats an eye at people buying energy drinks at five in the morning.  Pull a massively illegal U-turn and sneak down the highway shoulder in the wrong direction.  Thailand, baby!

5.31 am:  The road to Immigration is gloriously empty, and someone’s grilling corn by the side of the highway; the warm, scented smoke wraps around me for just a second as I fly past.  I remember making this journey two years ago, when I had just barely gotten my licence.  I was scared of everything – driving on the overpass, missing the turnoff, other drivers.  Now, I’m cruising along, not even in that much of a hurry, just skating lightly over the curves of a road I know well.  It’s all bridges and overpasses, this road, and even in the dark, there are some pretty moments when you see the lights of the riverside bars reflected in the water beneath you, or the blacker bulk of the mountain looming up in front of you.

5.54 am:  Only a handful of people are here so far.  I even manage to snag one of the few comfy chairs, up against the side of the office.  I side-eye my rivals:  a few honkies and two young Asian women.  As I sit down, a middle-aged Chinese couple stroll up, followed by an American who asks loudly if there’s a piece of paper to write our names on.  I just… dude, have you somehow managed to avoid coming to Immigration for the past two years?

You see, there used to be a list.  You arrived in the morning and put your name down, at 5 am or whenever, and then you could leave – go get a cup of coffee from the airport (a five-minute walk away), go home and sleep for another couple of hours, etc.  The problem was that some people started paying certain officials to put their names at the top of the list as soon as it went up; I don’t think it was ever more than a few people at a time, but (on principle, I suppose), it led them to close down the entire list system.  Which made coming to Immigration absolute hell after that, because it was replaced with a system where you’re handed a number when you come through the door at 8 am.  The shoving, elbowing, shouting, writhing scrum of honkies that resulted every morning had to be seen to be believed.

Personally, I liked the list.  The first time I came to get my visa extended, I showed up around 7, not realising that this would be way too late to get a slot for that day (I ended up being around #80-odd, out of a total of 40 slots), but the good thing was that I ran into my friend P., and the two of us hatched a scheme for the day after.  I would arrive at 5 and put down both our names; she would get to sleep in (well, relatively) and show up around 7.30 with breakfast.  I still remember that breakfast – fried eggs with chili in toasted croissants, with a 7-11 bag full of snacks and drinks for later.  That day was the most fun I ever had at Immigration.

And then, once we both got our visas, we went to lunch and I almost fell asleep headfirst in a bowl of khao soi.  Good times.

6.13 am:  I’m worried about the state of my Thai, given that my visa says I’ve been studying it for two years.  Which, to be fair, I have – it’s just that my attendance in class has been spotty, and of all the aspects of learning a new language, listening and responding appropriately to what someone else says has always been the hardest for me.  I find it very difficult to comprehend a language being spoken, even when I can read it (and to say I can read Thai would be optimistic).  It probably doesn’t help that all my teachers have been from Bangkok, and the softer northern drawl, with its “h” for “k” and its dialect words, can still throw me for a loop.

When I first arrived, one of my fellow volunteers told me about a guy in Bangkok who’d been here on a student visa for a decade.  (This must have been some time ago, since I’m pretty sure they max out at three years now – either that, or there’s an element of urban legend going on here.)  When he went to have it extended yet again, the immigration officer tried to make a little small talk while processing the application.  He pointed to the office aquarium and said sadly, “Bplaa yai gkin blaa lek” – The big fish are eating the little fish.  The applicant didn’t have the first clue what he’d said, and just like that – boom!  Deported!

Now, I know that story was told to reassure me:  after all, this man who apparently had no knowledge of the Thai language whatsoever (and, really, just eating in an occasional Thai restaurant should expose you to words like big, little, eat, and fish!) managed to get a visa to study it renewed for ten years.  But right now, the prospect of failing to get my visa renewed because I misunderstood a crack about fish is looming large in my mind.

7.15 am:  Oh you are kidding me.  This is too good to be true.  The office opened at 7.10, almost an hour early; people organised themselves into a civilised queue (with a few who arrived later than I did actually beckoning me to go ahead of them); no one pushed, shoved, called names, bit, or even threatened grievous bodily harm; we received, instead of slips of paper, fancy laminated number cards bearing the Thai Royal Police logo; and they’re already calling us up (which doesn’t normally happen until 9).  WOW.  Quite a change from my last renewal, when one guy even tried to body-check someone he thought was trying to cut the queue.  (Made even better by the fact that the check-ee was actually right; the guy who got violent somehow ignored the immigration official standing at his elbow calling out numbers, as well as me and the three other people who were trying to explain the situation to him, and kept insisting that this line was for people without numbers only, because he didn’t have a number and they’d told him to wait here.  My countrymen abroad, folks.)

7.37 am:  When I first sat down inside the office, it was next to a nice young Brit who’d clearly been in Thailand for a while, too.  “These are fancy!” I told him, flashing the laminated number card. 

“I know!” he grinned.  “They’re upgrading!”

After some reshuffling, however, I’m now sitting next to a young Chinese woman in flowered trousers, holding a scrunchy-faced small child whose favourite games appear to be Throw All The Shit and Kick the Farang To Death.  Luckily, she’s tiny and wearing crocs, but owwww.  I give her a Look.  She gives me an even crankier Look.  I feel this is a threat to my nuclear supremacy, and a Look arms race commences.  (Fortunately, the advent of the Look cold war means that actual hostilities cease.)

Granted, it’s not like I don’t know how she feels.  There are times when Immigration makes me want to run around kicking people, too.

I always feel bad for the children who get stuck here, especially at absurdly early hours, often because both parents need visa renewals.  That doesn’t necessarily make me despair any less at my tendency to attract the most bored and fractious of the kids, though.  Their attention isn’t usually quite this hostile, but there was also the young girl last time who spent about an hour attempting to pick up and examine everything I owned and stuff most of it through a crack between the table and the wall, piece by piece.  That was a fun exercise in human relations.

7.44 am:  Reshuffle again – my miniature nemesis has retired from the field.  Advantage Catherine!  Boo-yeah!

Also, one of the senior officials has emerged, wearing a cammo jacket over his lavender uniform polo shirt, to glare in a quelling manner at the assembled immigrants.  How dare we clutter up his Immigration Office with our immigrant-ness.  I must admit, he is the most badass figure I have ever seen wearing a lavender polo shirt and Buddhist bling.

Going to work on my latest job application some more.

I’ve started Wild, the book Margaret gave me, and it’s vivid and brutal.  It’s seriously my life at age 22, laid out in someone else’s words.  It’s painful to read, but also so reassuring to know I’m not alone.

7.55 am:  An elderly American lady in a wheelchair is explaining 90-day reporting to a horrified young Asian woman.  I think she’s under the impression that it’s the same kind of time commitment as visa extension, when it’s really more like an hour if you come in after lunch.

7.56 am:  First person attempting to get in the locked front door – take a shot!

7.57 am:  And second person!  Though he figured it out right away, unlike the first dude, who spent a good 30 seconds trying to force the door open while making gestures of exaggerated despair.  Seriously, man, it’s around to the side!  Where everyone else is going and also there are arrows.

7.58 am:  Third guy (first honky) strides up with typical American forthrightness and just rattles that shit, looking put out that the door refuses to submit to this display of shock and awe.

Also, two young men try to get out the locked door, to meet with a similar lack of success.  No women yet.  Is this a gendered thing?  Are we simply better at reading notices?

Dude by the door is a dead ringer for a slightly younger Ian McKellen.  As a matter of fact, for all I know, that is Ian McKellen and Asia just really agrees with him.

8.02 am:  Two women approach the door, challenging my previous theory, but figure out that it’s locked before actually touching the handle.  Clever girls.

It’s remarkably civilised in here, for January (classic visa renewal time).  Even the photocopy station outside is quiet, when there’s often a queue right back to the parking lot.  I guess it’s because it’s midweek, with no major office closings recently or coming up.

Aaaand another guy tries to leave through the locked door. J

Oh, honey.  Oh no.  Blue check shirt and green plaid shorts and socks with sandals and OWWWW.  Look, I get that you’re married to a young Thai woman and you no longer give a shit, but I think I may be permanently damaged after seeing that.  It’s like I’ve glimpsed Cthulhu and lost my grip on sanity.

God damn, the oldest official here has gone from black hair with a dignified sprinkling of grey to snow-white in my two years in Thailand.  (I hope those two things aren’t actually linked.)

Younger official in a sharp suit and K-pop boy band haircut just came out and wai-ed the oldest official – palms together and hands held high, near the mouth, almost as high as you’d hold them if you were greeting a monk – before draping over the older man’s chair.  Not sure if that’s respectful protégé or worshipful boy toy, but it’s rather cute.

8.21 am:  Whole queue of worried-looking folks waiting for numbers.  Rookie mistake, guys – get here hours before it opens if you want a visa, or late morning/early afternoon for everything else, once the crowds have thinned out.  If you turn up at 8 or 9, you really will wait all day.  Think I recognise one of them as the dude who kept going on about life energy and positive reprogramming in thoroughly condescending and pushy ways during every break at Thai class.  He walks away from the counter, sans laminated number, with virtual stormclouds gathering above his head.  I’m just going to be smug in his general direction for a bit.  How’s that positive reprogramming doing at easing your day-to-day life, man?

8.53 am:  The different streams of numbers start to pull away from each other pretty quickly:  we’re up to 18 90-day reportings and 12 re-entry permits issued, but only on the third visa renewal.

The lady in the wheelchair speaks fluent Thai, it seems, or at least enough to understand when an announcement is made about her truck.  She and the official are now having a friendly but firm discussion, in a mix of Thai and English, about handicapped parking provisions and the lack thereof.

9.17 am:  A shy young monk wanders in, all orange robes and embroidered gold lame bag, with his papers carefully in hand.  You don’t get many monks here, and the few I’ve seen have been Western.  I wonder where this kid is from.  Monks in Burma favour burgundy over saffron.  Cambodia, maybe?  Laos?  I’m a little surprised that the officials seem to treat him with the same brusqueness as everyone else, though the folks waiting give him a few chairs’ worth of space when he sits down.

9.29 am:  And my visa has been extended!  Just need to wait for the processing now.  This has got to be a record.  The official shot me a tired smile when I greeted him in Thai, but conducted the whole process in impeccable English.  “This is the last year,” he told me.  “The limit is three years.”  I nodded gravely, even though I’ll only be here for a quarter of that time.  In fact, I got a funny jolt looking at the date so meticulously noted in flourishing script on the back of my – probably last – departure card.  It’s the date that my next 90-day report will be due:  2 April.

My flight home is on 29 March.

I did have to run out and make more photocopies (what trip to Immigration would be complete without forgetting something?).  The application was prepared before my Cambodia and Vietnam trip, so I needed to replace the copy of my last re-entry stamp before that with the most recent version.  I at least got to use my Thai a little bit with the woman running the copy machine.  Once it was clear that my visa wasn’t going to hinge on it after all, I felt an odd compulsion to prove that I can speak Thai.  Kind of.

“Copy mai?”

“Copy anii kap anii kha.”

“Sii baht kha.”

 All those lessons have clearly paid off. J  (“Copy?”  “Yeah, this page and this page.”  “Four baht.”)

All the Burma folks are sitting on plastic chairs out in the cold, which seems hideously symbolic, waiting their turn at the outdoor counter reserved for them.  Yup.  There’s a separate counter for Burma immigrants, and it’s open to the elements and staffed by a single official.  Because that doesn’t carry disturbing Jim Crow echoes at all.  (The separate counter is new since I’ve been here, a concession to the growing flood of immigration from both Burma and elsewhere.  However, it’s pretty clear from the current arrangements that the move was more about decluttering the main office for the farangs than about improving the ease or comfort of the process for the people from Burma.

Now I’m listening to the passport announcements, which come in batches, and marveling a little at the wide range of places we’re all from.  “Miss Misa from Japan.  Mr Stephen from Switzerland.  Miss Fon from China.”  It’s actually one of the things that’s kind of cool about Immigration.  Over the years, I’ve struck up conversations here with a young teacher from China who lamented that Thai portions were so tiny, compared to the vast bowls of soup she was used to getting at cookshops in her home province; with a red-headed British guy who chatted with me about Liberal Democrat policies; with a European man who wanted to know what comic books I followed; with a tracksuited and blinged-out Italian-American guy from back home in Joisey, who laughed at me for being a “bleeding-heart liberal” and complained that Thai doesn’t have enough words for “beautiful”.  Outside this room, different groups of immigrants don’t always mix.  The teachers and NGO workers pal around, but only occasionally in the same places as the yoga teachers and the pilgrims, who tend not to know the retirees with their Thai brides, and so on – monks, IT workers, Chinese engineers, Japanese students, Mormon missionaries.  We move in separate lines… but they all intersect at this one point.

9.31 am:  A Thai man in what seems to be a fresh, and definitely elaborate, hairdo – cornrow-style stripes in front, shaven to a series of little nubs in the back that rise like some kind of Paleolithic barrows – stops at the first desk to lean backwards across it, letting the oldest Immigration official pat and exclaim over his hair. J

9.44 am:  My passport is ready!  That’s got to be a record.  When I go to pick it up, the official looks at me in surprise.  Then she studies the photo carefully, then me, then the photo.  Finally, she hands it to me, raising an eyebrow and saying, “Old passport, na?”

This is seriously the third time in the last few months that immigration officials of various countries have done precisely this routine.  Yes, I get it:  I was a fresh-faced twenty-two when that photo was taken, and now I’m an indifferently preserved thirty-one and operating on a scant few hours of sleep.  Just give me the damned visa already!

9.45 am:  And I’m out.  I walk past the tiny coffeeshop outside the main door; past the fruit and juice sellers; past the stalls with stacks of Styrofoam containers full of graprao moo kap khai todd (pork mince cooked with holy basil, with a mound of white rice and a fried egg).  And then I’m driving through the gate – for the last time.