Thailand

Its official, I hate the fact that we need visas to basically travel anywhere. Yes there are something like 90 countries South Africans can travel to without a visa. Unfortunately almost 85 of those countries are in the top 100 countries nobody wants to visit as a tourist, for example Iraq or Syria are in the 90.

We have been planning a cruise from Singapore to Dubai to end our trip in style, and stop along the way at the Sri-Lanka, India and Oman. We managed to find out that can travel to both Sri-Lanka and Oman without visas if we travel via cruise-ship. India unfortunately is a different story, we were unable to get hold of anyone to confirm if it was the same for India and we confirmed that e-visas for India only apply for traveling via air and not allow via any coastal entry.

As a final attempt to clarify this, we set out to be at the India consulate in Bangkok first thing in the morning.

Now this is the thing that irritates me the most about visas and the process to get visas, for some reason diplomats think the should treat potential visa applicants like criminals and make it as difficult as possible to get the correct information to do the application.

We arrived at the consulate and firstly the security did not want us to enter the gate. Then they called someone from inside and he was so rude, we could hardly finish a sentence. I wanted to ask: Does SA citizen need a visa if traveling on a cruise-ship? I was only able to get to the word "visa" before he dismissed me and sent me off to some consultant that handles visa applications. Obviously I did not just leave it there, I insisted he answers my question as we did not want to apply for a visa if its not necessary and we know from experience these consultants know just as little as we do as they are merely like a postal service between the applicant and the consulate.

Again he insisted that they would be able to answer my question. We then made our way to the consultants and surprise surprise they were unable to answer the question and referred us back to the consulate. The only thing they could confirm is that even if we did need a visa we wouldn't be able to apply for one in Bangkok as only Thai citizens or Expat work permit holders in Thailand can apply for visas there.

Very frustrated and irritated by the fact that we can't really get a straight answer we walk back to out Airbnb to cancel our planned cruise and start planning alternative things to fill the void of the cruise and get us to Dubai.

India's loss is the Philippines's gain, as the Philippines is one of the few countries we don't need a visa if we travel there for less than 21 days. After Thailand we now head to the Philippines then Singapore and from Singapore we fly to Dubai which is the last stop on our amazing life changing journey.

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