Overstayers - A lesson in counting

This morning marks our last sunrise in Thailand as we head to Langkawi, Malaysia to start working our way down the peninsula to Singapore.

After a delicious thai breakfast consisting of another Thai omelette, we grabbed our bags and treked about 1km across the island to the thai border control. About 3/4 of the way there, Jamie realised his bag was lighter than it was previously and discovered that a shoe was now missing, having fallen off somewhere along our walk. As we were carrying 20kg each on our backs, we made our way to the finish line before Jamie ran back to retrieve his shoe.

As Jamie was off searching for his shoe, I went and checked us in for our boat journey and had a conversation as follows:

Manager: (looking at my thai entry stamp on my passport) "Today is the 6th"
Courtney: (looking confused) "OK...."
Manager: "You only had until the 5th"
Courtney: "What?"
Manager: (pointing to the passport) "You only had until the 5th, today is the 6th"
Courtney (penny dropped, feeling freaked out and stupid) "Oh Shit, what do I need to do"
Manager: "You need to pay a fine of 500 baht per day and sign some documentation, we need to take you over to border control"

At this point, I am wondering whether we will ever be allowed back in Thailand? are we now criminals? How did we get this so wrong? It seems that when calculating our time in Thailand, we counting in a number of nights, instead of number of days... opps.

I got taken into the customs office, which is probably the most picturesque border control office in the world, located on the beach. I was met with a stern voice telling me to sit down and asking me where my partner is (who, none the wiser, was still searching for his lost shoe). I sat down, and proceeded to get a telling off for overstaying and was told that if the immigration police had stopped us on the street and found that we had overstayed, we would have been thrown in jail, but fortunately we had made it to the border and all we needed to do was pay a 500 baht fine. I apologised to him, stating that it was an honest mistake and that we would never do this knowningly because I would be too scared. He laughed and said it was fine and relatively common, but stressed how lucky we are not to have found ourselves pulled over by the police. I signed the paper work and when Jamie finally turned up, I went and told him the bad news. Jamie hardly battered an eyelid and went and spoke to the customs man, signed the paperwork and then had to run to the ATM machine to draw out more money to pay the fine as we had used up all our cash. This actually concerned Jamie more than being overstayers in Thailand, because to draw out extra cash in Thailand, they hit you with a £5 pound fee 💷

So, once we got everything settled and were allowed to leave the country, we debriefed each other over a mango/banana smoothie. Apparently Jamie's shoe was found near our hotel and as far as we are aware, there is now the possibility that we might not be allowed back into Thailand for a 1 year period, due to our little slip up. This requires further research, but I doubt after this trip we will be able to afford to come back in a 1 year period anyway.

1 hour later, we were being whisked away on the boat to Langkawi. This was not an overly interesting boat trip as what windows they did have were caked in salt. We arrived in Langkawi at about 1pm and once we cleared customs, we made our way to our hotel for some sunbathing and a swim. We found a nearby mall for lunch and a supermarket for the essentials (beer, wine) before we made our way back to the hotel for some much needed R&R.Read more