Thailand - The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia on a Budget - page 698

It's not a good idea to overstay your visa
limits. Once at the airport or the border,
you'll be required to pay a fine of B500
per day before you leave. And if you get
involved with police or immigration
o cials while in possession of an expired
visa, they're obliged to take you to court,
possibly imprison you, and deport you.
Sixty-day tourist visas can be extended
in hailand for a further thirty days, and
fifteen- and thirty-day stays for seven to
ten days, at the discretion of o cials;
extensions cost B1900 and are issued
within the hour over the counter at
immigration o ces ( kaan khao muang ) in
nearly every provincial capital - most
o ces ask for one or two photos as well,
plus one or two photocopies of the main
pages of your passport, including your
hai arrival card and arrival stamp or visa.
Many tour agents on Bangkok's hanon
Khao San offer to get visa extensions for
you, but beware: they are reputedly
faking the stamps.
For the latest information, see the hai
Ministry of Foreign Affairs' website at
W

and more comfortable, but tend to depart
less frequently and don't cover as many
routes. In a lot of cases they're
indistinguishable from privately owned
air-conditioned buses (often known as
rot thua ), which ply the most popular
long-distance routes and often operate
out of government bus terminals.
On some longer routes, there are also
more expensive VIP buses , with fewer
seats and more legroom. Major private
companies, such as Nakorn Chai and
Win Tour, are generally reliable, but
many smaller companies on the main
travellers' routes, especially from hanon
Khao San to Chiang Mai and Surat
hani, have a poor reputation for service
and comfort despite attracting customers
with bargain fares and convenient
timetables. Travellers have reported a
frightening lack of safety awareness and
frequent thefts from luggage on these
routes, too (see p.707).
Tickets for all buses can be bought from
the departure terminals and from major
post o ces (see also W thaiticketmajor.com
for information about buying by phone or
online), but for second-class buses it's
normal to buy them onboard. First-class
and VIP buses may operate from a separate
station, and tickets for the more popular
routes should be booked a day in advance.
As a rough indication of prices , a trip from
Bangkok to Chiang Mai (713km) costs up
to B900 VIP, B500-600 first-class and
B438 second-class.
In rural areas, the bus network is
supplemented or replaced by songthaews
(see p.702). Usually cramped, crazily fast
and uncomfortable, air-conditioned
minibuses ( rot tuu ), which sometimes
operate like share taxis, only leaving
when they are full, increasingly feature
on popular inter-town routes all over
the country.

10

mfa.go.th; for further, uno cial details,
such as the perils of overstaying your visa,
see W thaivisa.com.
If you need a visa for China or India,
you might want to apply at the
consulates in Chiang Mai. Laos and
Vietnam have consulates in Khon Kaen
as well as in Bangkok.

GETTING AROUND
he wide range of e cient transport
options makes travelling around hailand
very easy and inexpensive.

BUSES, SONGTHAEWS AND MINIBUSES
Ordinary (ie not air-conditioned) orange
buses ( rot thammadaa ) are now found
mostly in more remote areas, covering
short distances between towns. hey've
generally been replaced as the workhorses
of the bus system by blue, second-class
( baw sawng ), air-conditioned buses ( rot
air ), which are state-run and inexpensive,
but can get packed and are usually quite
slow because they stop fairly frequently.
he state-run, blue, first-class ( baw
neung ), air-conditioned buses are faster

TRAINS
Managed by the State Railway of hailand
(SRT; W railway.co.th), the rail network
consists of four main lines and a few
branch lines. Fares depend on the class of
seat, whether or not you want air
conditioning and on the speed of the train
- always slow, and usually late. Hard,