visas

Day 40. I wish they'd ban acoustic guitars from this continent. There's always some European 'traveller' with dreadlocks, or a beard, playing 'blowin in the wind' (badly) somewhere in the background. Makes me want to shout, 'get a job and a haircut hippy.'

Anyway, today I am a man. I have 3 new visa stamps in my passport. I collected it earlier this evening from Noi, my Bangkok tour operator, who has made all the arrangements for me.

I sat in front of her desk at about 6pm Bangkok time, praying she hadn't screwed up my instructions, or lost my only means of exit from Thailand. At 6.01pm she handed me back the small maroon book, and said joking, 'look at the visa, they beautiful, now you go to your hotel, and play with your visa.'

I'm not quite sure how to play with them, but I will be going back to my hotel to sit and stare at them adoringly after I've finished writing out this blog entry. The Cambodian visa is lime green with a hint of pink. The Vietnamese is a kind of peach colour with a blue border and white underborder. And the Laos is a kind of mysterious purple with a crest on the left hand side, giving it the slight appearance of a lottery scratch card. Signed respectively by Ngon Syvatha, Nguyen Trung Kien, and Intha Wongphachanh, I'm very pleased to have them in my possession, as they permit my passage in a slow anti-clockwise loop through South East Asia until early November - first Cambodia, then Vietnam, then Laos.

You may be wondering why I'm not just getting these visas on arrival at the border crossings of these countries? Well, anyone who knows me will be aware that I prefer to be pre-organised in such circumstances, but there have also been other reasons.

Vietnam: visas cannot be picked up on the border - arrangements must be made before arrival. You also have to specify the dates you will be in, and leaving, the country. In the case of Laos, which I definitely want to go to after Vietnam, border crossings are not always consistent, and it is recommended you get a visa beforehand. So I have. There is no fixed date on when I have to use it. Just after I'm finished in Vietnam. And Cambodia: well I'm going there in a couple of days and I thought I might as well get it out of the way.

Being biased, Noi was wrongly of the opinion that my Thai visa insert (various blue shades with inset Royal crest) on an earlier page was the most beautiful. I set her straight. Although it is a looker, it is the Vietnamese which is the Jordan amongst the page three girls.