Sunday, 25 January 2015

Visas and borders


for us, traveling within the European Union, passing from one country to another, is like going to the neighbor's house, it is even possible to cross borders without documentation. But one of the things you have to consider when traveling to distant countries, are the requirements they set, to allow you the entry. In this, every country is different. For some you just need your passport and nothing else. There are others where you need to apply for a visa and present a lot of paperwork. Often, you must also fill out forms at the arrival, where you do not always know what to put in all fields, so sometimes need to improvise a bit.

The countries we are visiting are usually easily accessible without many complications, for stays of less than 30 or 90 days depending on the country, although there are always little detail to consider.

We know that in some of the countries we want to visit, we need visas, but as we did not have time to apply for them in Barcelona, we are doing them here.

According to the official website of the Austrian
and Spanish ministries of foreign affairs, most countries require a ticket out of the country, to allow you to enter. This makes the trip much less spontaneus. However, we heard from other travelers that in most cases, this only applyes if you enter by air. If you enter by land, they don't use to ask for it.


In our case, They checked at the airport of Barcelona if we had a ticket to leave the country, before they even issued as our boarding pass. Fortunately, we were informed of the conditions of entry to Thailand, and a couple of days before we bought a ticket to go to Myanmar (Burma). Once at the airport in Bangkok, we were stamped passport with entry without any problems. This is only valid for 30 days if you go by air or 15 days if it is by land. If you want to spend more time in Thailand, then you should apply for a visa and pay the fees.

Anyway, the second time we went to Thailand (also by plane, but this time coming from Myanmar), we were not asked for any ticket to leave Thailand. We even didn't have any. So may be, they only ask for it on transoceanic flights ...? Sometimes it is difficult to discover what criteria they follow exactly.


But, even had a ticket to Myanmar, we couldn't have used it, because we did not have a visa to go there, as Myanmar, do not have any kind of visa on arival (well, that's what we thought before going there, but recently, there is the option to acquire a visa on arrival).

Because we didn't know that, we applyed for it, on the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok, where you have to go in the morning from 8:00 to 12:00h, with your passport, two photos, a photocopy of your passport and a form (handed at the same embassy) and wait. When it is your turn, they collect all your documents, including your passport and also the fees, which vary depending on the rush you have to pick it up. We opted for the cheapest version 810 baht (about 20 Euros) wich takes three days. So we spend
3 days, far away from home, completely undocumented.

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