Khon Kaen Visa Run

This week began with an interesting visa run, after a fun weekend in Bangkok. We woke up monday morning to pick up our work permits at the local Chaiyaphum office, and made our way to Khon Kaen, (a two hour open air bus ride.) We arrived around 1:30 pm. When we arrived we went straight to the visa office where we encountered a long queue with "take a number" box. we took numbers 71 and 72. We then sat and sat while watching other teachers, some american families, but mostly American men with thai wives/girlfriends receive their visas. 3 hours went by, and we were still 10 numbers away from being helped, and we were told to come back the next day. We took it in stride and grabbed a city bus back to the city center. and found a cheap hotel for about $6 USD. We took this as a chance to explore Khon Kaen, a city of about 250,000, though the census numbers in Thailand seem to be skewed. Khon Kaen is very different from Chaiyaphum, it features an airport, a train station, many nice restaurants (Chaiyaphum has 1 nice restaurant), but the pride and glory of khon kaen is its brand new 6 story super-mall which was constructed last year. We bowled a round at its bowling alley, and then grabbed some street food, and an english newspaper published in Bangkok, and headed to bed. The next morning we woke early and camped out at the visa office at 7:30, we were finally awarded with our visas around 10 am.