Day 159, Year 4: A Little Help from Some Thai Friends
Date: Friday, March 20, 2009
Weather: Storms Overnight; Overcast Morning; Sunny Late Afternoon
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
Our newest Thai friend and hero of the day is Beei (bee-ah), Oh’s significant other and business manager. She had written a letter for us to take to Immigration. Oh delivered the letter by 10 am and we took off in a taxi to Phuket Town. When we arrived at the Immigration office the captain said we could have our two-week extension but would need to get the letter rewritten. Beei had addressed it to Customs instead of Immigration. So we got back in the taxi and headed for Boat Lagoon. We called
Oh on the way and he said he would have Beei fix the letter and bring it to us at the Boat Lagoon in an hour’s time. She and Oh live near Yacht Haven on the north side of Phuket, so it is at least a 45 minute drive down to the Boat Lagoon. But she did arrive with the new letter and she insisted on taking us to Immigration, another 40 minutes south of here. If there was something wrong with the new letter, she wanted to understand first hand so she could take care of the problem. Thank goodness
she went with us as we ran into difficulties and it was tremendously helpful to have someone with us who could speak and understand Thai. The captain said everything was in order and we could have the two week extension. She then sent us to another desk to be processed. This is when the problems started. We ended up at the desk of the same gentleman who had told us we could only have seven days when we were there on Wednesday. Well, he said the same thing again. Beei talked to him and got nowhere,
but then the captain, who happens to be a woman, came over and tried to set things straight. There was quite a heated discussion, but in the end the captain won out and said we would get the two week extension. But we still had to have things processed through this man who had now ‘lost face’ as Beei said, and he was not a happy camper. He found little things wrong with how other Thai officials had stapled our departure card in our passports, so he unstapled and relocated them and then sent Beei
to get new photo copies of these pages. This nonsense went on for about an hour with Beei being sent to get more and more copies of things. At one point Mark reached over to take back the copies of our passport departure card that we had brought with us and the sergeant actually slapped his hand down on the paper letting Mark know that he want not to touch anything. In the end, we did end up getting a two week extension, but it was from today’s date, not Monday’s date when our original Visa expires.
This means we need to be out of here by April 3. Actually if we don’t leave by April 1 at the very latest, we cannot get out until April 7 because of the tides. But basically we think we have a workable solution but I’m not sure we would have if we hadn’t had Beei running interference for us. So a huge thanks to our newest Thai friend.
When we got back to Windbird, it was almost 4 pm. It was now totally sunny and beautiful, but at the time the crew had to make a decision about doing the final coats of paint on the mast and boom, it was still cloudy. So a decision had been made not to do the final mast and boom painting today, and Luck and Lok were on the cabin top cleaning up the overflow of caulk from installing the hatches. Mark had spent two hours in the early morning just trying to clean one hatch and when Oh came to the
deliver the letter at 10 am we could tell he was not quite pleased with that clean-up. He really is a perfectionist, so we assume he told the crew to finish off the job for us so things would meet his approval. Mark was absolutely delighted as he had found the clean-up process just too tedious. So the assistance from Oh’s crew was our second Thai friend help of the day experience.
We worked on the boat once Beei brought us back from Immigration, but it was late in the day and we didn’t get much done. I’m working on cleaning up the four bronze ports and Mark is working on preparation for the mast to be stepped. All of this will continue tomorrow, but at least we have our weekend and don’t have to travel to Burma. Right now, that extra time seems like a real gift.
And now I must mention my contact with our apartment floor last night. I was dutifully doing my daily exercises with my faithful ab slider. This is a little roller mechanism that I have been using for five years now to help strengthen my abdominal muscles that in turn strengthen my lower back. Last night while I was doing my daily 40 slides something happened which I can’t explain and suddenly I was face to face with our hard tile floor. My nose was smashed as well as my front teeth. There was
unbelievable bleeding but finally things were under control. I’m hoping that my front teeth were just jarred but not actually damaged. My nose does not appear to be broken but it is very tender to the touch. And I have this huge scar on my nose where my glasses slid with the fall. What a stupid accident. But obviously these things happen and I just hope there are no further complications.
