Upon arrival into Thailand you receive a VISA to stay in the country for 30 days. After that, you need to leave the country and come back in order to stay longer. If you arrive by land you are given another 14 days and if you arrive by air you get another 30 days. I guess you can do this as long as you want but it does become somewhat of a hassle – always having to leave the county. But then again it gives you a reason to get out and see other surrounding areas.
There are actually tourist agencies that sell “Visa Runs” and they will take you on a mini-bus to the nearest boarder so that you can get your passport stamped and will bring you back that same day. There is a fee for this and since I’d be paying regardless I decided to head over to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (or KL as the locals call it)for the weekend (the closest non-Thailand airport to Koh Samui and also one of the cheaper places to fly into).
I flew on this budget Malaysian airline called Firefly and it’s so budget that it lands at a completely different airport than all the other flights. The airport is actually the very old KL airport and fortunately everything about the airline and the airport turned out to be great.
It was only a 2 hour flight and then a 30 minute taxi ride to get to downtown KL. For those of you who have no idea, KL is a huge metropolis. In a way it reminds me a little like Chicago. Skyscrapers everywhere, above ground and below ground trains and monorails, very high end shopping, and surprisingly lots of green area (parks, gardens, etc). Not to mention the traffic rivals LA traffic.
I stayed at a hostel recommended by a friend of mine called BackHome Kuala Lumpur. From previous experiences I always write down the address of the place I am staying and since I thought I would do it on the cheap and take the bus from the airport, I drew myself a little map of where the hostel was located. Good thing I did that… The taxi driver had no clue where this place was and loved that I had my little map to guide him.
The hostel was actually really great and is definitely a great way to meet people! I was surprised to see that a lot of the people staying there were closer to my age than to the 20 something crowd that I normally see in hostels. I shared a room with 3 other ladies all traveling by themselves. One from New Zealand, one from Spain, and one from Australia. There was a nice air-conditioned lounge area where we would spend our evenings catching up on the latest movies (all pirated of course).
Kuala Lumpur is known for a few things. One of those being the Petronas Towers, the tallest building in the world until 2004. There is a sky bridge on the 41st floor that they allow 1300 people each day to visit. Tickets are given out on a first come first serve basis once the ticket office opens at 8am. A fellow “hostel” guy from Canada went early in the morning to get a ticket and said that there were SO many people waiting in line and by the time they got to him all tickets were gone. My first night there I decided to go check out the Petronas Towers at sunset and watch the lights come on. It was a 10 minute ride on the underground train and the station where I got off was right at the base of the towers. Pretty impressive sight!
Another thing KL is known for is its Chinatown and lucky for me the hostel was only a few block away. Chinatown is a sight to be seen, heard, and tasted (and Linda, you would not like the smells). It’s famous for its stalls of imitation good (primarily fake purses, watches, CDs, DVDs) and food from all over Asia.
I had cheap dinner here both nights and since food is served from street stalls, normally they put out small plastic tables and stools for you to eat from. The second night I ended up getting into a conversation with a local Malaysia woman who was still single after 47 years and was in love with a man from Burma but because she was so poor she couldn’t afford to travel and would probably never see him again. Ah the interesting conversations….
The next morning I flew back to Thailand and noticed a handful of people who had been on my flight to KL – obviously they were doing the same thing I was… VISA Run.
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