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A hostel cook in Chiang Mai told me to stop chasing 30 day visas, so I counted my stamp pages
Was sitting in the kitchen at a hostel in Chiang Mai last week and a guy from Ireland asked why I looked stressed. I told him I was booking a visa run to Laos for the third time this year. He laughed and said he's been on the same 60 day tourist visa for 14 months just by doing border hops to Malaysia every other month. I went back and counted my passport pages, 11 stamps in 8 months, and realized I was burning about $400 a month on visa runs I didn't actually need. Does anyone else feel like the visa run treadmill is mostly self inflicted?
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pat_hart7d ago
Ever noticed how the visa run thing works like a gym membership you keep paying for but never use? People build their whole schedule around these trips because the stress makes them feel like they're being productive, when really they're just spinning their wheels. I knew a guy in Da Nang who had a spreadsheet tracking every border option within 500km, and he spent more time planning runs than actually enjoying Vietnam. Meanwhile the dudes who just hop to Malaysia or do a quick land crossing when needed are chilling at the beach. The whole "visa run" culture gets passed around in hostels like some kind of badge of honor, but it's mostly just guys copying what the last guy did without checking if the rules even require it. Your Irish buddy basically proved that by accident.
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