Legit!

That's right... no boarder runs for this girl. I officially have my work permit as of today.

Our Immigrant B Visa's expired today. If we wouldn't have gotten the permits today, we would be filing a 7 day sick extension at the Immigration office.... Then getting on a bus on Sunday to Laos for an overnight visa run.

I wasn't opposed to that plan either as long as the school paid for all the costs incurred. It wasn't our fault that they waited a month after we got here to apply for our work permits. They know its a long process and takes time. I can't really blame them though, even if they started the process immediately it still could have taken forever. I know the school paid alot to get it pushed through for us. And everything takes time here.

At noon today, five of us (Tom, Brian, Emily, Me, and Lua... one of the Chinese teachers) got in Khun Gun's truck and traveled to Chonburi to collect our work permits. We all squashed in for the 1 hour ride there and back.

Khun Gun has some mad driving skills. We got there in no time...

I tried to be discreet. Notice their amazing filing system... It's like that all over the office. No wonder we brought in brides of cookies for the workers at this office :)

Brian signing his paperwork

After we got the permits and signed more paper work, we headed straight to the immigration office in Jomtien/Pattaya to get our visa's extended.

Apparently, we will have to go into this office in Jomtien every three months to get stamped. I also learned that we technically cannot leave Thailand without another type of re-entry visa, otherwise, our work permit is void. Hopefully, we will figure this problem out so if we do want to travel to any surrounding countries on a whim or find a good deal - we can.

Good news -- we got back just in time to go home :)