39 weeks.: Visa Shmisa!

On the 14th of December I had to leave the country because my visa ran out -so I went to Singapore to stay with my parents over Christmas and New Year, and until I could get a visa. Last Friday I went and applied for my visa. This is how the day turned out.
The Thai embassy is only open between 9.30 am and 11.30 am. After going to my parents office and printing everything we think we need off, my Dad and I get the MRT to the road that the Thai Embassy is on. We get there around 10.45 and it takes us a good 15 minutes to run around and actually find the Embassy. We talk to the guard and he looks through my paper work and then tells us that my pictures have a blue background and that's not okay, it needs to be a white background. He then proceeds to tell us that there's a photo booth in a certain shopping centre around the corner. Now I don't know about you, but finding a certain shopping centre in a whole road of shopping centres, and then finding a singular passport photo booth in one seems a little bit difficult to me. He rattles off some directions and leaves my Dad and I to it. After running around and finding this photo booth, we get back to the embassy for about 11.20. Ten minutes to spare. We run in, begin to line up and a lady comes up to us and says 'you need to cut and glue those photos'. So we get out of line, borrow some glue and scissors and get back in line. Once we get to the front desk and hand in my paper work, the lady takes one look at it and says 'Okay, can you sit to the side please and I'll call you back over later'. We sit to the side. At 12 noon we're the only ones left waiting. The lady who asked us to sit to the side looks over and says 'I'm sorry, what are you doing here?' Fantastic. We then explain and she remembers and goes to get my paper work. She then asks 'where are your flight details?' I explain that I had to cancel my flight back to Chiang Mai because I only just received the paper work for the visa. She then tells me that she cannot issue my paper work unless she has a copy of my flights back to Chiang Mai, which are of course not booked yet. Thankfully, she told us that she'd be in the embassy at 2pm that afternoon and if we managed to book flights, print them off and take them back to her that day, my visa would possibly be ready by the Tuesday. However, if we waited to give them to her we would have to wait until Tuesday and then she wouldn't be sure when I could get my visa. So after a call to my mother, a dash back to the office and booking a flight for a day where we couldn't be sure if I would have my visa yet, we made it back to the Thai Embassy for 2pm.
And on Tuesday - I was handed my visa!
There are still complications with renewing it and it's turning out to be a lot more expensive than planned, but for the next three months I definitely have a visa and a permit to stay in country! Yay!

The silver lining in all of this was of course, getting to spend three weeks with my family. Here are some pictures from the trip.