I'm legal again

I made mistake, quite a big one... in thinking that my International Drivers Permit allowed me 3 years of driving in Thailand.... it does not. Why the IDP is valid for 3 years, in fact you are only allowed to use it for 3 months in Thailand...oops...this was a bit of a shock, and as soon as I found out I curtailed my driving and started collecting the paperwork to get my license exchanged.

This, turned out to be a bit of a chore, for a number of reasons.. First I needed a Certificate of Residency...actually 2, car/bike. A quick trip to Immigration and 120baht later, I get.... a tracking number for my post in about 3 weeks.

oh.. oh so we wait, Jirawan has to do the driving.

3 weeks come... and no sign,... But I get a call from a Thai number that immediatly hangs up on me when I greet the caller in English... 30 mins later, the Thai chat app, Line, pings me with what I assume is spam friend request, I get a lot of those.. but no... it is in fact someone in our neighbourhood who got my CoR.. her boyfriend was the hang up who didnt speak English. It seems our house numbers contain the same digits, but in a different order...and those wrong numbers are on the paper work..ooops.

I assume that I must have filled out the form wrong and transposed the digits, but no... they send the certificates to..the address on your TM.30, a legal document you get from immigration that registers where you are living....and on checking, indeed the TM.30 is wrong, but we'd never noticed it.

So I start panicking as I am prone to do when official things go wrong. But Jirawan calmly takes my tm30 to immigration, gets if fixed, then we collect the faulty CoRs, and go to immigration to get them fixed....next day...excellent.. no charge. Jirawan is amazing at doing such fixes.

So... now I have the paperwork. we go get medical certs, which is nothing more than a rubber stamp of health if you can actually walk into the doctors office with a heartbeat...... 800baht. and I need 2, 1 for bike, 1 for car.

Next step, according to the DLT website you can no longer walk in and wait....so you have to register with the DLT smart que app......its not smart... in fact, its the opposite of smart... but after struggling with it for hours, if finally let me get to the point of booking a day.....in October, 3 months away... my certs only have 30 day lifespans.

arrh... I again start stressing and getting wound up when Jirawan says just turn up.. I can't, I snap, they say I have to book.... 
But Jirawan calls them up... talks to someone, who tells us to get down to the DLT now, they will check our docs and give us a quicker date..

We rush down, to get there before closing...and indeed they check our docs, and give us a date.... tomorrow.

wow.

Now tomorrow is today and off we went at 9-30, was seen almost immediatly, docs, checked, some very very simple eye and co-ordination tests taken. And wait for 30 mins... 
Number called, pay 310 baht, go to queue for photo...

10 mins later I walk out with 2 shiny license.

Yes there is a lot of beaurocracy in Thailand, so much paperwork and steps to be taken, but the simple fact is, if you have a brillian Thai wife... its all sabai sabai.

Ahthankyew