Void

Now I will tell the story of how I received a "VOID" stamp in my passport.

It was November 5, 2012 or 2555 in the Thai calendar. It was hot enough day, over 30 at least, with the sun shinning down on the pollution filled city of Bangkok. It was also the day that I had to get my visa renewed. And it was of course a good day because I didn't have to go to school.
What I find interesting is that even though one might have a year long visa, it still needs to be renewed every 90 days. It's also incredibly hard to immigrate here. One of the foreign teachers at my school has lived in Thailand for 12 years and is married to a Thai women but he still has to renew his visa every 90 days and is denied Thai citizenship.
So off to the Bangkok immigration office we went! My host family said that I only needed to bring my passport with me, they had everything else planned out already. As it turns out I only needed my passport, a picture of myself and a form from my school confirming that I attended there.
We arrived at a huge, and I mean HUGE building in the middle of nowhere with a gigantic picture of the King on the side when my host dad told me that we were here. Now in my head I was picturing that the immigration office would look like the DMV. Boy, was I wrong.
My first impression of the building was that it was filled with long, boring white hallways with florescent lights, and then I walked further into the building. About 30 feet inside the building opens up and you fill like you walked into a spaceship just like in the movies! It was incredibly expansive  The white walls turned into windows that all had captions and titles underneath, the floor turned into a window to see below into the food court  and all of a sudden I really did feel like an alien.
We were a little early, it was lunch time so the office we would reopen at one. The problem with that is that there were so many people there! I asked my host dad is we should get in line and he responding with:
"Oh, no, I have a friend."
And that's all I needed to hear.
So one o'clock came around and the doors opened, farangs fleeing inside to be the first one to renew their visa.
We casually walked in after them.
A lady in a government uniform, much like the ones my teachers have to wear every Wednesday, greeted us and asked me to fill out the top half of a form. It might be hard to immigrate into Thailand but it just might be too easy to get a visa- although I'm probably biased coming from the US. I was filling it out at her desk when she all of a sudden handed a hot pink camera to a coworker and started taking pictures of me (and her posing beside me) filling out an immigration form! This raised a few questions in my head.
1. Isn't there a no camera sign right outside the door?
2. Should I be excited about renewing my visa?
3. Don't you work with foreigners everyday?

But that's besides the point, so I finish the form and hand her my passport. She disappears for ten minutes and tells me I can wait out in the main room where all the other farang are. So I go out and sit next to a man who is holding a red passport (I couldn't see the front of it to read the country) who looks like he's in his 20's or 30's. We start a conversation. ( I can't remember all of what he said but I do remember some).
Me: So, where are you from?
Man: Mexico.
Me: Oh that's neat, my dad's from Mexico.
Man: Really? Where?
Me: Torreon.
We continue on to more small talk.
Me: So what brings you to Thailand?
Man: I'm a PhD student here.
Me: What do you study?
Man: I'm studying Thai culture.
Me: Oh wow, that must be fun.
Man: Yeah, I'm researching the underground rock scene in Bangkok.
You meet really cool people at immigration, trust me.

I was called back into the Pink Camera Lady's office and she handed me back me passport along with my photo, paperwork and receipt  I was a little confused as to why I got all my paperwork back but didn't think much of it until I looked in my passport and there was stamp from the Thai immigration office but it also had a huge red VOID stamp slapped across it.
I quickly asked my host dad why I had the mark of death in my passport and he said that we went to the wrong immigration office. See we went to Bangkok Immigration office when we don't live in Bangkok. We live in Nonthaburi. Nonthaburi is right outside of Bangkok but all the public transportation that's in Bangkok runs through Nonthatburi. It's like West Seattle and Seattle.
And so we went off to another immigration office, this one had a parking lot of dry brown dirt that reminding me of fair grounds. It was smaller than my house back home, used a number system like the DMV, and I was the only white person in the joint. It wasn't a spaceship but I got my visa in less that 20 minutes.

Book: Page 18 in Adventure of State
Thai:station........................................suh-tawn-nee