The eleventh hour

Two weeks from now, God willing, we will be in Reykjavik. Stopper that volcano for just a fortnight, will you please, senior deity? 

And ensure a few other things as well, please, while you're at it?

I guess two weeks isn't exactly the eleventh hour. But today we had to get serious about our tourist visas for Thailand.

A visa is required if one remains in Thailand longer than 30 days, as is an accounting of one's comings and goings, as well as every time one has been in Thailand before. (Why should that matter?)  We will be there precisely 31 days and will enter the kingdom twice, so Bill feared that, even if the Thai government let this go, the airlines might not, and we would be stuck forever in Singapore en route home. Although this might be fun, it really wouldn't do.

Turns out the nearest Thai consulate, in Miami, is closed for the entire month of September--rather like some Thai restaurants we know.  So, we have had to resort to a special Visa Express expediting service, whose website contains a great deal of text reading "Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s."

Being an editor and understanding the half-assed nature of "Lorem Ipsum," all this made me a bit nervous.

Nevertheless, Visa Express was recommended by the Thai consulate and happily accepted our payment of over $300 for their service.

No worries.

We discovered that we also had to have two additional passport photos taken apiece, to send off with our applications. Off we went to AAA headquarters, where this can be done relatively efficiently.  Still, I was by now so grumpy that I didn't bother to put on makeup and was perversely pleased to see that my photo looked like holy hell. The Thai government and the airlines will know how I feel about this, goddammit!

Now, the kicker. We are required to send off our passports with our photos, applications, and bank statement proving that we really have the money to pay for all this. 

Will our travel insurance cover not getting our passports back in time, and the bank account being drained?

Should I call in a consumer advocate?

Serenity now ...