Thai visa issue
I am extremely thankful to His Excellency, the Ambassador of Thailand to Bangladesh, for kindly responding to my letter on "Thai visa issue" published in DS on 26 September 2008 through his letter on 6 October 2008.
First, I apologise to His Excellency, The Ambassador of Thailand in Bangladesh if I have hurt his feelings by mentioning in my letter that an Asian nation should be sympathetic and considerate to another Asian nation. In this connection, I would like to mention that on 17 September 2008 I visited the VFS Thailand Visa Application Centre to submit a tourist visa application for myself but an employee of VFS sitting in the ground floor of that building told me that I could not submit my visa application without prior appointment over telephone and he also showed me a list of visa seekers who had made prior appointment for submitting visa application on that date and that employee also gave a small paper to all visa seekers along with me who didn't know about the system of submitting visa application with prior appointment over telephone.
In that small paper it was clearly written "Please book appointments over phone before coming for submission of application to IVLAC" with the phone numbers 8850636 and 8811071 and one email address as well as one web address of IVLAC. I have sent one copy of that paper to the Royal Thai Embassy in Dhaka.
I fully agree with His Excellency that there is very good relation and understanding existing between the governments and peoples of Thailand and Bangladesh.
Bangladeshi people are innocent, peace loving, friendly and religious like the people of Thailand and they visit Thailand for holidaying, shopping, business and medical treatment,since Bangkok is less than two hours by air from Dhaka. They are also a friend of Bangladesh, so my view was why Bangladeshi citizens should not have the option of buying an air ticket and fly to Thailand without applying for visa in advance as citizens of many countries can?
I understand that the government of any country has got every right to impose a system of advance visa for the citizens of any country of the world and at the same time I hope His Excellency will agree with my suggestion that any citizen of Bangladesh who has visited Thailand once with visa in advance and returned to Bangladesh without overstaying in Thailand for any valid reason and did not engage him/herself in anything illegal, then that Bangladeshi should be allowed to visit Thailand without visa in advance for the second, third, fourth time and so on.
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