Just chiming in with a brief report from Koh Samui office this morning.
We arrived just before 6:00am and retrieved numbers, which were left on a table at entrance to the office. We later spoke with a British man who told us he came at 5:00am and there were no numbers out yet, but when he returned at 7:00am they were all gone.
The copy store started serving people around 7:30am. The line was very long and criss-crossed into the line of people waiting for numbers (who did not realize they would not get one, more on that in a moment). There was very little in the way of “social distancing” both in the shop and in line, so if you have any possible way to get your copies and photos done before coming I highly recommend doing so.
At 8:30am the staff from the office emerged and tried to direct people with numbers to approach, however they lacked megaphones or microphones/speakers and were unable to be heard by the majority (easily 200-300 at this point, I’d think). They tried to explain that there were only 100 numbers for the morning and that if you didn’t have a number to come back after 1:00pm, but many people either couldn’t hear or didn’t listen and tried to push their way in anyway (see video). EDIT: Another poster said they actually had 200 numbers at the start, and they told people from numbers 101-200 to come back after lunch. I was standing about 15 feet from the immigration worker who was yelling this information out to the crowd and didn’t catch that detail, so perhaps that gives you an idea of how loud/chaotic it was.
After about 30 minutes there was a bit less confusion, however those with numbers that were permitted into the actual lobby were not seen in the order they lined up in. Some clarification about the fact that the lobby is a “waiting area” and not an ordered queue would have been very helpful, but again, there were too many people for anyone to communicate this properly and a number of arguments broke out by people who felt that others were cutting in front of them.
Immigration staff tried to intercept people before they reached document check to make sure they had what they needed. There were no forms available before 8:30am (not even from the copy shop — they said to get them outside) so many people were trying to fill them in on the fly as they came in. Again, if you can do this before you get there, I highly recommend you do so.
After document check things go very smoothly upstairs and you can probably be in and out in less than 30-45 minutes. Regular extensions get their passport back immediately, covid extensions have to come back later (given a ticket). Not sure about other types of visas and extensions.
In summary, I would say that if you are planning to make the trip to the Koh Samui office anytime soon, make sure to do the following:
1. Get all of your paperwork in order the day before
2. The day of, arrive between 5:30am-6:30am to get one of the first 100 numbers
3. Come back at 8:30 and avoid the initial crush, wait for your number to be called
4. Don’t get mad at people who appear to be “cutting” in front of you, the lobby area is not an ordered queue — they will call numbers again from document check stations
5. Once you’re upstairs you are good :)
I will say that much of what went wrong this morning could be EASILY avoided with visible signage explaining the number system, separate queues for different types of visas/extensions, and megaphones for the staff to actually direct people. It almost felt like they were intentionally encouraging chaos by not taking relatively simple steps to reduce confusion. Maybe there will be improvements soon.
