The story began last month (October 2019) when I heard the news that there will be a big boxing match between Anthony Joshua and Ruiz in Saudi Arabia. The organizer promoted the event in the way that everyone can attend the event if you get ticket. I was super excited and happy about the fight as well as the chance to visit Saudi Arabia (on my wish list).
My friend went there last year in December 2018 for Formula E (she got a visa directly after buying a ticket). But I heard this year the rule had changed so I checked the website https://www.visitsaudi.com/en/(the official website for making an eVisa) and found out that my country (Thailand) is not on the eVisa eligible country list.
Then I started to contact the Saudi Embassy in Bangkok, the officer said I need an invitation letter in order to apply for the visa. I tried to get back to Diriyahseason (the official sales agents) to ask about the letter but received no answer about it.
It is quite difficult to get any contacts to ask about this letter and in the end I found that the website visitsaudi.com has a ‘’contact us’’ page so I sent them my questions about visas and got an answer like this:
I was so happy with the hope that it is possible to get a visa, I bought the flight ticket and prepared all the documents that they mentioned. After I got all documents, I made a call to the Saudi Embassy in Bangkok again and they told me yes there are tourist visas but there are 6 countries including Thailand that are not eligible to apply for tourist visas. I was so shocked and sent an email to VisitSaudi admin again to ask if this is true?
Then I got the answer that the Embassy was right, I was really disappointed with the website VisitSaudi that gave me wrong information (I did mention from the first email that I hold Thai passport but they still replied to me that I can apply for a tourist visa) and made me lose money on sport event ticket, flight, hotel plus my time to prepare all supporting documents.
I have been to over 80 countries around the world, applied for many visas and this is MY WORST experience. My plan to watch the sport event is screwed and have no way to get my money back.
#Visitsaudi
