Hi. Recently I have bought the tickets for our holiday in Sri Lanka in December using a promo action, which pressed me to do some last-minute itinerary changes. Too late I realized that due to that we will actually overstay our 30-day ETA visa by at least one day (our flight is leaving at 2:55 at night and we will of course try to pass the immigration before midnight to limit it to one day only). Please help me to clarify our options.
1. How long before the flight time will the luggage check-in counters be opened (flying Emirates) at the Colombo Int. Airport? Could we manage to check-in our luggage in some 4 hours before the flight to be able to pass the immigration on the 31st day of our stay? Does anybody tried/managed to check in so early? Naturally, we will try to speed up the process using the on-line check-in but we cannot be sure we will be able to print out our receipts.
2. What happens when leaving the country with an expired visa? I went through posts here and it looks that there should be no problem at all with a one-day overstay but there seems to be contradictory information about the 2-day overstay. Some say it is no big deal (possibly some 5-USD penalty fee per day beyond one extra day uptill 5 days overstay) but I have also found here a report of a traveller who got charged a 100-USD fee when overstaying by 2 days. Can anybody please share her/his experience in this matter?
Naturally I was considering extending our visa but the procedure seems to be very time consuming, requiring not only getting the actual extension in the Colombo's Department of Emigration and Immigration but also prior registration with the Colombo's Aliens Bureau - as both of our flights will happens over weekends, this excersize would easily eat out about a week of our stay in Sri Lanka.
Could anybody please share her/his experience. Thank you in advance.






