IT seems that no matter where you go, you can always depend on your own helping you out of a tight spot.
This was the case as two Tralee natives came to the rescue of three young Irish students in Thailand earlier this week, when they helped to pay off the last of a fine that the students had unwittingly incurred for overstaying their visa.
Now their story has gone national with RTE, Her.ie and many other media outlets telling of their act of kindness.
John O’Brien, Mounthawk and Julianne Ni Laoire, from Ballyroe, were sitting in the Surat Thani airport in Thailand when they got talking to three students from UCC who had been on holidays in Thailand.
They had unknowingly overstayed their visas after what had originally been a 30 day visa was shortened to a 15 day visa without the girls knowing.
On attempting to leave the country, they UCC students were given a fine of 10,500 baht, which equates to about €300. They were however unable to pay this fine and were faced with the prospect of being brought to the local police station and prosecuted.
Having hurriedly contacted their parents, they managed to pull together the majority of the cost of the fine, but still found themselves €12 short of the total, which was then kindly contributed by the Tralee couple.
“Basically what happened was myself and John, having just graduated from UCC, we were just travelling around for about three and a half weeks and we were in the airport getting our flight to Bangkok. We saw these these three girls running around the place, and they looked a bit distressed,” said Julianne speaking to TraleeToday.ie earlier today.
“We heard one of the girls shout ‘Maeve’ and so we knew they were Irish. One of the girls sat down next to me and I asked was she okay, and then she started crying. She explained the story with the visas. One of them came over to us again later and said ‘I’m so sorry to ask you, is there any way that we can ask you for 400 bhat’ which is about €10,” Julianne continued.
“We gave her 500 bhat and we told her to just run and get her flight after this and that was the end of that really,”.
The three students then posted online about the simple kindness of the couple and it has exploded from there, with an online search taking place to find out the identity of John and Julianne.
“It’s [the reaction] has just gotten so big,” Julianne laughed when asked about the reaction that the story has been getting on national media.
“We were actually pulling into the train station in Tralee and we saw the article on Her.ie and they were talking about the fact that they could have gone to jail. We didn’t know this at the time that there was the possibility that they could have gone to jail,” she continued.
“The girls didn’t go out to make such a big story out of this. They put up a Facebook post about it and Her.ie took it and then it blew up from there really. It’s a good news story for once you know. It’s not about the visas or anything, it’s just about other Irish people helping out others in the end.”