NanLaew

Yes, NOW there are several. I was talking about the good old days when I was the only know-it-all on ThaiVisa!

I know that feeling. Having kept ahead of my UK passport renewals in different countries over +40 years globe-trotting, I got busy these past 6 months and all of a sudden both my passports are due to expire in Oct and Nov 2025. No problem, I says, I'll do it on my next break. However, I have already fallen foul of the EU's rules on maximum 10-year passport validity. Both of my passports were among those that the former HMPO gave you 9-months credit for renewing early. So as far as immigration at Schiphol was concerned, and despite the printed expiration date, they "expired" last month and were illegal for EU entry. Oops!

Did you read the OP? (rhetorical) Yup, a wee bit arcane, but that's no unexpected or surprising to anyone who has actually had to deal with Thai government paperwork. It is certainly not the disaster that the click-baitey OP suggests? It hasn't even started, and the usual suspects are bashing away at Thailand already? (you know who you are) You must really hate yourselves a lot to project all this negativity and doom on the country you have chosen to pitch your tent in.

Not quite. You were always allowed to provide a nominee for the collection process after the new passport had arrived back at VFS. However, applying was initially an "applicant only" option until Key Visa were officially allowed to handle the entire process. I understand that there's only one other officially approved full-service that is only contactable via the Facebook platform. It's called "xxxx" sending machine (I forget the guy's name, hence the xxxx).

No less than 9 months before expiration? Since most nation's visa requirement, and the demand of airlines, is for minimum 6 months validity on your passport or travel document, allowing an additional 3 months for cock-ups like the OP has experienced would be my minimum. However, I reckon @DrJack54's 12 months recommendation should be bullet proof.

When you say VFS "send everything", does that mean your expiring passports as well, and not just all-page photocopies? My recollection from when I renewed both my UK passports via VFS twice since they took over the process from the Embassy, the reason we were allowed to keep our expiring passport is because it's illegal for a foreigner to be in Thailand without their original passport in their possession. Keeping a photo copy or scan doesn't legally count. This thread appears to highlight varying, recent experiences. I'm renewing both mine at the Durham passport office in a couple of weeks from now, before returning to Thailand. I am expecting a minor kerfuffle at immigration on arrival as they'll need a supervisor to add my new passport to my decades-long history on the "front desk" computer.

The law is an ass. So is Donald. Doesn't matter if the judge was a raving, lefty, card-carrying Democrat, the law said the thug shouldn't have been sent home. That sounds like a most equable solution to me.

You mean needlessly upset.

And don't forget that the Chinese can do it all with their super-soft, low-grade steel too!!!

For about 15 years, our moobahn power stability was abysmal, especially in the evenings around March and April when everyone was turning on their air-conditioning. Every summer, the transformer behind the local 7-eleven would spectacularly blow up, leaving half the homes in hot darkness for several hours. They would replace the transformer with one of the same size that would last about a year if we were lucky. Then I noticed them building a sub-station on the other side of the ring-road near our house that appeared to feed the new, tall power poles that were spreading towards the east, beyond our home. However, after it was finished several months with no improvement on our power, I assumed it was to feed newer urban sprawl out east. I was on the point of buying a voltage stabilizer even borrowed my mate's hydraulic crimping tool, but the day before I was going to go to Global House to buy it and the cable and lugs, I noticed loads of orange power company trucks in the area, and workers with their long-handled, isolated switch actuators hovering around the newly installed power poles. Around 5 pm, fai-dahp which lasted almost an hour before BAM!...240 Volts of rock steady AC power came on. That was the first evening where we didn't have clattering fridges, slow fans, warm air con and dim lights. Three days later, the trucks and switch guys were out, and there was a brief outage that was explained as completing the "load balancing" needed on the brand new power supply. Since then, maybe three years now, we've never had low voltage or no voltage. The OP should wait...or at least stop whining about it here.

Got that right regards understanding. Pity about the comprehension though.

Off topic moaning. Start your own thread about how you finally woke up, realised your high-end villa development in Hin Lek Fai was a total rip-off and you moved (back home).

What's "Cassation"?

https://bangkok.immigration.go.th/en/home_en/# https://www.immigration.go.th/#service Failing that, @James65 can ask at his local immigration office. Or maybe the person that ties his shoelaces for him in the morning?

So did Stevie Wonder. Charlie Pride was also adored by all colors but of course he could see. Where are we going with this?

Oh, for the love of all that you hold dear to you, not this bloody steal nonsense again?! Serious observers of what? Conspiracy theorist rabbit holes?

More incredible is the uneasy Ukrainian stasis, fomented under the Obama administration, that was largely ignored by Trump 1. He only got a wild hair up his arse about anything Ukrainian right at the end of his term in 2019, when he was seeking dirt on the Bidens, who ultimately "stole" his re-election. Putin has never been 'scared' by Trump, not then and not now and not ever. Putin's simply giving the idiot enough rope, and guess what?... he's still doing it.

Proof?

Good grief! What sort of idiot gives an infant 6 shots of 12 different vaccines all at once? When three of my overseas travel vaccinations lapsed during Covid, as an adult, I was advised to space them out between both arms and over several days. To me, it sounds like manslaughter by a dangerous health care worker rather than dangerous vaccines.

Are you another disenfranchised Englander from Leicester then? Living your self-imposed exile in Thailand? Or have you always been bigoted?

Two cheeks of the same arse, if you ask me.

No, he's got a point. Who decided that sky burials are illegal in the United States. Clue: It wasn't Pocahontas, Tonto or Geronimo.

I don't know, I'm not a Christian.

Okay, how's this? There's no need to be afraid of something you don't understand.

How apropos.