Eff1n2ret

Up-to -date guidance for England (since Feb 11): "If you do qualify as fully vaccinated for travel to England, you do not need to take a test before travel." What individual airlines require is up to them. I haven't heard of any test that is required to enter Bangkok airport to check in.

Have you any evidence? If it was a Thai who cut you up would you have bothered posting? You're obviously having a busy day at work.

I've just tried "Find my NHS Number" on the NHS website. They want name, dob and postcode. I put in the postcode that I left 12 years ago - result, "We cannot find your NHS number". They say I should ask my GP, but I guess it is the GP who deleted my record about 5 years ago through lack of contact. It's no big deal for me, but it looks as though if you have been out of the UK a long time you become a non-person. And I understand full well that there's no basis for a tax rebate at present, but if they do start dishing out rebates to those who go private then those of us who still pay UK tax should start agitating for the same.

I think that sums up the reality. I know that when I was back in the summer of 2015 I was still on NHS records from my old address 6 years previously. However, I tried searching for myself on the NHS app last year and it was "no record found". I have no record of my National Health number (as opposed to NI number), so am now a non-person as far as the NHS is concerned. But my original point remains:- Leaving aside all the years I paid in before I left England, I'm still paying my full whack of income tax, and if there is any relief on offer to those who go private in the UK, I should get the same benefit as well.

That is the case, for in-patient hospital treatment at least, although GP and A&E treatment are free to all. Since April 2015, even if you're just back in the UK for a visit and happen to fall so ill that you need hospital treatment you will be charged cost + 50%. There are plenty who will tell you that all you have to do is flash your British passport and "they can't prove" that you aren't resident, but I guess that depends how diligent they are in making checks. Apart from that, the notion that you can just swan off back to Blighty if you have a medical problem is just nonsense. If you get off a plane and rock up to A&E they may patch you up but will tell you that for further treatment you must go and see your GP who will refer you for consultation (happened to a friend of mine). In practice, unless you are prepared effectively to resume residence in the UK and stay there for as long as it takes to arrive at the top of a very long waiting list, you are better off getting treated in Thailand. If you are very ill you probably won't be getting on a plane anyway. I have made adequate provision for my healthcare here, and can't envisage circumstances where I would want to go back and submit myself to the NHS.

The NHS is a bottomless pit that is no longer fit for purpose, but it's political suicide for any politician to try and do anything to reform it, because the NHS is the nearest thing to a religion that now exists in the UK. It wouldn't be any better if private medicine didn't exist, and I wouldn't blame anyone now faced with a 1-year wait for, say, a knee or hip operation, for going private if they could afford it. The biggest single success of the Covid episode was the vaccine procurement programme, which was taken out of the dead hands of the NHS.

As were the Brits, although we were providing proof of income. The Embassy took the opportunity provided by the American decision to withdraw the service on the rather legalistic grounds that the evidence we were supplying couldn't be verified - in other words, we were all liars.

UK news in the last few days has featured many items about the huge increase in waiting lists for NHS treatment, and the suggestion that crops up from time to time is once again being floated, that those who relieve pressure on waiting lists by paying for private treatment should be given a tax rebate. If that ever became policy, would it not be fair that expats who still pay UK income tax should also be entitled to the same rebate? In 12 years in Thailand I've been treated in hospital 3 times all paid for personally, and I spend at least 1000 Baht a month on medication, so I've saved the NHS a considerable amount whilst getting no benefit from it. Straws in the wind, I know, might never happen, but if there is a policy change all of us expat taxpayers should not be slow to write to our MPs or pressure groups to ask for equal treatment. It would be some compensation for our "frozen" pensions.

Booster was Pfizer. !st & 2nd doses AZ, 2nd August and 30th October. Last year I applied to wherever I could, (turned away by local govt. hospital), and accepted the first offer I got, which was from the Medpark Hospital in Bangkok under the expatvac scheme. I subsequently got another offer from British Chamber of Commerce Thailand, which I declined, but they must have kept my details because I got an email last week offering vaccinations at Bangrak, filled in the form and was quickly offered the appointment today. Superbly efficient, checked in at 09.10, left at 10.00hrs, including the 1/2 hour rest period. Kudos to BCCT, who took the trouble to organise what the British Embassy failed to do.

I don't know for sure, but having been for a booster today at the Bangrak Centre (government-run), my impression is that both passport number and the 600000.... Thai i/d number are required for it to be recognised by Mor Prom. The booster showed up on the app soon after I'd been stabbed. My first two jabs were at a private hospital, albeit under the expatvac scheme, if your private hospital for the Moderna did not participate in the expatvac, maybe they're not linked to MorProm, with whom you might have to take it up direct.

I can't remember what I put on the form, but bearing in mind that data are being transferred from your old to your new passport, my answer to those questions would be - the date of the last entry and - O Retirement. Thai Immigration will fill a couple of pages of your new passport, starting with the number, nationality, issue and expiry dates of your old passport, then stamps re-creating the origins of whatever extension/visa you have now (in my case it was a conversion from 'B' to 'O') then a stamp recreating your last entry to Thailand, then a repeat of the last extension you were given.

I had a booster vaccination this morning at the Bangrak Vaccination Centre in Bangkok. They issued an A5 printout showing all 3 vaccinations, and the updated data were on the Mor Prom app when I checked it on the way home.

Good question. I never have. The only documents I have ever received from the DWP were the original notification 12+ years ago itemising the make-up of my pension and another letter in April 2020 withdrawing the "Adult Dependency Allowance" (payment for my wife as a dependant). The 13 4-weekly payments are constant and easily verified from my bank statement. HMRC assesses my income tax every year on the basis of the annual OAP increase, I have to notify them that there ain't no increase and they adjust the tax code without a quibble.

OP, if you take seriously the opinions of the sort of expats who hang around outside mom and pop stores you will go mad trying to make sense of the world.

I'm not sure what you mean about "post cancel" the non-B. I can't remember exactly but I think Immigration require a bit of paper from the Employment Office enabling them to cancel the B extension. And the fact is that cancellation of the work permit cancels your permission to stay, so you are immediately an overstayer, but if you apply promptly for an O extension you will get it at the cost of 1k or 2k baht in fines for the overstay.

I've no idea what's happening on the Strip. The restaurants we go to will serve alcohol, at least to their regular customers. I don't know whether or not they are doing so within current restrictions, can't say I much care. There was a crackdown a month ago (see attachment) but it didn't seem to last long.

In my experience it was not possible. I cancelled WP at Chonburi and broke a lot of speed limits to get to Rayong Imm on the same day to change from 'B' extension to 'O' Retirement. 'No can do' said the man, 'you have to get the extension cancelled at Jomtien, where it was issued'. I went to Jomtien the next day, they said I'd have to pay 1 day overstay when I went to Rayong. At Rayong they managed to calculate the overstay as 2 days, fine and circumstances all entered manually into an exercise book which I was obliged to sign. But they made no fuss about giving me an extension.

I had an email last week from a former Immigration Service colleague who mentioned this about his return from a skiing holiday in Europe:- "On our return, I had a very pleasant conversation with a young female IO at Gatwick North who told me a bit about how the computer system linked all the required Covid information to your passport number, thus saving them from asking for additional paperwork or QR codes - the Home Office seems to have moved into the 21st century at last!"

I posted about renewal n Rayong in this thread:-

I understand that online applications go through quite quickly, but those are only for renewing passports, not first-time applicants. I didn't know they are so keen to get the Biometric Card back - "Welcome new British Citizen, here's £1000 fine." If only we could apply online from Thailand....

You are in a "Catch-22" until your wife receives her British passport, because once she is a British Citizen she has "Right of Abode" in the UK, and does not require Leave to Enter from an Immigration Officer. Presumably that it why they have taken her Biometric Residence Card off her. She would be entitled to arrive at the UK Border and demand entry as a British Citizen by presenting evidence of her identity and her naturalisation certificate. However, few if any airlines would take the risk of allowing her to board. So she can only wait until she has received her British passport. In normal times that wouldn't take long, but the Passport Agency has hit on the jolly wheeze adopted by most of the Civil Service of pretending to "work from home", so applicants for such as passports and driving licences have been subjected to massive inconvenience. You have my sympathies.

But it's ok for you to post it off to an agent and be without it for a couple of months or more.

The whole system is f...ing stupid. If the Civil Service wasn't so anal-retentive and still living in the middle of the 20th Century they'd offer the choice of applying online and sending in our passport, as you can in the UK. But then, we expats are second-class citizens.

It was pretty much the same procedure in Rayong, except that I went to make the appointment in person. Letter from Immigration satisfied the address requirement.

I've just had an email from BCCT offering registration for a booster jab, filled in the form and received an acknowledgement. Don't know when the vaccination will be, but I'm content to wait, it's only 4 months since my second dose.