OJAS

But the 12-month statement is definitely a new requirement as far as Rayong Immigration are concerned. I was not asked for one this time last year.

I mean copies of pages from your passbook which you sign and date yourself, just as you do copies of passport pages.

Retirement - did you extend on the basis of 800k in the bank or 65k monthly income? Your reference to a deposit account would appear to point to the former, but grateful if you could clarify for the avoidance of any doubt.

Yep, as crystal clear as mud, actually. Unfortunately crystal balls which might enable us to make sense of what you're banging on about don't appear to be on offer at Lazada!

They now require 12-month bank statements as well as certified passbook copies, as I found out yesterday when seeking my latest retirement extension there. Presumably this new requirement also applies to those seeking marriage extensions on the basis of 400k in the bank. This will prove a particular PITA for those who stash the requisite funds in a Bangkok Bank account since their branches are unable to produce 12-month statements on the spot but instead require up to a week's notice to obtain these from Head Office in Bangkok. Thankfully my 800k account is with Krungsri whose Maptaput branch were able to provide me with a suitable statement over the counter.

I would have thought it highly unlikely that there are many - if any - Brits who are living in Thailand solely on the basis of their (frozen) State Pension income! For example my current monthly State Pension income (as calculated on the basis of the payments I receive every 4 weeks multiplied by 13 and then divided by 12) comes nowhere near the monthly income minima of 65,000 THB and 40,000 THB required for annual retirement and marriage extensions respectively. That said, though, I quite agree with you that there must be better ways of proving that we are still in the land of the living for State Pension purposes than the cumbersome bureaucracy which the DWP insist on inflicting on us every couple of years or so. Unfortunately I fear that we are probably stuck with their current procedures until such time as it dawns on them that we are now nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st - rather than the 19th - Century.

And while they were about it change the name from SCB Easy to SCB Difficult.

So were you aware that MS will be pulling the plug on Win 10 support from Oct 2025 then, eh, Mr Clever Clogs?

Not to mention that, as I have already said, Microsoft will be pulling the plug on supporting Windows 10 from 14 October 2025. That said, though, the OP appears to have been more than happy to continue with Windows 7 for 3.5 years after Microsoft finally pulled the plug on supporting it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#:~:text=Mainstream support for Windows 7,ended on January 14%2C 2020.

IMHO one good reason for the OP to go the whole way now and install Windows 11 is that Microsoft will be pulling the plug on supporting Windows 10 on 14 October 2015:- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-home-and-pro

So what do you then do when your home country bank tells you that they are closing your account with them, as has happened to quite a few on here?

In the meantime a bed will continue to be made up for him in the Bangkok Hilton.

Matches my brother-in-law's recent experience. Vietnam is from where FB accounts are hacked these days, it would seem! He decided to give his FB account the heave-ho as a result. Personally speaking if I were in your shoes, I would be extremely wary of recovering a social media account with obvious security flaws which Meta seem unable/unwilling to fix, in case of a further hacking event.

It would probably also be prudent to ensure that you aren't wearing the same colour shirt as you wore when the previous year's mugshots were taken. I distinctly recall a report on here in the dim and distant past from someone who came a cropper on this at the hands of an eagle-eyed immigration officer!

Really no big deal, I think - certainly not when compared to all those bloody bureaucratic hoops we Brits here in LOS are forced to jump through at passport renewal time, thanks to those masters of bungling incompetence and ineptitude known as HMPO!

But what your helpful contact conveniently omits to mention is that your call will, in all probability, not similarly be answered immediately, and that you will first have to endure the entire suite of Beethoven symphonies from start to finish (or irritating muzak of similar duration) before being able to speak with a real live human being! What I personally find far more irritating than the cost of making such calls is the ages you're forced to spend twiddling your thumbs and unable to do SFA else as part of the whole process. But DWP are by no means the sole culpable party in that regard, of course.

If that, indeed, were the case, she would by no means have been the first politician making such utterances until they had had their ear bent by the incumbent DWP Sir Humphrey!

Plenty of detailed info in this article about northern (and north-eastern) provinces. But not a dickey-bird about southern ones. And what about those in between north and south?

Or going to extreme lengths to ensure that links to their website aren't posted on Asean Now in violation of Forum rules!

Well I thought from the title that this thread would be all about flogging retirement visas on Amazon, Etsy (never heard of them) and Ebay. Most disappointed that it isn't as I'm sure that there must be a market for such visas from retirees who can't afford the minimum financial requirements!????

And below is a link to the official Immigration Bureau guidance:- https://www.immigration.go.th/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/9.FOR-RETIREMENT-PURPOSES-50-YEARS-OLD-NON-O.pdf Not that it's slavishly followed to the letter by each and every immigration office in practice, of course. In particular in the context of this thread, Jomtien appear to have seen fit to impose an unofficial rogue 60-day seasoning requirement on applicants using the 800k method, as noted by the PCEC.

Not to mention that the whole Life Cert process is wide open to abuse anyway, it seems to me. What's to stop a State Pensioner in Thailand upon receiving this form to, say, get a family member to impersonate a completely fictitious Thai individual purporting to work in an acceptable occupation at a completely fictitious Thai address for witnessing purposes? I somehow doubt whether DWP are sufficiently resourced to undertake the necessary in-depth checks of the credentials of each and every Life Cert witnesser. In any event, it strikes me that said State Pensioner is doing nothing wrong as he is still in the land of the living and, hence, still entitled to receive the State Pension. Would be a different matter, though, of course, if he had popped his clogs before the new Life Cert had been received. DWP are IMHO so hung up on security that it appears to act as a blindfold in devising methods to prove that we are still in the land of the living for State Pension purposes, which more appropriately reflect the fact that we are nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st - not 19th - Century! Would you believe it, they apparently destroy all emails after 3 months for security purposes, so they told me recently!!

When a new Life Cert is on its way to us from DWP, it would appear to need to go through 4 customs checks, which could well add to the delay in its receipt:- (1) UK outbound (2) Netherlands receipt (3) Netherlands outbound (4) Thailand receipt

Have you tried tracking it on the Royal Mail tracker? In my experience that provides much more detail on current whereabouts in the UK than its Thailand Post counterpart.

Could equally be the fault of the UK and/or Thai Customs services, through whom all incoming and outgoing international mail is routed, I gather.