OJAS

Maybe it's because these guys have actually found an effective way of deadening the boom-boom racket emanating from those who have nothing better to do with their sad and pathetic existences than sadistically inflict their multi-megawatt sound systems turned up to full volume/bass on their neighbours??!!????

In the scenario to which you refer, you would need to submit a 90-day report 90 days after your return on 20th Feb - which, by my reckoning, is actually 20th May (20th Feb counts as Day 1 of the 90 as far as Immigration are concerned). So, if you were to exit the country every other month for work, you would never need to submit a 90-day report - or at least not until such time as you were to stay continuously in the country for 90 days.

Maybe you need a separate UK will to cover these, in addition to a Thai will as recommended by @DrJack54. If the will referred to in your OP embraces both Thailand and the UK, things could potentially get messy.

Makes me seriously wonder, though, whether the OP might be best off following in my footsteps by throwing in the towel on this whole charade - unless, of course, he needs a yellow book and pink card for the purposes of seeking permanent residency or Thai citizenship eventually.

I wouldn't have started this thread in the UK Home Country forum had I been talking about a part of the Thai government, would I?

I threw in the towel on any attempt to obtain a yellow book years ago when, after being given the dreaded "Bangkok Runaround" by my amphur (entailing a trip to the British Embassy to obtain some letter or other followed by a lot of faffing around at the MOFA while we endeavoured to provide them with a version of the certified translation of said letter which they were eventually prepared to endorse), I fell at the final fence when some eagle-eyed so-and-so back at the amphur spotted that the transliteration of my surname in the translated Embassy letter did not exactly match my wife's as stated in her ID card and blue book! But this is a decision which I have never come to regret ever since - even for my retirement extensions the increasingly dog-eared TM30 notification slip in my passport has done the trick thus far as regards proof of address! IMHO the yellow book and pink card are only of any intrinsic value to those seeking permanent residency or Thai citizenship, for which they are, I believe, prerequisites. That said, though, I might be tempted to have another crack at obtaining a yellow book and/or pink card if either were modified so as to be capable of including what I consider to be the most important piece of personal information in our case - namely the date when our current permission to stay in Thailand expires. But I'm not holding my breath for this to happen any time soon.

It's the "hanging on for ages" aspect that gets me more than the expense involved, I have to say!

So they require your latest extension of stay stamp which has been placed in your passport by a Thai immigration officer at a Thai immigration office to be translated into Thai. Absolutely speechless!!

The days of hanging on for ages at considerable expense while being "serenaded" with irritating muzak when calling HMRC may be behind us until early April at least?? https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64322140 If this trial is successful and adopted permanently, I hope that it also gets extended to other UK government organisations - in particular HMPO and DWP/IPC in our case.

I certainly obtained an FWD policy which was deemed acceptable for a Thailand Pass application I submitted last year - only for the Thailand Pass requirement to be scrapped the day before my return to Thailand following a foreign trip!

And, when conversions of visa-exempt/tourist visa entries into real genuine McCoy non-immigrant visas of the "O" variety (which have become increasingly popular in recent times for those wishing to ditch original non-OA visas in order to avoid mandatory health insurance requirements in particular) are thrown into the mix as well, the scope for unnecessary confusion as a result of the use of incorrect terminalogy is, I think, even greater nowadays!

Reverting to your previous question, I paid £128.51 for my new passport last October. However, this is of the "jumbo" variety, and a standard passport would have cost me £10 less. In addition to HMPO's fees, though, you also need to factor in other costs like (a) photos (£12.99 from a Snappy Snaps branch during a trip to the UK in my case), (b) colour copies of each and every page of your existing passport (150 THB in my case), and, most significantly, (c) 2 return trips to a rundown office building with a silly name from wherever you live (10,000 THB in my case from near Rayong).

And now things seem to be going from bad to worse as far as Royal Mail's overseas services are concerned at the present time, thanks to a cyber incident. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64231473 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64244121

Chance would be a fine thing if we were able to use the online facility for renewing our passports from Thailand in place of cumbersome antediluvian procedures based on Stone Age "hi-tech"!

Well, you certainly won't find me skipping up and down my soi in a state of unbridled ecstasy fulsomely singing the praises of HMPO to the very highest heavens as being the best thing since sliced bread in the area of fast and efficient passport renewals, at least until such time as they see fit to dispense with the ridiculous requirement for 2 physical trips (whether undertaken in person or by an agent at extra cost) to a rundown office building with an extremely silly name in Bangkok or its Chiang Mai equivalent (which may well, however, be rather more sensibly named and less rundown, for all I know)!

Well, it would appear that passports are being specifically targeted by the PCS Union for further industrial action from 1 February if this ES article is to be believed: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/civil-servant-strike-february-government-departments-full-list-pcs-b1052407.html Although HMPO are not explicitly included in the ES's list of affected government departments, they do, of course, form part of the Home Office who are specifically mentioned. If this further action materialises, therefore, the recent improvement in renewal processing times does not look like being sustained in the short-to-medium term, I fear.

In particular, how much is like being compared with like, I wonder?

Sadly, your assertion does not appear to be borne out by the INRIX scorecard referred to in the BBC news item, though - according to which 156 hours were lost to traffic delays in London last year, compared to only 67 hours in Bangkok: https://inrix.com/scorecard/

Whenever it does take place we'll no doubt know well in advance when plethoras of loud boom-boom convassing pick-ups start cruising our neigbourhoods and terrorising us with their ear-splitting racket. And then on the great day itself there will almost certainly be a zealously-enforced (for all and sundry, including expats who don't have the vote) nationwide booze ban in place from 18:00 the previous day, since we cannot possibly run the unacceptable risk of having electors hauled in by the BIB for VUI (voting under the influence), can we? ????

Bit of a mystery to me as to why the good residents of Chadlington seem to have objections to humans eating in a farmyard barn but presumably not livestock animals!????

Whether this improvement is sustained going forward during the early part of 2023 at least is, however, dependent on how things shape up on the current wave of civil servants' strikes. To the best of my knowledge HMPO staff have not, to date, been specifically targeted for industrial action - but that, of course, could all change to the detriment of passport processing times. So, if your passport is due to expire over the next 6-9 months, you would still IMHO be strongly advised to set the wheels in motion for its renewal ASAP.

I agree!

In that case the only financial avenue open to you is the 800k money-in-the-bank option referred to by @DrJack54. Absolutely no chance that you will get away with a series of consecutive 45/30-day visa-exempt border runs over a 12-month period (which is what I assume you are contemplating) before applying for a 90-day non-O conversion for retirement at your local immigration office leading in turn to annual extensions of stay.

Exactly the same can be said about people in Western countries, of course.

Provided, of course, that you are prepared to be put on hold for an eternity and "serenaded" with irritating muzak until a real live human being in the International Pensions Centre picks up your call and then bombards you with a plethora of security-related questions which you must answer correctly in order to start the process!