OJAS

Does this mean that you are planning to seek a 90-day non-O conversion at an immigration office, followed, in due course, by an annual extension of stay for retirement? There is no such thing as a "15-month non-O visa" apart from multi-entry non-O's for marriage issued by the Savannakhet Consulate! Hence my confused reaction to your original post!!

The Immigration Bureau's stance will remain unchanged regardless - i.e. no new extension of stay beyond the validity period of your current passport. Is it really the case that you only initiated its renewal 16 weeks before your existing permission to stay is due to expire? It appears from the GOV.UK website that appointments can now, once again, be booked in connection with the 1-week Fast Track Service in the UK:- https://www.gov.uk/get-a-passport-urgently/1-week-fast-track-service

Yep, starting with bans on the sale and wearing of replica Chelsea FC shirts in Thailand! ????

Looks to me like we may actually be here talking about a "special service" provided by the agent to relieve you of 18,000 THB! ????

Suggest that you check via the following link how much it will cost to transfer the equivalent of 800,000 THB with Wise (using the low cost transfer method): https://wise.com/ Transferring £19,000 (which presently converts to just over 800,000 THB net) would result in a deduction of £104.80 for charges. So if you are planning to make a single transfer in one go and costs are your major concern, I think that SWIFT would prove cheaper for such a large amount - even though the big unknown is, as you say, how much Lloyds' partner bank in Thailand would charge for a SWIFT transfer in addition to Lloyds themselves and Bangkok Bank (at their GBP TT Buying Rate).

Believe you me, getting new paper mugshots for annual extension applications each year is in my experience a doddle when compared to the "demeaning nightmare" facing us Brits here in Thailand at passport renewal time in having to obtain new paper mugshots which must comply in each and every respect with an assortment of over-fussy requirements!

And is it also the case that, whereas foreign men married to Thai women are given 30-day "under consideration" stamps and required to report back to Immigration in due course for their passports to be stamped for the remaining 11 months, foreign women married to Thai men, on the other hand, have their passports cheerfully stamped for the full year from the get-go?

The OP may need to submit his first 90-day report at Jomtien in person with completed forms TM30 and TM47. @orientfan - that said, have you already provided Jomtien with a completed TM30 form?

Might be hard for the OP to find rooms for rent in Brighton at these prices if the following link is anything to go by:- https://www.roomsforlet.co.uk/search/results/?area=36994

No need to wait that long, I think. There will probably be another bash when the kid turns 6 months!

Mueang District actually covers a pretty large area between Ban Phe to the east and Maptaput to the west. Clearly it was too much trouble for those journalistic "geniuses" at Pattaya News to provide more precise location details.

Preferably should be done by the time of your next 90-day report if that is sooner IMHO. You might well get away with using your previous and now cancelled passport if submitting a report online or by snail mail - but, if you need to report in person for whatever reason, your local office will probably insist on the stamps transfer process taking place at the same time.

Might they also, for good measure, require a 12-month bank statement to be obtained on the date of your retirement extension application and include a nominal transaction of, say, 100 THB performed on this date? If so, this requirement would be impossible to comply with in practice where the 800k balance is held in a Bangkok Bank account, in view of their inability to provide 12-month statements on the spot!

IMHO the OP needs to start making monthly 65k transfers at the earliest opportunity after his latest extension has been granted with the aim of ensuring that 12 such transfers are in place by the time of his 2023 extension application. That would be better safe than sorry, I think!

Even a valid re-entry permit is no guarantee of a smooth passage in boarding a return flight to Thailand after a trip to foreign parts in my experience. A few years ago I had a devil of a job in persuading a check-in assistant at LGW after a trip to the UK that my re-entry permit was good to go. In particular she was obsessed with the fact that my original non-OA visa had long expired! Thankfully she eventually relented and allowed me to proceed to the boarding gate. Should the OP have the misfortune to encounter a similar experience for his eventual return flight with a check-in assistant who proved rather more obstinate, my advice to him would be to summon their supervisor - who will, hopefully, be rather more clued-up on the vagaries of Thai immigration processes!

The problem I have with marriage extensions is with the over-fussy requirements which certain immigration offices (mine included) appear to take delight in springing unannounced on extension of stay applicants as regards the acceptability of photos (on the basis of criteria which can change from year to year at the whim of the particular officer dealing with your latest application), plus the need for (a) 3 witnesses to accompany you and your wife to the immigration office and (b) home visits - not just for the initial application in either instance but every year! I strongly suspect that these were the main points which @DrJack54 was driving at. I can only assume that your local immigration office is not one of those which inflicts all this cumbersomely bureaucratic nonsense on marriage extension applicants each year!

The "income from abroad" method is still available to Aussie, American and Brit retirees (even though their home country embassies no longer provide income confirmation services) through regular monthly transfers equalling at least 65,000 THB from home country into Thai bank accounts in their name. Just because your local immigration office might accept 45 days does not necessarily mean that most other offices will accept any longer than 30 days!

No immediate end in sight to this bloody shambles, it would appear.... https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-62378144

Agree with you about English and Spanish - in the latter instance on the grounds that Spain has consistently been the most popular tourist destination for Brits over recent years if the following link is to be believed:- https://www.finder.com/uk/outbound-tourism-statistics Not to mention British tourism to Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas - although this does not, admittedly, appear to be significant, with only a specific mention of Mexico. Disagree with you about Chinese, though - British tourism to the People's Republic & Taiwan appears to be insignificant, with only Hong Kong worthy of a specific mention.

In that case the IO's at your local immigration office would probably show more than a passing interest as to why no TM30 form had been filed with them when/if you ever needed to do business with them.

Easier said than done if you're aged 75+ and hence uninsurable!

Believe that Chiang Mai and Phuket do.

Even though, as already been said, this won't be an issue for you when entering Thailand, it might nevertheless be a good idea IMHO to hang on to the latest paper or pdf records of vaccinations prior to the latest 2 for posterity - just in case you receive unexpected requests for this information from other sources!

Don't get the impression that he was complaining about being prevented from leaving the UK but rather more about the cumbersome bureaucratic hurdles with which he would have been faced until recently in being able to re-enter Thailand (relating, I strongly suspect, to nonsensical Test & Go procedures and COVID insurance requirements, coming as they did on top of the need for a Certificate Of Entry initially or Thailand Pass subsequently - which, in turn. necessitated the conversion of supporting docs from PDF to JPG formats, with some having to be carefully cropped as well). In other words, a lockdown in all but name imposed by the powers-that-be here in LOS, I think.

@Toolong - can you please clarify explicitly and categorically whether or not you are the proud possessor of a DEBIT card with your Bangkok Bank account? As opposed to a CREDIT card which you've said you've never had.