Validity of Thai Passports

[durhamboy]

My Thai wife always renews her Thai passport at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in Bangkok. She does this whenever we go back for a holiday. It's a quick, efficient and cheap service. Everytime she renews she also gets her old passport returned to her. The old passport still has some time left on it. The new passport starts from the date of application/issue and has a completely new number. There is nothing that I can see to say that the old passport is cancelled - no stamp, no writing, no cut-out corners etc.

 

So therefore it would seem that she has 2 valid Thai passports.

 

Anyone have any comments about this. Thanks.

[pontious]

Only the new one will be valid. The new 10 ten year passport should be issued by now but still nothing on the MFA site.

[durhamboy]

Thanks Pontious. Interesting, I didn't know they were going to issue 10 year ones. Just googled it and apparently they started issuing 10 year ones last year.

 

I take your point that only the new one would be valid but how would other countries (e.g. UK Home Office) know that an "old" one wasn't valid?

 

[ChaiyaTH]

13 minutes ago, durhamboy said:

I take your point that only the new one would be valid but how would other countries (e.g. UK Home Office) know that an "old" one wasn't valid?

 

One can usually only have one active passport at the time, so that makes using the old one fraud potentially. Should be showing up in the International shared databases too as far I know.

The new ones have 10 years, I can confirm, we were a few months too early for my son his passport and that one is still only 5 years.

Edited September 25, 2020 by ChaiyaTH

[KhunBENQ]

Have fun when you google for introduction of the 10 year passport.

mid 2020, July, August, September, near future

The widely distributed news is from July 9.

Obviously (from this post) it still is has not introduced regularly.

I bet Covid is a good excuse.

Edited September 25, 2020 by KhunBENQ

[puchooay]

Thai consulate in UK currently only issuing 1 year temporary passports. The excuse was Covid19 problems. My wife had to apply in July as hers was about to expire.

 

Her old one was returned with the corner cut off.

[durhamboy]

19 hours ago, ChaiyaTH said:

One can usually only have one active passport at the time, so that makes using the old one fraud potentially. Should be showing up in the International shared databases too as far I know.

The new ones have 10 years, I can confirm, we were a few months too early for my son his passport and that one is still only 5 years.

Thanks ChaiyaTH, do you really think that Thailand and the UK both share and use an international database? Personally I doubt it but you might well be right.