Visa trip to penang

[Boo]

To those of you who wanted to know.....

After getting married a few weeks ago I decided to get a new passport issued at the British Embassy in my married name (this was something I was going to do anyway but with the confusion & worry over fake stamps I decided to do it sooner rather than later) 1 week later I received my new passport & when my current (legit) visa ran out I took myself, the old & new passports & my wedding certificate to Immigration. I filled out the form requesting a 10 day extension & went to the counter. The guy there, big immigration man brought from Bangkok, took my passports & form & asked me why I wanted an extension, I explained that I was waiting for a freind to be able to come to Malayasia with me the following week as my husbands business was very busy at the moment & we had deceide that I would go with a freind instead. He then took out a magnifying glass & proceeded to spend more that 20 minutes looking at every stamp in passport (nearly 6 years of legal & not so legal stamps). By this point I was crapping myself & decided to just sit there loking sweet & keeping my mouth shut, after 20 minutes another imm guy came in, the same one my husband & I had seen before getting married for advice on my visa, he came over all freindly & asked me if I had got married yet, I replied that I had & he was confused as to why I was appplying for a non O at the immigration office, I explained that I just wanted an extension & that I didn't want to go to Penang alone & he then spoke in Thai to the guy with the magnifying glass that I just wanted an extension & why was he looking at my passport so much as I was married to Kon Thai & just give her the extension (all this time I was sitting there pretending not to listen) 5 minutes later my most recent stamp was transferred to to the new passport as well as the extension.  PHEW

When I went to the border, the security was very strict, we had to go to the office first, where a stony faced officer looked at & verfified the most recent stamp (I flashed the one page of my old passport at him saying that I had got married & changed my passport), we then had to go to the counter to be stamped out of thailand, where they scritinised the stamps again before stamping me out, I then entered malaysia on the new passport with out further trouble. Got the non imm O visa in penang in 2 days so now, at last I am clean.

What I would say is that, with the security being so strict during apec, anyone with what they think may be dodgy stamps, would probably be better off "washing" their passport & paying any overstay fine (only valid if the last stamp is fake), as even though my most recent stamp was legit, sitting there while the guy scrutinised all the past stamps, made me relalise what a serious problem this is.

This is of course my personal opinion and others may feel confident enough to go through with potentially dodgy stamps, but another thing to think about, at the immigration at both exit & entry points, there was a peice of paper in plain view with a bunch of stamp numbers written on it, B008 was definatly there as well as some others but I was so worried getting through myself that I didn't look at it for very long & wanted to get back on the bus as quickly as possible. Sorry

Hope this helps some others decide their best course of action & I am in no way exaggerating  any of the situations described above.