Hello,

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction here -

I need to renew my Australian passport which currently has a non immigrent O visa, so will need to have the visa transfered which I understand I can do at airport immigration when I next leave Thailand.

The tricky part is I want to change to my married name in my new passport.

Any ideas if this will cause problems, and how to go about it?

Thank you!

First of all you cannot transfer your visa, only your permission to stay stamp.

I dont believe this can be done at the airport, but needs to be done at an immigration office, changling over to a passport into a new name should not be a problem, you need to take both old and new passports and I guess you will need your marriage certificate in this instance to an immigration office and they will do it for you.

I wouldnt try and attempt this at the airport

Do you have a valid visa or are you on an extension of stay? An extension of stay needs to be transferred, a visa cannot be transfered.

If you have an extension of stay from immigration inside Thailand best is to go to your immirgation office and sort it out there. At the airport they sometimes take care of it, but you don't want to risk missing your flight as lines can be very long and they might refuse to do it if they are evry bussy.

If the visa is a multiple and still valid, simply leave the country and when you return show both passports and marriage certificate to explain the name change. They will see the visa in your old passport and stamp your permission to stay in the new passport. In your case, because of the name change, I would visit immigration afterwards to see if they need to update their files. They might do that right away at the airport.

Mario I don't agree with allthat.when I got my new Canadian passport issued in bkk you can Chaco a box where they ask if you would like to keep your old passport or not. I have do e this two times and checked that yes I want to keep my old one however when my new passport arrived from Ottawa Canada they did not send my old one. this has happened 2 times. also when any country does return d passports, they clip the top corner off it and thAt meAns that nothing inside that passport is valid any more and cannot even be used for simple identification purposes legally. all of my stamps were in my new passport when I picked it up from my embassy in bkk

A clipped passport does not mean valid visas inside it are no longer valid. They are. No Thai or US visa can ever be transferred into a new passport - it is not done - but the visa is still valid and can be used by presentation of both passports. If your Embassy provided the passport with permission to stay or extension of stay stamps in the new passport they did that at Thai Immigration (saving you the trip) but they can not do themselves.

ok i know its not Aus but UK Border Immigration officer advised my to leave new passport in maiden name same as the old passport with ILR in it. he said i personally would not have a problem but others might.

Embassies issue new Passports and give you a letter for Thai immigration to transfer info of appropriate visa's and stamps from your old passport to new passport.

Think it is best to go to immigration office asap when you receive a new passport and not wait and take a chance that they will not do it at the airport.

Immigration office in Bangkok used to have a special room for doing this sort of thing. Don't know the situation at other.

Thanks - seems a trip to immigration is needed but it won't be as difficult as I thought.

Thanks for all the info