Samut Prakan Immigration office update

[jpinx]

Just a quickie to say that I renewed my retirement extension there, based on income, and it was all good. The office has now got a big counter instead of individual desks, the officers are all nice, the boss is efficient and courteous, and the process produced no surprises. There's the usual thing about having to copy the receipt, involving climbing over the rest of the folks sitting waiting, but the copy machine operator knows to let you jump his queue. The other thing they do now is take your photo.

Points to note --

Take copies of the pages in your passport with the "Original" visa that is being extended, the last extension, the last re-entry used, the last entry stamp. That's 4 stamps that might all be on different pages -- plus the photo-page obviously.

At the same visit - with the same officer - I got a re-entry permit and the 90day-report paper stamped. You'll then get shuffled along the counter to another officer who will actually check the 90-day count and staple the slip into the passport. From there you'll be sent into the back office where they manually enter the renewal into the system and take your photo -- hat's off please

As an aside - I also got a credit card sized copy made of my passport in a good printshop in the basement in Seacon Square -- cost 59 Baht. It's the front cover of my passport on one side, and the photo page on the other. Immigration were suitably impressed

That's it -- hope your experience is as painless

Edited January 17, 2015 by jpinx

[dragonfly94]

They are very good but strangely ask for PP copies now just for a 90 day report. Their keenness on photocopies is probably linked to the service outside at 2 baht a go. Much better than CW anyway.

[InTouch]

I arrived at Samut Prakarn Immigration last Friday at 8:30 when they opened up. I was looking for a re-entry visa. They saw me coming with no one in the queue and had me processed in less than 5 minutes including the mandatory photo copy of the receipt. There is a new requirement since a month ago for a picture. That took an extra 5 minutes but they are extremely fast and farang friendly. The gentleman on the back row who looks like the boss is the only one I have found that speaks fairly good English. My Thai wife usually goes with me and has everything organized and clipped together with a yellow sticky note where things are supposed to be so I usually dont need to converse anyway. They seem to appreciate that. We have been in there so much I go by myself now and they usually know what I want when I get there and grab the paperwork from me and start processing it without speaking to me. Its a whole lot easier and faster process than the big immigration facility in Bangkok.