Transferring your old visa/extension. The final step

Probably worthwhile to add for posterity a note about transferring your existing visa/extension of visa/multiple re-entry permit* from your old UK passport to your new UK passport.

You will receive a pro-forma letter from the British Embassy to Thai Immigration along with a one page guidance note when you are handed your passport. The note directs you to fill in the blanks about yourself (name, old & new passport numbers, details of unexpired visa/extension etc) on the printed pro-forma and send it back to the British Embassy. It gives you the option of sending it to the Embassy for their signature by mail or e-mail and receiving back the signed letter from the British Embassy by mail or e-mail. I chose the quick route and so completed the pro-forma, scanned it and e-mailed it. Got an e-mailed letter back as an attachment, but it had a note that some immigration offices insist on a manually signed version and will not accept a printed-off download from the e-mail attachment. So I played safe and sent back an e-mail asking for a manually signed letter now to be sent to me. That arrived a few working days later.

I went to Sisaket immigration this morning only to find that not only did they not need a manually signed letter they actually did not need any letter at all, since my visa extension had been granted at their own Sisaket immigration office. Just as well - I had driven 45km to get there and realised I had left the letter at home (clod!)

Sisaket is notoriously user-friendly so I would not rely on this working practice being applied in every immigration office.

My new passport now contains a page explaining that the following entries are copied over from a previoulsy issued passport, a brief stamp concerning my non-O visa that was originally used to generate extensions and a stamp for each of the extensions since, a stamp to indicate the unexpired portion of my multiple re-entry visa* and a stamp concerning my last entry and next 90-day reporting date.

So now 3 pages of my 50 page visa have already been consumed and I've gone nowhere! [surely to god they don't put 15 extension stamps in if you are still here on extensions that are based on a 15 year old visa?]

It cost 200 baht to do the copying over exercise. That plus the page use did make me wonder whether there is an alternative to just travel with your old passport until you come up to another extension renewal date. Anyone know? No - I aint bitchin' - I'm happy enough to get the whole thing over with, even if I am looking at my new passport likely not lasting anything like its 10 year issue period ... again (damn these one page Camby and Laos visa paste-ins; damn visiting family & friends who always insist on being shephered to one or the other by land!)

*Not all of these will be applicable to every reader

Just got the phone call to say my passport is ready to collect.

So that was 3 weeks to the day nearly for the renewal.

Not bad service at all.

I sent in a renewal application for my son,one week later received an e-mail asking me to resubmit the application form direct to them, without telling me what was wrong with the original,yet saying that if I had any query to contact the official who had sent me the e-mail. So I rang the UK No to find that, their automatic telephone system was having an off day, after about 5 hours and 8 attempts finally spoke with a human,who informed me I could not speak directly to the official, and basically that he could not help me. So now I will fill in the form again and post it direct to the UK.

Now! I'm asking myself what was the use of me traveling up to Bangkok, submitting the application at the Trendy office, who did not notice the mistake I am supposed to have made, it would seem that they only record what forms are submitted and then they send them to the UK, the same as I will with the re-application. It would seem that the lines of communication are overly stretched for which I have to pay extra,basically bureaucracy gone mad.