Hi,

Anyone have recent experience of transferring a retirement visa and re-entry permit to a new UK passport at Phuket Immigration?

What documents do I need?

Thanks

Old passport.

New passport.

Photocopies of visa, extension and personal info page of both passports.

Letter from British Embassy stamped and signed verifying old passport number and new passport number.

You cannot do the transfer without this letter.

I did this with an agent and this is what they told me (the transfer was successful).

application as well from Immigration.or online

Photocopy TM card

Very easy, get there at 8:20 it in the morning, back that afternoon.

No cost

"Letter from British Embassy stamped and signed verifying old passport number and new passport number".

Is this still the case Karen? I've read the UK won't issue this.

"Letter from British Embassy stamped and signed verifying old passport number and new passport number".

Is this still the case Karen? I've read the UK won't issue this.

Sorry, forgot the application form.

Yes, the letter is still necessary. I did mine a month ago.

It's the embassy in Bangkok that signs and stamps the letter. Not the passport office in the U.K.

You can get this done by email and they will send it to you by EMS. Do a search as there are a couple of threads on this already.

Thanks guys

After reading some more (something I should have done first), it seems you don't have to transfer the visa/re-entry permit but can go on using the old passport when you leave/re-enter. I think I will do this to a) save space in my new passport and save (possibly 2) trips to immigration.

Not a big hassle to take both when I travel until I renew in December although I theoretically have to carry both at all times. Since I don't carry one right now I will photo the visa/permit and keep it on my phone.

Anyone had experience with this? It certainly wasn't a problem when I came in with both on Sunday

An update as I went to Immigration this morning:

In addition to the documents Karen lists they now require copies (signed by you) of every page of your old passport that has a Thai immigration stamp of any kind. They want to know your entire history.

They also require a copy of your last entry stamp if that is in your new passport as was my case

I arrived around 9 am and got ticket number 17. I thought this was promising as the transfer should be a simple matter but at 10 am was told to come back the next day (not even after lunch!) as they were "too busy" to handle more than 16 cases. I have usually had reasonable experiences at Immigration but this was a new low.