I have had a retirement visa which has been renewed once. Next renewal date is May 30th 2007. However, I'd like to be in UK at that time. Does anyone know whether it is possible to renew the retirement visa in Thailand in advance? And how is this done? I don't want to use the embassy in London as they require so much documentation and it all has to be notarised.

The Embassy would be for first time use in any case, unless you let your extension lapse.

You can check with immigration, ticket in hand, and ask them. Normally they will try to be helpful if it is only a matter of a week or two but not too sure how much latitude they have.

I have had a retirement visa which has been renewed once. Next renewal date is May 30th 2007. However, I'd like to be in UK at that time. Does anyone know whether it is possible to renew the retirement visa in Thailand in advance? And how is this done? I don't want to use the embassy in London as they require so much documentation and it all has to be notarised.

I have renewed both my one year retirement visa and my wife's visa before the expiry date and the rules state you can do this 30 days before expiry and not before this. What I did find was confusion when my wife got back as she used a re-entry visa that expired 2 days afterwards and they gave her 2 days despite the fact that she had already got the 1 year extension in the passport (because the old re-entry visa was only valid up to the expiry of the old visa!). We sorted it out at Hua Hin immigration but they did stamp used over another new re-entry visa so another 1900 baht was wasted. In my case I also used an old re-entry visa with 1 day left on it and they looked at my extension for another year, done before I left, and gave me up to the expiry of the new visa woth no problem.

I guess the moral of that story is: get a a new re-entry stamp with every new extension stamp.

I had a similar situation ..The first week in June, I was going to the US and would be returning to BKK just 3 days before my retirement visa expired. I went to Immigration here in BKK with all my renewal paper work and they gave me a new retirement visa and the starting date for it was the date of the expiration of the current visa...This was done approximately 30 days before the expiration date of the current visa. I was surprised because I assumed that I would get a new 1 year retirement visa and it would supercede the old one..Oh yes...It took less than an hour...