BANGKOK: It's not that I considered myself any more important than any of the 53,000 British citizens who were, and still are, currently awaiting their passports thanks to an unprecedented demand backlog.
As the process entered its ninth week, I even started to think that perhaps my case, as a British expatriate, might even be viewed as less urgent.
I will start this by stating that the scenario that I discovered I needed to renew my passport possibly wasn't the best, it was - with glorious hindsight - probably one of the worst.
The moment I discovered that my 10-year passport, which wasn't due to expire for another four years, was full was at the Thai-Laos border, when a portly Laotian official hrrumphed and hrarrhed upon opening it.
Taking out the odd piece of paper and attached document and rotating it a few times, he did manage to find a page to place the full-page Laos stamp, which meant that I could now pass into Laos, but had no more empty pages to get the necessary Thai non-immigrant visa stamp that I was there to get.
I'd just started a new job, see, well I was hoping to anyway, as, of course, in Thailand, a foreigner cannot legally start work until they have the necessary documentation, and the non-immigrant B stamp, which he/she needs to leave Thailand in order to get.
Counting my current employer, I have had three different jobs in my five years in Thailand.
Starting a new job in Thailand is a nightmare, - it really is. Depending on the leniency/consideration proffered by previous employers, a foreign worker will need to leave the country pretty soon after finishing his previous post and before the visa is cancelled.
Some companies give a grace period of a month, while others cancel the visa almost as soon as the worker has washed his coffee cup for the last time.
After leaving Thailand to re-enter on a tourist visa the worker must then hope and pray that the new employer can finish up the mountain of paperwork before the new tourist visa is cancelled.
So, anyway, as my faded and battered passport was handed back to me and slipped back in my pocket, I had a dilemma: I could either turn on my heel and return to Bangkok or press on to
Vientiane and see if anything could be done at the Thai Embassy in the Laos capital.
Considering I already had a flight booked back to Bangkok for the following day, I chose the latter.
On a wing and a prayer, along with a ''surely something can be done my good man?'' English attitude, I decided to hightail it to the Thai Embassy in Vientiane.
By the time I got there, the visa submission time (8.30-11.30am) had passed and so I relayed what was to become a very particular, peculiar problem that I was to repeat on many occasions, to different departments in Thailand and the UK.
Besides the odd change in phrase, adding of Khun, simplification of request, and the none too subtle English passive aggressiveness/thinly veiled threat, it was pretty much:
''Excuse me. My passport is full, yet I need a stamp in order for me to begin the process of starting my new job. Is there anything that could be done temporarily while I await my new passport?''
The answer was more or less the exact same that I was to receive on countless occasions throughout the nine-week process.
''No.''
Having heard the brief, albeit final answer from the Thai side of things, I went to the UK Embassy in Laos to see what could be done from my homeland's bastion of bureaucracy, for one of their
citizens in distress.
After my British brethren stated quite categorically that under no circumstances whatsoever should I tamper with my passport in order to remove a non-used Japanese visa to free up the required full page, he proceeded to say that as it was no longer policy to issue new additional pages. Basically, nothing could be done.
Then the panic, guilt and feelings of foolishness and incredulity began in alternating whooshes in my stomach. Back at a busy roadside hotel, I flicked through my passport and examined my
options.
I indeed had no full pages left in my passport, but I had many half pages, quarter pages and, plainly speaking, pages with dubious marks and stains on them.
I decided to try my luck the following morning and so after a fretful Lao beer-infused sleep, I headed down to the Thai Consulate with my passport and prepared speech.
After a cursory glance through my passport, an officer told me as that as there were no empty pages, then nothing could be done.
Well, at least now I knew, so I resigned myself to doing the only thing that could be done - that is to apply for a renewal of my passport and return to Bangkok and my prospective employers with my tail between my legs and little else.
But I had more pressing matters at hand - chiefly to get the hell out of Laos and back to Bangkok.
In the years that I have been resident in Thailand, I've seen a good many changes in the visa-on-arrival policy. Arrival by land only allowed the 'visitor' 15 days, while a flight into Thailand granted 30. This also depended on which country one is coming to Thailand from.
Panicking that there were only a few bites of my well-travelled cherry document left, I began thinking ahead - I know, I know, if only I had begun a few months earlier . . .
But anyway, considering there was so little space in my passport, I knew that if I arrived in Thailand and was only given 15 days, then I was unlikely to be able to go on any more visa runs and then what would happen?
I'd be deported, I'd lose my job, I'd lose my deposit on my apartment and would probably end up in jail after a bout of alcohol-fuelled stupidity (I have a tendency to overthink things and leap to worst-case scenarios).
The internet had thrown up conflicting bits of information - some sites had said that I was to expect just 15 days by arriving in Thailand from Laos by land, while others said that it was 30.
Again, numbers differed depending on nationality. What to do?
Well I'll you what I did. I slapped on a little bit of suncream and skedaddled to the border and kept my eyes open for English people.
After the first few wide-eyed stares from backpacking young girls, who looked at me with a mixture of fear and readiness (as their mother had probably warned them about such approaches from unshaven men on the border), I got into my stride.
''Hi - sorry to bother you. Are you going to Thailand? Basically, I need to find out how many days you get on visa on arrival. Is there any chance you could email me to let me know when you get on the other side?''
I even prepared little scraps of paper with email addresses on. Two wonderful, beautiful, kind souls emailed me later that evening, with news that it was indeed 30 days.
So, I celebrated that night - I could get 30 days; plenty enough time to get a new passport, surely?
Well no, because when I returned to my apartment and flipped open my laptop to do a little research I realised how long, tortured and convoluted the whole process was going to be.
In a bid to 'centralise' (save money), the British government closed down seven British overseas passport offices recently, which meant that instead of my passport renewal process being done in Hong Kong, it was, as well as every other British passport application around the world (about 350,000 every year), sent to London.
This obviously slowed things down somewhat and significantly increased the workload of the officers in the UK.
The situation is compounded by the fact that now, in Bangkok, the British consulate or British embassy no longer deals with any stage of the passport process. This instead has been outsourced to VHS Global, from the Visa Application Centre in Bangkok.
This is the same initial port of call that includes on its official email signature that ''the Visa Application Centre will not be able to respond to any passport enquiries.''
Sorry, what?
To start the process therefore, one must fill out an online passport application from the British government's website then request an application submission time at the Visa Application Centre in Bangkok.
After you submit every requested document to officers in Bangkok and after they are checked, it is dispatched to the UK.
For all intents and purposes VHS Global's job is then done. They do not respond to any further queries on status (as to be fair they do not know, as the proverbial ball has already been passed).
The problem remains that there is no way for the applicant to check the progress of the passport issuing, as VHS Global is not able to provide a tracking or reference number.
This means, therefore, that applicants must sit tight and wait and pray that all is going to plan. In the interim, my 30-day tourist visa had of course expired.
I visited Thai immigration in Bangkok with a letter from my prospective employer and a letter from the Passport Agency to see whether they could extend my visa.
''No.''
I then emailed four different departments in the UK and Thailand to explain the situation. I even tweeted the British ambassador.
They were all, without fail, apart from a few links and email addresses, absolutely unable to help in any meaningful manner whatsoever.
Not one department, even the government office in Thailand, could do anything about fast-tracking my passport. They all passed the buck; it wasn't their department, it wasn't their particular area of concern.
After about seven weeks, I got an email from the Liverpool Overseas Passport Department. They were requesting proof of residency. This was the first I'd heard that they required such proof.
Why they required it, why they didn't ask me for it at the Visa Application Centre in Bangkok and why it took them seven weeks to ask for it is still unclear.
The answer they gave was that it was done on a case by case basis.
After I sent a letter, I was informed that it would be on the way.
It took another nine days. I then received an email at 3.04pm on a Friday afternoon informing me that ''it'' had arrived.
The offices close at 3pm, so I would just have to wait until Monday morning to go pick it up; no biggie - it just meant that as my visa (I went on another visa run, then got the maximum 7-day extension in the interim) expired on Sunday, I would just have to pay the 500
baht overstay and then be able to flick open my new passport and start from scratch.
Mai phen rai krab, almost done . . . I went to pick up my passport on Monday morning and booked a flight and left Bangkok on Monday evening to retrace the steps of perhaps my most stressful and exhausting mini-break ever.
I arrived at Udon Thani airport and then travelled to Nongkhai - the Thai-Laos border town - and arrived at about 8pm and trundled up to the overstay counter.
The officer flicked through the pages, located my visa, continued flicking then issued a phrase I'd heard in abundance in the last two and a half months, ''Passport full, cannot do.''
I proffered my brand new passport and almost winked at him, in fact, I think I did.
''Oh no, cannot do now,'' he said, ''Have go Immigration Headquarters, opens tomorrow at 8.30am.''
Apparently, even if a visa has expired, it still needs to be transferred to a new passport. I explained, gently, innocently and very Thai-like, that I need to be in Laos the next morning by 11.30am to submit my passport krab, is there anything that could possibly be done krab?
I knew the answer - of course I knew the answer. I'd heard it so many times in the last 75 days.
''No.''
After I was told ''no'' by four different officers, I headed out to find a hotel to bed down for the night.
I woke early, went to HQ and then, finally, everything went more or less perfectly, as it should have done the first time, had I arrived with a passport with sufficient pages.
It was remiss of me not being aware of how quickly my passport pages were being used up, I admit that, but living and working in Thailand and having to jump through the various hoops: to check in every three months, to go on visa runs, to get stamps, to get re-entry permits etc one does have a tendency to slip into auto pilot with such matters and it takes an experience like what I have described to snap you out of that cruise control.
It is all the more infuriating therefore, and cruelly ironic, when, after switching to manual, you are then met with robotic responses from officers either unwilling, unable or just not programmed with the necessary software or emotional
extension pack to be able to deal with a person's problem, and not just as Case 98677543.
For a week and a half after the receipt of my new passport, I was still getting email responses from departments in the UK and Thailand, answers to emails that I had sent two weeks previously.
Most poignantly was the response I received to a fast track renewal enquiry, 11 days after I had sent it.
A few days after I received my passport, it became clear why the process had taken as long as it had, as news started to surface that officials had warned British MPs that the closure of the overseas passport processing centres would lead to severe delays more than six months previously.
Unfounded allegations came out that overworked officers who were apparently working ''around the clock'' were now being told to ''relax passport checks''.
Temporary measures have now been introduced to try to sort out the backlog. These include 12-month extensions on expired passports, and free fast track services for people residing in the UK.
As the process entered its ninth week, I even started to think that perhaps my case, as a British expatriate, might even be viewed as less urgent.
I will start this by stating that the scenario that I discovered I needed to renew my passport possibly wasn't the best, it was - with glorious hindsight - probably one of the worst.
The moment I discovered that my 10-year passport, which wasn't due to expire for another four years, was full was at the Thai-Laos border, when a portly Laotian official hrrumphed and hrarrhed upon opening it.
Taking out the odd piece of paper and attached document and rotating it a few times, he did manage to find a page to place the full-page Laos stamp, which meant that I could now pass into Laos, but had no more empty pages to get the necessary Thai non-immigrant visa stamp that I was there to get.
I'd just started a new job, see, well I was hoping to anyway, as, of course, in Thailand, a foreigner cannot legally start work until they have the necessary documentation, and the non-immigrant B stamp, which he/she needs to leave Thailand in order to get.
Counting my current employer, I have had three different jobs in my five years in Thailand.
Starting a new job in Thailand is a nightmare, - it really is. Depending on the leniency/consideration proffered by previous employers, a foreign worker will need to leave the country pretty soon after finishing his previous post and before the visa is cancelled.
Some companies give a grace period of a month, while others cancel the visa almost as soon as the worker has washed his coffee cup for the last time.
After leaving Thailand to re-enter on a tourist visa the worker must then hope and pray that the new employer can finish up the mountain of paperwork before the new tourist visa is cancelled.
So, anyway, as my faded and battered passport was handed back to me and slipped back in my pocket, I had a dilemma: I could either turn on my heel and return to Bangkok or press on to
Vientiane and see if anything could be done at the Thai Embassy in the Laos capital.
Considering I already had a flight booked back to Bangkok for the following day, I chose the latter.
On a wing and a prayer, along with a ''surely something can be done my good man?'' English attitude, I decided to hightail it to the Thai Embassy in Vientiane.
By the time I got there, the visa submission time (8.30-11.30am) had passed and so I relayed what was to become a very particular, peculiar problem that I was to repeat on many occasions, to different departments in Thailand and the UK.
Besides the odd change in phrase, adding of Khun, simplification of request, and the none too subtle English passive aggressiveness/thinly veiled threat, it was pretty much:
''Excuse me. My passport is full, yet I need a stamp in order for me to begin the process of starting my new job. Is there anything that could be done temporarily while I await my new passport?''
The answer was more or less the exact same that I was to receive on countless occasions throughout the nine-week process.
''No.''
Having heard the brief, albeit final answer from the Thai side of things, I went to the UK Embassy in Laos to see what could be done from my homeland's bastion of bureaucracy, for one of their
citizens in distress.
After my British brethren stated quite categorically that under no circumstances whatsoever should I tamper with my passport in order to remove a non-used Japanese visa to free up the required full page, he proceeded to say that as it was no longer policy to issue new additional pages. Basically, nothing could be done.
Then the panic, guilt and feelings of foolishness and incredulity began in alternating whooshes in my stomach. Back at a busy roadside hotel, I flicked through my passport and examined my
options.
I indeed had no full pages left in my passport, but I had many half pages, quarter pages and, plainly speaking, pages with dubious marks and stains on them.
I decided to try my luck the following morning and so after a fretful Lao beer-infused sleep, I headed down to the Thai Consulate with my passport and prepared speech.
After a cursory glance through my passport, an officer told me as that as there were no empty pages, then nothing could be done.
Well, at least now I knew, so I resigned myself to doing the only thing that could be done - that is to apply for a renewal of my passport and return to Bangkok and my prospective employers with my tail between my legs and little else.
But I had more pressing matters at hand - chiefly to get the hell out of Laos and back to Bangkok.
In the years that I have been resident in Thailand, I've seen a good many changes in the visa-on-arrival policy. Arrival by land only allowed the 'visitor' 15 days, while a flight into Thailand granted 30. This also depended on which country one is coming to Thailand from.
Panicking that there were only a few bites of my well-travelled cherry document left, I began thinking ahead - I know, I know, if only I had begun a few months earlier . . .
But anyway, considering there was so little space in my passport, I knew that if I arrived in Thailand and was only given 15 days, then I was unlikely to be able to go on any more visa runs and then what would happen?
I'd be deported, I'd lose my job, I'd lose my deposit on my apartment and would probably end up in jail after a bout of alcohol-fuelled stupidity (I have a tendency to overthink things and leap to worst-case scenarios).
The internet had thrown up conflicting bits of information - some sites had said that I was to expect just 15 days by arriving in Thailand from Laos by land, while others said that it was 30.
Again, numbers differed depending on nationality. What to do?
Well I'll you what I did. I slapped on a little bit of suncream and skedaddled to the border and kept my eyes open for English people.
After the first few wide-eyed stares from backpacking young girls, who looked at me with a mixture of fear and readiness (as their mother had probably warned them about such approaches from unshaven men on the border), I got into my stride.
''Hi - sorry to bother you. Are you going to Thailand? Basically, I need to find out how many days you get on visa on arrival. Is there any chance you could email me to let me know when you get on the other side?''
I even prepared little scraps of paper with email addresses on. Two wonderful, beautiful, kind souls emailed me later that evening, with news that it was indeed 30 days.
So, I celebrated that night - I could get 30 days; plenty enough time to get a new passport, surely?
Well no, because when I returned to my apartment and flipped open my laptop to do a little research I realised how long, tortured and convoluted the whole process was going to be.
In a bid to 'centralise' (save money), the British government closed down seven British overseas passport offices recently, which meant that instead of my passport renewal process being done in Hong Kong, it was, as well as every other British passport application around the world (about 350,000 every year), sent to London.
This obviously slowed things down somewhat and significantly increased the workload of the officers in the UK.
The situation is compounded by the fact that now, in Bangkok, the British consulate or British embassy no longer deals with any stage of the passport process. This instead has been outsourced to VHS Global, from the Visa Application Centre in Bangkok.
This is the same initial port of call that includes on its official email signature that ''the Visa Application Centre will not be able to respond to any passport enquiries.''
Sorry, what?
To start the process therefore, one must fill out an online passport application from the British government's website then request an application submission time at the Visa Application Centre in Bangkok.
After you submit every requested document to officers in Bangkok and after they are checked, it is dispatched to the UK.
For all intents and purposes VHS Global's job is then done. They do not respond to any further queries on status (as to be fair they do not know, as the proverbial ball has already been passed).
The problem remains that there is no way for the applicant to check the progress of the passport issuing, as VHS Global is not able to provide a tracking or reference number.
This means, therefore, that applicants must sit tight and wait and pray that all is going to plan. In the interim, my 30-day tourist visa had of course expired.
I visited Thai immigration in Bangkok with a letter from my prospective employer and a letter from the Passport Agency to see whether they could extend my visa.
''No.''
I then emailed four different departments in the UK and Thailand to explain the situation. I even tweeted the British ambassador.
They were all, without fail, apart from a few links and email addresses, absolutely unable to help in any meaningful manner whatsoever.
Not one department, even the government office in Thailand, could do anything about fast-tracking my passport. They all passed the buck; it wasn't their department, it wasn't their particular area of concern.
After about seven weeks, I got an email from the Liverpool Overseas Passport Department. They were requesting proof of residency. This was the first I'd heard that they required such proof.
Why they required it, why they didn't ask me for it at the Visa Application Centre in Bangkok and why it took them seven weeks to ask for it is still unclear.
The answer they gave was that it was done on a case by case basis.
After I sent a letter, I was informed that it would be on the way.
It took another nine days. I then received an email at 3.04pm on a Friday afternoon informing me that ''it'' had arrived.
The offices close at 3pm, so I would just have to wait until Monday morning to go pick it up; no biggie - it just meant that as my visa (I went on another visa run, then got the maximum 7-day extension in the interim) expired on Sunday, I would just have to pay the 500
baht overstay and then be able to flick open my new passport and start from scratch.
Mai phen rai krab, almost done . . . I went to pick up my passport on Monday morning and booked a flight and left Bangkok on Monday evening to retrace the steps of perhaps my most stressful and exhausting mini-break ever.
I arrived at Udon Thani airport and then travelled to Nongkhai - the Thai-Laos border town - and arrived at about 8pm and trundled up to the overstay counter.
The officer flicked through the pages, located my visa, continued flicking then issued a phrase I'd heard in abundance in the last two and a half months, ''Passport full, cannot do.''
I proffered my brand new passport and almost winked at him, in fact, I think I did.
''Oh no, cannot do now,'' he said, ''Have go Immigration Headquarters, opens tomorrow at 8.30am.''
Apparently, even if a visa has expired, it still needs to be transferred to a new passport. I explained, gently, innocently and very Thai-like, that I need to be in Laos the next morning by 11.30am to submit my passport krab, is there anything that could possibly be done krab?
I knew the answer - of course I knew the answer. I'd heard it so many times in the last 75 days.
''No.''
After I was told ''no'' by four different officers, I headed out to find a hotel to bed down for the night.
I woke early, went to HQ and then, finally, everything went more or less perfectly, as it should have done the first time, had I arrived with a passport with sufficient pages.
It was remiss of me not being aware of how quickly my passport pages were being used up, I admit that, but living and working in Thailand and having to jump through the various hoops: to check in every three months, to go on visa runs, to get stamps, to get re-entry permits etc one does have a tendency to slip into auto pilot with such matters and it takes an experience like what I have described to snap you out of that cruise control.
It is all the more infuriating therefore, and cruelly ironic, when, after switching to manual, you are then met with robotic responses from officers either unwilling, unable or just not programmed with the necessary software or emotional
extension pack to be able to deal with a person's problem, and not just as Case 98677543.
For a week and a half after the receipt of my new passport, I was still getting email responses from departments in the UK and Thailand, answers to emails that I had sent two weeks previously.
Most poignantly was the response I received to a fast track renewal enquiry, 11 days after I had sent it.
A few days after I received my passport, it became clear why the process had taken as long as it had, as news started to surface that officials had warned British MPs that the closure of the overseas passport processing centres would lead to severe delays more than six months previously.
Unfounded allegations came out that overworked officers who were apparently working ''around the clock'' were now being told to ''relax passport checks''.
Temporary measures have now been introduced to try to sort out the backlog. These include 12-month extensions on expired passports, and free fast track services for people residing in the UK.
Makes me glad to be an American - our Embassy actually visits us in Phuket. Multiply this ordeal by thousands and you get the odyssey of the Thai expat. Simply not worth it, anymore.
Posted by The Night Mare on June 26, 2014 12:05