of course the rules follow you. In the sense that you get 1 30 day extension from a visa exempt entry. The requirements might be slightly different from province to province. What you said initially was that if on a visa exempt entry you have to use laksi square in Bangkok. That is only true if you are actually in Bangkok.
which office what? If you mean Bangkok, it's laksi square for visa exempt extension. If another province, then usually just the local immigration office.
Bangkok has a separate office for visa exempt. I don't know of any other provinces that does. Just go to the immigration office. There are 77 provinces in Thailand, and more than 80 immigration offices.
it doesn't "follow you". As a tourist you get the extension at the immigration office that serves the area you are in (where your latest tm30 is done).
Without knowing what school, it could just be typical thai admin. Always a mess šSo they might back-pedal if you question it. Only having said it because they donĀ“t know. ItĀ“s easier to say no, so you donĀ“t have to cover your *ss later for having said yes, when your superior asks why you did that. Anyway, it is a big red flag,
said, there is a high chance they just want the control. You are eligible for a work permit on your non o based on marriage. It is even less paperwork for the school as they don“t have to provide paperwork to support your visa too. Only the work permit. Thing is, if they can“t control your visa, like in threatening you for example that if you don“t do this and that, they will cancel the visa, they lose that option.
Seeing as they already play that card, I would avoid working for them altogether! Find another school!
if you have a valid extension, supported by attending a real uni here, don't worry. Just get a new passport, as you said, even if readable, when water damaged it's no good. Then just show both the old, invalidated passport (snipped/holed/whatever they do to an American passport to mark that), and the new passport at passport control. Just explain its new and old passports. Hand over showing the page with the reentry stamp maybe. They will see it in their system too and just stamp your new passport with a "stay until" date, that will be the expiry date of your current one year stamp. After that, after arriving in Thailand, you go to the immigration office that gave you that stamp, and get it transferred to the new passport.