if Thai police authority demand to see your passport - you have to produce it. Sometimes a scanned copy of your Passport pages stored on your phone will satisfy a police officer. Same for paper copies.
It doesn't matter what you can do to fix an injustice in an immigration office - TOD you are not the Average Guy - you have years and years of insider experience... The rest of us just want to avoid making someone in an immigration office mad... I am sorry you cannot identify with that. In Texas we didn't go around pissing on the County Sheriff everytime one of his deputies exceeded his authority. We had to continue to live there... plain and simple
No I rely on countless discrepancies... I cannot countermand what goes on in my local Immigration office that is blatantly wrong. If I do I will be Blackballed forever.. And I do not want to move from my province
In any number of immigration offices - it doesn't matter what the actual Police Orders say - they do what they want to do. And there is nothing the average guy can do about it without making a permanent enemy of the I/O or the whole fricken office.
Whenever you decide to actually move to Thailand (pension issue solved and all that)... Here is my advice... I live in Krabi Province (mid south Thailand - east of Phuket about 2+ hours drive)
Most every year and this year especially we have Expats who live near Chiang Mai posting on the local Facebook Groups here looking for a place to stay in Krabi... (Ao Nang, Koh Lanta, Klong Muang, etc.) for 2 to 3 months to get away from the dense smoke from the annual crop stubble burning all over that area - including parts of Laos and Myanmar (Burma)..
People from the greater Bangkok area are doing the same due to awful smog air quality problems.
I suggest research more - pick a place that will not affect your health.
- My account balance is not huge but I do feel many Bkk Bank customers were unhappy for the same reason - complained or dropped the account. Collectively it seems the money did talk.
I have had a Bangkok Bank account for nearly six years now... But when they started forcing the Union Pay on customers about three years ago, I made a big show of making a substantial cash withdraw and announcing out loud that I was going to get a SCB account with a MasterCard. Evidently I was not the only one. About two years ago Bkk Bank started up with the MasterCard.
After much resistance and many complaints Bangkok Bank stopped forcing the Union Pay card on account holders. Bkk Bank now routinely issues a MasterCard Debit/ATM card. I would rather have a Visa Card but I do not find any real limitation with the MC card.
