Armed with my new Visa I went to the Thai immigration department in Udon to renew my retirement visa for another 12 months. When I said that my passport had been issued in Hong kong there was pandemonium and they insisted I get a passport from Bangkok. I repeatedly explained that the Embassy in Bangkok no longer issued passports – only Hong Kong.  Eventually the senior immigration official rang Bangkok and was able to confirm what I was telling them. However he stipulated there should also have been an accompanying letter with my passport stamped by the embassy confirming the cancellation of my old passport and the issuing of the new one. This was obviously something that the  embassy in Bangkok used to provide but Hong kong had failed to do. Fortunately(  for me ) on this occasion they waived this letter and then transferred my previous retirement visas into my new passport as well as issuing me a new one for the next 12 months.

There seems to have been a lack of communication between the UK embassy and the Thai immigration department about the new processes and the embassy in Hong kong is not following procedures used by the embassy in Bangkok. I assume these issues were presumably because I was one of the first people to have been issued with a new Hong Kong passport – Hopefully as word spreads the process will become easier.