Owen Jones

My Annual Pain in The Neck

My wife, Neem, and I have been working towards one goal for the last three days, that is to get my twelve-month visa renewed, my annual pain in the neck, with the minimum of hassle.

The requirements for such a visa, called in my case, a ‘Thai Wife Visa’, as opposed to a Retirement Visa, are often complicated, but the financial deposit necessary in a Thai bank is also only 400,000 Baht, instead of 800,000.
This induces many men to ‘hire a wife’. She can be trouped out once a year for the visa for a fee.

Obviously, the Thai authorities are aware of this fraud and are keen to stamp it out. I am not involved with anything like this, but even after ten years, I am not above suspicion.

It is a pain in the neck, but understandable, and therefore, acceptable.

It is also annoying, because the Immigration Police change the requirements for the visas often, but they don’t inform us foreigners. Neem had phoned thm yesterday to ask if any requirements had changed, and she was told that we needed to provide ‘happy family snaps’ every year now.
OK, we took four.

However, when we got there, we were told that they wanted ten photos and that we had to go back to the nearest branch of our bank and have our ‘proof of wherewithal’ retyped in Thai, our was in English, and that we had to have a copy of the new style of marriage certificate.

This was all news to us. Why hadn’t they told Neem the day before?
We drove the five kilometres back into town, did that and represented ourselves.
The photocopy of the details and picture in my password was in black and white.
“Please to go back into town and do again.”
The officer wanted it in colour.
“Haven’t you got a colour scanner/printer here?” I asked.
“No, sir,” she replied, so back into town we traipsed.
My Thai companions took it in their stride, but I admit that I was getting rather annoyed.
Now, there are boasts of completion times all around the office, and my visa, from start to finish, is supposed to take thirty-five minutes.
We had first arrived at nine a.m. and we were done at three ten p.m. That was my eighth twelve-month visa and four or five hours is about the norm whatever they have written on the walls.
The whole thing took from four a.m. until we got back at eight forty p.m.

While they were checking my application, I counted three colour printer/scanners in the back office, and the young female officer checking my paperwork took more colour scans of my passport photo 🙁
And people are asking whether I had a nice day out.
No, I didn’t, it was a pain in the neck!

Preparation for the visa also took a day, another pain in theneck, so I am now two days behind with my book too, which is the worst thing for me as I wanted to complete and publish it before the end of the month. Still, all my deadlines are self-imposed, although they are the worst ones to break – it leads to bad habits.

I have another, far more pleasant task to perform this week too. My father was a Medium and Healer. He died on his birthday, 21 February, thirteen years ago and left me a load of his automatic writings. Three years ago I put some of them in a book and published them on Amazon under the title of ‘The Eternal Plan – Revealed’. Every year, on the twenty-first, I republish the book with a few more poems and articles that were channelled through him by Spirit.
If you want to get a copy now, don’t let the thought of the impending update stop you, because with Kindle, you are always entitled to new versions.
Back to trying to catch up on Dead Centre II.

All the best,
+Owen Jones

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