Getting a Passport

Getting a passport

In May 2004, I needed to make a trip to Belgium to make an update of all my documents after I was married to my Thai wife.

For the occasion, I was thinking to bring my Thai wife and my Thai daughter with me as well and let my family meet my new little family.

I discussed it with my wife, and she was full of joy to go on a trip to Belgium and meet my family. For her, it would be the first trip out of Thailand.

But there was a little problem. She needed to get a passport and apply for a Shengen Visa for Belgium. Something she had never done before. At home, I filled an application for a Shengen Visa for Belgium and looked up what documents were needed to apply for a Thai passport. According to the information I did read, we needed to travel to Chaeng Watthana in Bangkok. There was the department located where my wife would need to apply for a Thai passport.

I prepared all the necessary documents and we made the trip to Bangkok with her.


While waiting for our turn to visit the officer, I noticed a Thai woman walking around and talking to the Thai spouse of foreigners. She was about 35 years old and well dressed.
She came to my wife and started to talk with her. It was all in Thai, and at the time, my knowledge of the Thai language was not very good. But the subject seemed to be interesting to my wife.

Finally, it was our turn. The lady gave my wife her visit card and we went to the officer.
I explained that we wanted to make a trip to Belgium to meet my family as we married recently and about 15 minutes later everything was ready. The passport would be send by post in a few days.

As we sat in the bus on our way back to Nakhon Ratchasima, I asked my wife what the discussion was about. Seemed that the lady was working for a law office and had been talking about the foreign laws about raising children and divorcing.

Contrary to the Thai way of life where a man could find himself another woman and leave his children behind without a penny or divorce his wife and not taking responsibilty, foreign laws could be very lucrative for a Thai wife and the foreign courts were easily awarding the wife or the children lots of money.
Also, the Thai wife could apply to the half of his assets in a divorce case. The daily wage was about 250 Baht (about 7.5 USD) per day at the time.

That lady seemed to have found a very good business.

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