Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bangkok and the Dutch Embassy; Mission completed
One important part of being in Bangkok right now has now been completed, requesting new Dutch passports for our two children and myself. And a groovy new business passport it's going to be with extra pages for my travels outside of Thailand.
One of the strange requests of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bangkok was that we needed to show a translated and legalized copy of our marriage certificate. The translating part wasn't too difficult, that could all be dealt with online but the the actual legalization needed to be done by said Ministry of Foreign Affairs which is located in the Chaeng Wattana area, next to the old Don Muang airport.
The actual building is very modern and well organised and set up, a delight if on is used to deal with local or provincial Thai authorities. Very efficient and I must say that I was positively impressed by it all. The building hosted a food court, the mandatory 7-11, a couple of coffee shops and some very clean bath rooms!
The hoops and loops displayed
Off we went, very early this morning, after an excellent breakfast at our Windsor Suites hotel. We were lucky and were picked up by an excellent cab driver who for a change knew his way around Bangkok and a good 20 minutes before the desks opened we found ourselves at Chaeng Wattana, waiting for the rush onto the clerks. At 8am our journey was officially started but it lasted until 10.45am before we got all the required stamps and signatures, which left us with just 45 minutes to get to the Dutch Embassy to file for new passports!
Talking about passports, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building was also a passport issuing outlet and here are a bunch of older end newer models of Thai passports on display
We just made it in time thanks to our skill full cab driver, who we had waiting outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and who was fully prepared and knew exactly how to get us back to the Embassy. With literally one minute to go we entered an emptied out Embassy which reduced the waiting time drastically and all paperwork was sorted out efficiently.
Je maintiendrai or outside the Dutch Embassy in Bangkok
A long morning with a nice ending because we were able to apply for the passport today and got it done and over with.
Now that we had this sorted it was time for some relaxation and off we went to the Dusit Zoo in Bangkok. More on that trip can be found here.
Camille
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