At the beginning of October we started the process of getting everything sorted for Joe’s visa to visit England at Christmas. Firstly we needed to get him a passport to put his visa in. This was not as easy as we thought though because when Mink and Joe arrived at the passport place early one Friday morning they were told that they could not apply for a passport without the signature of his dad or the local village headman of the place that we live. We had neither so Mink and Joe had to return home again.
A week or so later they returned to the passport place and met Joe’s dad there who co-signed the passport application form. Simple, and a few days later the passport arrived at home. A couple of busy weeks went by where I didn’t have time to complete his visa application but started getting some of the documents, i.e. a letter from his school giving permission for a holiday, a letter from his dad stating he knows he is going out of the country and other bits and pieces. I also, possibly rather foolishly, booked our flights and hotel accommodation in London.
Half term week gave me the chance I needed to complete the paperwork and so we submitted the details online. Due to new stringent biometric requirements Joe had to go to Bangkok with Mink to give his fingerprint scans and also to provide any supporting evidence to his application. The supporting evidence was where we failed many moons ago the first time we applied for Mink to get a tourist visa so I made sure that we covered every angle from financial requirements, to travel details, a letter of invite from Flo, explicit reference to the reason to return, copies and photocopies of passports, visas, birth certificates, marriage certificates etc. I also provided a checklist of all the documents on the front and detailed if they were originals, copies or both. At the top I included a note stating that if anything was not in the application form then the people at the VFS that accept the the applications had told us to take it out and so it wasn’t our fault.
We submitted everything on the Thursday morning and the courier returned the passport with visa attached the following Wednesday meaning that Joe will be going to England at Christmas. Luckily for him I brought back a hat and a scarf when I went home a couple of weeks ago.
Scanned copy of his visa will be included once my laptop starts working again and I get an internet connection at home.
He’s going to want a bit more than a hat and scarf when he gets off the plane methinks…..
… and a duvet to wrap around him!