Myanmar Passport Extension

HELLLOOO!!

I haven't blogged in a while as I have been quite busy.  One of the errands I have been busy with is renewing my Myanmar passport in Singapore.  I HAVE TO TELL YOU guys about my experience since I was pretty impressed by the Myanmar Embassy. Those of you who have been to the Myanmar Embassy in Singapore in the past couple of years would know that a visit to the embassy could be unpleasant - to say the very least. We had to jostled with the crowd, there were not enough chairs, a whole day could be wasted there, so on and so forth.  Well, guess what? All these problems are gone! No more!

Let me offer you a step by step guide on how to renew/ extend your passport if there is a need for you to do it. 

Firstly, you need to get an online appointment.

1. Go to http://www.mesingapore.org.sg/index.html

2. Click on "Online Appointment Reservation for Consular Service"

3. Click on "Register" to create an account with the Myanmar Embassy website.

4. Fill in all the information including Myanmar ID card number (မွတ္ပံုတင္အမွတ္). Without မွတ္ပံုတင္အမွတ္, you cannot create an account. There will be an error.  

5. Select "Application of a new passport". 

6. Check the box next to "I Agree". 

7. Fill in all the information and click NEXT. 

8. Click on the box beside ရက္ခ်ိန္း(Appointment Date).

9. Choose a date.

10. Click on AVAILABLE?

11. After you get a message like this - "Still available and xxx people had occupied" - go to your email, copy the verification code and paste it in the box next to "VERIFICATION CODE". Then, click OK. 

12. TA DA! An appointment page will be generated with your name and passport number. Click on TO PRINT. You will be re-directed to a PDF file.

13. If you do not want to print out immediately, it's okay. The PDF file will be saved in your account with the Myanmar Embassy. Just go to the log in page http://consular.mesgservice.com/, log in to your account and you can see the appointment page as shown below.

Secondly, prepare all the documents (original and photocopy)

1) Print out the online appointment file. It has both  ႏိုင္ငံကူးလက္မွတ္ေလွ်ာက္လႊာ and  ကုိယ္ေရးရာဇ၀င္ (ေဖာင္ပံုစံတြင္ မိမိအိမ္မွယူေဆာင္လာသည့္ ဓါတ္ပံုတစ္႔ပံုအားကပ္ရန္).

2) Current passport (original and photocopy) (ဓါတ္ပံုပါေသာ စာမ်က္နွာႏွင့္ ေနာက္ဆံုးသက္တမ္းတိုးသည့္ စာမ်က္နွာ)

3) Singapore ID Card (Work Permit, S Pass, Employment Pass, Permanent Resident) (original and photocopy)

4) If you are a student - Student Card and Student Status Letter from school (original and photocopy) 

5) If you are working - Tax receipts that you have paid up to 31 Dec 2011 (original and photocopy)

6) If you are a dependent -  အိမ္ေထာင္စုစာရင္း / လက္ထပ္စာခ်ဳပ္ / ေမြးစာရင္း (original and photocopy)

7) If you are a dependent -  မိမိမွီခိုသူ၏ Passport, Singapore  ID, အခြန္ေျပစာ(original and photocopy)

Thirdly, go to the embassy on the appointment date. I THINK Q number starts from 101 so if your number is between 101 and 140, you should actually reach the embassy before 9am. When I reached there at 9am, the counters were already serving 140+! Talk about efficiency!

1. As soon as you reach, look for boards displaying Q numbers. When your number is called, counter 1 or 2 will check through all your documents and give you back whatever is not necessary. They will arrange the documents in a file and you have to pay SGD 20 as service fees. 

2. Proceed to Counter 3 or 4 to take a passport photo as well as to record thumbprints and signature.

3. Then you go back to the waiting area and wait for your queue number to be called from Counter 5 or 6. They will calculate the amount of tax you have to pay.  If you have to pay tax, they will ask you to come back at 3pm. If you do not have to pay tax, they will ask you to come back at 5pm.  

4. Withdraw money (SGD 150 + Tax)

5. Go back to the embassy at the requested time and wait at the waiting area for your name to be called.  When your name is called, go to Counter 7, make payment and collect your brand new passport!

Counter 8 and 9 are for Myanmar visa application. During my 10 years stay in Singapore, I had to go to Myanmar Embassy a couple of times and boy, I was impressed with this visit! If you had been there (excluding the past one year), you will surely know what I am talking about.  The embassy staff were friendly, helpful and patient. They are pretty efficient too. THANK YOU to whoever is responsible for this big change (:

Adios!

xoxo

Miss N

Disclaimer: This is true as of May 2013.