Hello,

Wow, what a minefield!

I'm British and my girlfriend is (yeah that's right)

I have sooooo many questions and I must apologise in advance for my ignorance if any of these have been previously answered on this forum.

If anyone can help with any of our questions it would be much appreciated.

We live together in Bangkok. We have lived together for nearly 3 years.

We have lived in 3 different apartments!! One tenancy agreement was solely in my girlfriends name and the other two were solely in mine.

We have no joint agreement, no joint bank account etc.

From the previous two places, we don't have any bills, as back than we didn't think we would need them.

We only have letters from my mother in England, addressed to me individually, my girlfriend individually and to us jointly, birthday and christmas cards etc spanning the whole period, going to the same addresses.

We intend to approach our current landlord and our previous two, to write letters to confirm that we lived there together. Do these need to be authenticated by a lawyer here in Thailand?

We have thousands of photos over the whole period. The two of us, us with my family, us with her family. I have only been to the Philippines once.

We shall also get our parents to write letters stating that we have been in a relationship akin to marriage for over two years.

Can anyone see a problem here or offer any tips / advice?

I will have approximately 4000 pounds in the bank and a UK job offer which will leave sufficient funds after deductions to maintain ourselves in UK.

I work in Thailand and I shouldn't! I transfer money from my Thai bank account to my English account every month. Should I provide a 6 month bank statement? Or just a final balance letter form my UK bank?
If my means of income are going to be different once we return to UK, why might they require 6 months of statements, and if not and I supply a final balance letter only, what's to stop me just putting a big lump sum in from somewhere?

Will they care where the money has come from (wages)?

Will they care if I was eligible to work in Thailand?

I mean the job I do in Thailand is not going to be how I will support us in UK.

Therefore on the application form under "sponsor", should I detail my Thai employment, which is irrelevant to what I will be doing in UK, or leave it blank, or detail the employment I will have in the future?

Do I need to provide more than just the photo page of my passport?

She doesn't have a bank account in Philippines. Is this ok?

We will have an apartment ready in time for us arriving in UK but the Embassy needs to know where we intend to live, 3 months before we will arrive, so we're going to use my parents place. 2 bed terraced house.

We're going to supply a letter from them saying we will stay there. A copy of the deeds and a mortgage statement, bills, council tax receipts etc all authenticated by a UK lawyer, together with the dimensions and photographs of our room.

Any issues here or advice?

Can we apply in Bangkok or should it be done in Manila?

If she gets the visa issued in Manila, is there any problem in her leaving to the UK from Bangkok?

Do we need evidence that we haven't been married before?

Can she do the English language test in BKK and apply in Manila?

On the application form should she put her residential address as our current address in Bangkok or as her parents address in Philippines, where she will be staying as the application is processed?
Also, should the sponsors home address be here in Bangkok or my parents address, where we will stay in UK?

Only other documents we intend to provide are birth certificates really. Anything else we need?

We're both incredilbly worried and excited at the same time so if anyone can help us with our questions or offer some advice, that would be great.

Again, apologies for all these questions.

Many thanks,

Ritfor.