Hi, Sawatdee Kha and welcome to the Australian Embassy in Bangkok.
My name's Tracey and I'm Consul here at the Embassy.
It's a Monday morning, and as usual on a Monday we're expecting a very busy day.
This is our consular section at the Embassy.
Now, very often we're asked what a Consul actually does overseas.
Believe me it's really not particularly glamorous,
but we do get enormous satisfaction when we're able to help Australians with genuine emergencies.
In a nutshell, we're here to help Australians in difficulty.
That might be Australians who are ill or have had an accident or are in hospital.
In the last year we've assisted more than 160 Australians who have been put into hosptials in Thailand.
We give support to Australians who have been robbed or assaulted,
and we assist Australians who have been arrested.
Just a bit of a chat about what's happened for our duty officers over the weekend.
Outside of Bangkok we had an elderly gentleman who's been hospitalised in the north, in Chaing Mai.
He's in quite a serious condition after a motor vehicle accident.
The doctors that are at the hospital in Chaing Mai are considering transfering him to Bangkok
where they feel he'll be able to get more appropriate treatment,
and thankfully the fellow has travel insurance so
the travel insurance will cover the cost of his transfer
and the costs associated with his hospitalisation at a private hospital in Bangkok.
Sadly, we also had a young Australian man pass away over the weekend in Phuket.
It seems that was crossing a road in the main part of Phuket, the main tourist area, Patong
when he may have been hit by a motorcycle.
The young man's family in Australia have been informed
and we're working together with them to make arrangements for his body to be returned home.
Here in Bangkok at our counter this morning
just at the moment we've got three Australian men
who have to come to seek our help in relation to money.
One of the fellows has had his Australian ATM debit card that was eaten by an ATM machine in Bangkok.
Not an unusual thing here or at home.
What we're doing, we're trying to help him to contact his bank in Australia
to try and access some of those funds that are in his account,
and if we have trouble with that
we'll help him to contact his family in Australia, who might be able to send him
some money just to tide him over until he's able to leave.
Another Australian that we had come to visit us this morning
basically woke up on the street early this morning near one of Bangkok's night entertainment areas, in Patpong.
He woke up to discover basically his passport, wallet containing credit cards, money, etc. had been stolen.
He thinks it's possible his drink was spiked
so we've recommended that he get checked out by a doctor just in case.
Thankfully, he's got insurance so that will cover these costs.
He's currently completing a passport application at the moment,
so that we can issue him with an emergency passport so that he's able to make his
currently scheduled flight home to Australia on Thursday.
We're also in contact, we've got his consent to speak to his brother in Australia
and his brother agreed to send him some money via Western Union
just to keep him going for a couple of days until he can catch his flight on Thursday.
Well, the third client that we have at our counter this morning is really quite upset.
He was supposed to take his flight home to Australia yesterday
but the airline wouldn't let him board the aircraft because they said that he was intoxicated.
This has created a multitude of problems for him because he was travelling on a discounted ticket,
and of course the airline's told him that he will now need to pay an
additional fee in order to change the date on his ticket.
Discounted fares always come with a lot of restrictions. We have to told him that
we cannot get involved in his dispute with his airline.
So, as well as the three gentlemen I've just been talking about
we also have quite a lot of passport applicants that have visited us this morning, applying for new passports.
Now, most of these are applications, are applicants renewing their passports - their passports have expired
or some have lost their passports so we're issuing them with replacements
and we also have quite a number of child passport applications.
These are children of Australian citizens who have been born in Thailand
and so they're getting their first Australian passport at the Embassy in Bangkok.