Passport Renewal at the Philippine Embassy, Singapore

It was on 23rd of May 2010 in 20 Nassim Road when I applied for this Machine-readable passports for renewal since it will expire this august 2010. This is not cheap, it punches an $85 sing dollar in your pocket. Is it worth it?, or we just can go home in our beloved country and process there instead?

Now, I want to share my good and bad experiences, the pro’s & con’s and my drop dead advices.

Pro’s:
Open on Sundays and the convenience of immediate need in Singapore itself without coming home in the Philippines. In which for a fact that most of the Filipinos working more-human-than-human in Singapore, deprived of the breath-catching “TIME”.

Con’s:
Again, not cheap. Processing fee: $85 sing dollars which is about P2720 pesos.

When to go there?:

The embassy location itself is not quite accessible, no public buses will be passing by there and its a 20 minute walk from Orchard MRT.

Embassy services are served in the traditional, classic Filipino way that we grew up and get used to be. I’m not going to elaborate this, I took the photo above at almost 8am there, so just “be early as much as 7am”.

We enjoy holidays right?, so is our beloved embassy. I strongly advice to check both Philippine & Singapore holidays and government events; e.g. election. The embassy takes part of the overseas absentee voting for the recent national elections for all the Sundays last month.

Last month I was broke. I was completely prepared for all the requirements when the security says that the embassy will not serve passport renewals on that day. I was there very early and everything was a waste on the start of my Sunday morning.

What to wear?:

For both ladies and gentlemen please wear something with a collar, It is necessary to have collars in your attire in your passport photo. So I strongly advice to wear such, in case that the embassy don’t want your photo, you can just take it in the photo machine inside. The photo cost $7 sing dollars for a set of four.

I hope this article helps. Please do check their website at: http://www.philippine-embassy.org.sg , all the information will be there.

Thanks for reading, Mabuhay po ang Pilipinas!...