This really is more gee wiz as it does not pertain to the Philippines other than I needed a new passport before heading home next month. I needed to renew my passport so I sent an email to the US embassy here in Turkmenistan and had an immediate response giving me an appointment 2 days later. Went in with the proper filled out form, $110 and one 2"X2" photo. The lady apologized saying it would be 10-14 days as the application had to go back to the states. 8 days later they emailed me saying my passport was ready for pick-up. Pretty impressive in my opinion so I figured I would share. Shawn
My experiences here were similar except I got the application sent to me from Air21 and filled it out and returned it to Embassy in Manila then made me an appointment to pay the fees which IMPO is a PITA to go to Manila to do it in person but luckily they will allow you to assign a proxy to make the payment. I did so and the passport was mailed to my home by Air21. I did this in December 2014. Really rather easy except for the proxy. Some people that may not know anyone in Manila to do this for them but many travel agencies will do the same for a small fee.
You don't see too many Americans around here other than embassy folks or school teachers from the international school. Not one of the top tourist destinations I assume. Shawn
I would think that most Americans (maybe everyone else as well) would probably only know 3 of the "stans": Afghanistan because - war Pakistan because - Muslims with nukes Kazakhstan because......Borat Start naming off any of the others and most will probably think you are just making up names for countries.....but having a quick look at their wiki pages they just look like slightly less crappy versions of Afghanistan and I suspect most foreigners wouldn't step foot in those countries without earning a pretty decent paycheck.
I was just researching the web to renew my U.S. Passport & I noticed the U.S. Embassy instructions have a "(NEW!) Mail-In Payment" option for people renewing passports through the mail. This option consists of including a $110 demand draft issued by BPI when mailing in the application. Seems like a helpful change. I attached a screen shot.
