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I am a citizen of Ukraine, living in Thailand on a long-term basis.

My current passport is running out of free pages.

I have yet another, older passport which ran out of its period of validity several years ago. We usually need to surrender an old passport, unless it has valid visas, and this is exactly my case (a ten-year visa to a third country, still valid). The old passport has plenty of free pages.

Recently, I was offered a tour to several neighboring countries (namely, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia).

I'm aware I can apply for a new passport in the Embassy of Ukraine in Bangkok, but it takes several weeks to be done, while the tour supposed to occur within two weeks or so.

The question is, may I apply for Malaysian/Singapore/Indonesian visas, providing with both passports and asking to place visas into the old passport? Obviously, I will not be risking to expect for Visa-on-Arrivals, but at least, may I expect to receive normal tourist visas via respective embassies? In other words, would my two passports together comply with the requirement of having available pages?

Update. I greatly appreciate all ideas about possible workarounds, but my question was primarily about interpretation of the requirements: (1) passport1 within its validity period; and (2) passport2 with free pages, whether or not passport1 and passport2 must be the same one. Even if the visas did not take pages at all, there would be also nine entry+exit stamps that use almost 2 remaining pages.

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    You need to call the respective embassies, but I don't think they will place a new visa in an expired passport.
    – user13044
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 10:11
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    Major chances are they might stamp overlapping another stamp. Happened to me, even though I had some empty pages on my passport.
    – DumbCoder
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 12:38

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No, they will not stamp an expired passport. It's OK for previously granted visas to exceed the validity of a passport, but no country will stamp in a visa that starts after the passport expired. For example, Indonesia's tourist visa requirements state:

Passport still valid at least 6 months from the date of entry

Malaysia won't be a problem, Ukrainian citizens don't need a visa in advance and their passport stamp is quite small, so they'll squeeze it in somewhere in your current passport. Singapore requires a visa, but it's an e-visa and the entry stamp is even smaller, so no problem there either.

Your problem is likely going to be Indonesia, which requires an advance visa and uses full-page stickers for its visas. So you'll need at least one completely empty page in your current passport for this.

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    „no country will stamp in a visa that starts after the passport expired“ — thanks, this is what I supposed. I tried googling but failed to find any official document about that. Not even anything relevant. Do you have one to share, please? About small stamps of the other countries, you're right, but again — there are requirements of pages available, and chances are big to get into an awkward situation of catching a refusal straight in the airport.
    – Be Brave Be Like Ukraine
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 22:26
  • There's a lot of countries in the world, so I can't speak for all of them, but as an example, Indonesia's visa requirements include "Passport still valid at least 6 months from the date of entry". kbri-canberra.org.au/index.php/visa-service-kbri-canberra/visa/…
    – lambshaanxy
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 23:38
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    That rule requires interpretation. His current passport IS valid. I would try to get a letter from the embassy stating it is OK. Then show the letter along with both passports.
    – WGroleau
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 2:55
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    @WGroleau Not really, unless you want to argue that they could apply the visa sticker to his forehead as well.
    – lambshaanxy
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 5:30
  • (snicker) I suppose if the embassy letter said the forehead was OK. :-) My point is that the page you cited states requirements to obtain the visa. Says nothing about the physical form of the visa nor about where it can be placed/carried nor when and where it must be presented. Unless those things are specified elsewhere, one is at the mercy of the "common sense" of some official somewhere.
    – WGroleau
    Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 16:55

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