Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing funeral arrangements for unfortunately when foreigners are deceased in Thailand. 

I have done other videos on this channel on this topic but a recent article came to my attention from The Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Family Fight to Give UK Expat a Funeral. Quoting directly: "The UK family of an Expat who lived in Phuket for 15 years and passed away in February, is desperately pleading with both authorities at the hospital where he died and UK diplomatic personnel to have his remains which are due to be part of a mass cremation on Wednesday, released for a private service after an issue arose over his passport details." I am not going to go any further into that. That is the quote there. There is a lot of detail. Thai Examiner as usual provides a lot of insight into the overall situation.

I thought that this was noteworthy because funeral arrangements are not something to, I mean it depends on your circumstances. Your concerns or your own but for those who have family that they wish their remains to be sent back to or who have family even in Thailand who might be foreign or even if they have children in Thailand it may be an issue. Making one's arrangements and that may be a Will, oftentimes funeral arrangements can be stipulated by Will or just planning ahead. It is not just something anyone wants to think about. I certainly don't want to think about this world revolving without me on it but the fact of it is, presumably unless there is some modern marvel that comes about in medicine sooner rather than later, it is probably how things are going to be for me. So making these arrangements in such a way that they forestall any possible problems and I am not saying that the people involved in this were in any way remiss; sometimes circumstances are just unforeseen and they just happen the way that they happen and it is just an unfortunate state of affairs across the board. That is not my purpose with this video. It just got me to thinking that "Hey, folks that do live out here, especially older expats, it is a good idea if you haven't made arrangements at least basic arrangements with respect to what needs to be done with one's remains, it is a good idea to go ahead and try to make such arrangements. The other thing to bear in mind, I don't have a lot of dealing with the UK Embassy with respect to the remains of foreigners but I have dealt with the US Embassy on frequent occasions, more frequent than I would like obviously but throughout the years I have been here, it seems to come up once every one or two years we will see something where there will just be an extenuating set of circumstances that needs to be dealt with respect to arrangements associated with funeral or getting remains back the United States. For the most part, I found the Embassies are quite assiduous in assisting with that. The US has always proven to be so. The American Citizen Services is right on top of that stuff. 

That being said, sometimes unforeseen things do happen. The best thing to deal with that I often find is probably going to be dealing with a Thai Will in order to  have some instructions set aside so that one's loved ones or relevant caretaker of one’s remains know what to do in the event of one's passing.