soongmak Posted August 17, 2004 Report Share Posted August 17, 2004 Is other photo ID acceptable, ie a driving license? No, it is not. You're a foreigner, and the only way you can proove that you have a right to be in thailand, is by showing your passport with the visa stamps. A photo copy won't do. Maybe it will satisfy some officers, but if you want to be 100 % sure, you have no choice but to carry your passport. Cheers, soongmak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sayjann Posted August 17, 2004 Report Share Posted August 17, 2004 coming from the UK i am not expected to carry any ID......yet. i find the idea of carrying my passport while out on the town in Thailand alien. the only time i DID carry it while having a few Beers i lost the fucker,wether i dropped it or i was the victim of a pickpocket i don't know. caused me endless problems and fucked up my visit in a big way. from now on,passport will be left in my room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khun_Kong Posted August 17, 2004 Report Share Posted August 17, 2004 MightyMouse said:Bangkok Post claims in the Monday issue that 373 people were tested for drugs Sunday morning at the Q bar. 2 women tested positive for drugs and 104 falangs did not have passports. I wonder where all of these falangs got the idea they did not need to carry their passports? Just wondering if they checked every farang and how many of the 373 were Thai? If 104 out of around 200 were farang, then ~50% actually carry their passports. Any Thai people without ID get popped? BTW- this sucks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BKK_DJ Posted August 17, 2004 Report Share Posted August 17, 2004 I already discussed this on the Nana piss test post so refer to that for more info as I was there and gave my report. The law states that a Passport is the only valid form of ID, it must be carried by all foreign visitors to Thailand and can be asked for by any law enforcement agent at any time. If you do not have one you can and will be held until it is produced. You can either safe yourself a whole lot of time by carrying it or you can bitch and moan about it and go to another club or bar that is relaxed its policy...when the police raid it and hold you for 6 hours..you can bitch more...if you lose it you can only blame yourself... either way...without a passport...your gonna lose time sitting in a cell or police station or an immigration office replacing it So do yourself a favor and carry it...that way there is no argument and if you lose it you have no one to blame but yourself...no different than losing a wallet or money... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamokhamok Posted August 17, 2004 Report Share Posted August 17, 2004 I have read the comments here and it seems that you will be held until you produce the passport or be fined. Looking a little further into this and you decide to 'get' your passport brought to you in the police station - think of whats involved and assuming you have the passport locked in a safe in your room or maybe in safe deposit box in the hotel. 1. You'll have to disclose the password to your safe - a safe that will definitely have more than your passport in it - leaving the contents of the safe open to being robbed at that stage. 2. Getting someone reliable to get the passport to you in the police station. 3. If you have a safe deposit box, and assuming the hotel work strictly to the rules governing these boxes, then in the words of the poet --- your fucked. You have the 'second' key to the box and you have no way of going to the hotel and the hotel won't, even if they could, open the box for anyone else. My biggest problem with bringing the passport is mainly the problem of keeping it dry. My experience of the carrying anything in your pockets in Thailand is that because of the heat and sweat etc everything in your pockets will be wet. It seems that we are f....d. There doesn't seem to any way around this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 18, 2004 Report Share Posted August 18, 2004 Hamokhamok said:It seems that we are f....d. There doesn't seem to any way around this one. A few options come to mind for us tourists. Protest to your local Thai Embassy and the TAT. Leave your passport in the hotel safety deposit box and explain your concerns. Get the hotel manager's name card and let them kow you expect them to produce your passport should you be detained. Any decent hotel will do the right thing here. "Mr. Manager, yeah it's me that rogue Roppongi from suite 3107..." "Yes breakfast was fine and I love the hospitality at the Oriental. He listen, I'm in a spot of bother here. Some flea of a cop insists on seeing my passport cause I was drinking in a bar..." Despite all the warnings, for us expats not living in LOS, a few hours with the BIB seems a better option than waiting for a new passport at the embassy and then going through all the drama of visas, etc, for our host country. A few other random thoughts: No one can confirm the amount of the 'fine'? How many hours were you detained BKK DJ? Till 3 am, but from what time? What's this Q Bar all about? Why was it only targeted? It was mentioned on another board that it was foreign-owned and the nationalistic Thai Rak Thai Party wants to be seen doing the right thing by the 'hard-hit' locals ahead of elections. BTW, Pattas seems exempt from this nonsense... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 18, 2004 Report Share Posted August 18, 2004 "no different (to lose a passport) than losing a wallet or money... I'll just past whet I just posted on a different thread, and wonder citizens of which countries are in the same case. Forget it if you're french and not resident in Thailand. No new passport issued, only a paper which allows u to fly back to France, for many people it means a pretty big change in their plans. Happened to me along a few others I met. We had a SUPER BITCH at the embassy a few years ago so things may have gotten better now!?! I was once there and a french lady who was on some across asia journey just asked for a passport extension but no way either. Load of buggers! Hence I understand people reluctance to carry along original passport Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mongatu Posted August 18, 2004 Report Share Posted August 18, 2004 Hamokhamok said: My biggest problem with bringing the passport is mainly the problem of keeping it dry. My experience of the carrying anything in your pockets in Thailand is that because of the heat and sweat etc everything in your pockets will be wet. It seems that we are f....d. There doesn't seem to any way around this one. Agree with you about the wetness problem. To avoid that I intend to get a small passport sized ziplock plastic bag to use to carry the passport in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 18, 2004 Report Share Posted August 18, 2004 Looks like they think farangs drinking in Bkk is a much bigger threat than the killings/bombings and assorted mayhem going on in the south to allocate so much manpower to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stumpy Posted August 18, 2004 Report Share Posted August 18, 2004 It will be interesting to see if this kind of information makes it in to the book travel agents keep that give tourists the real low down on places. 'Thailand has many beautiful Temples and beaches. The local nightlife is good but closes at around 1am. You are required to carry your passport at all times and you may be arrested if you don't. If you are arrested you will sit in a police cell until someone can deliver your passport to the police station for you. So you might not want to think about travelling alone to Thailand. There is random drug testing and you may be detained for 3 or more hours and forced to produce a urine sample into a plastic cup. Any failure or a positive sample could land you a lengthy spell in a Thai jail. Thai jails are massively overcrowded, you will have to buy your own food daily and many are rife with serious illnesses like TB.' I would love to know what evil Thailand is trying to overcome with this crackdown and I feel sure there is a better way to go about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.