Luggage to be X-rayed at airports by year-end, used-car imports to be banned: Customs

[HaoleBoy]

How many bottles of wine can you bring in to Thailand?   I've been bringing in 6 bottles each trip ... guess they may be confiscated now (or tax applied).

[bristolgeoff]

When u go thru swampy and the green line you put your bag in a ex ray machine anyway.don,t know what happens before you get your bag from the carousel.i imagine they can check it

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[JamesBlond]

We can be pretty sure they haven't thought this through. They will discover that the volume of baggage is huge and there will be horrendous queues. They will discover that given staff limitations only a certain number of bags can be pulled and inspected during the course of a day anyway. They will discover that they don't need to check every bag in order to reach that capacity. They will discover that the cost of maintenance of the machines and training all the specialised staff will not be worth what they recoup in petty import taxes. After a few months of queues, complaints, and bad publicity, they will go back to selective x-raying again.

[Chelseafan]

1 hour ago, HaoleBoy said:

How many bottles of wine can you bring in to Thailand?   I've been bringing in 6 bottles each trip ... guess they may be confiscated now (or tax applied).

I think its one 1 liter, so in effect 1 bottle as most are 75cl but may I add you have been very lucky.

On a bad day, you could be charged 10x the duty (which is considerable anyhow) and had the goods seized.

There are horror stories of passengers (traveling as a group) bringing in 6 bottles of wine and being charged 75,000baht.

 

 

 

[keemapoot]

On 7/5/2019 at 1:33 PM, scotinsiam said:

No doubt this will add more delays to the wonderful airport experience, I am currently in the lounge in Swampy having endured the immigration exit process at passport control - I was 45 minutes in a crowd of Asians who were behaving like children - shouting, jumping queues and eventually the immigration stopped fingerprints being taken - it was a <deleted> joke. One prick asked to get in front of me when I was almost at the front of the line - "I think my flight left already" he said I told him no point in rushing then - asshat.

I hope I am fully done with this place in the coming few months, I have enjoyed living here but I don't  want to live on a military base anymore.

Another thing that is slowing down both exiting and entering Swampy now is the mandatory fingerprint scanning for everyone. I recently left for a few days and returned last night, and in both immigration lines, there were people who were fumbling with the fingerprint scanners, not placing their fingers correctly, or whatever and I was observing the time it takes to process each person is significantly longer now. The camera is now directly above the fingerprint scanners so at least that reduces delays people not being lined up for the photo. 

 

In summary, we have complete left and right hand fingerprinting, both thumb prints, photo being taken at immigration exit and entry. In addition, we now will have full checked luggage scanning. Of course, add to this the TM30, 90 reports and other assorted nonsense, and yes, it feels like living on a military base...except it's easier on a base because everyone has a CAC smart card and it contains everything already, so the Thai experience is actually much more cumbersome and  intrusive for everyone.

[treetops]

On 7/8/2019 at 3:46 AM, bristolgeoff said:

When u go thru swampy and the green line you put your bag in a ex ray machine anyway.don,t know what happens before you get your bag from the carousel.i imagine they can check it

These x ray checks you refer to are random - not 100% checking.  The new ones being discussed here may be 100% but not carried out at the same location.

 

On 7/8/2019 at 4:59 AM, JamesBlond said:

We can be pretty sure they haven't thought this through. They will discover that the volume of baggage is huge and there will be horrendous queues. They will discover that given staff limitations only a certain number of bags can be pulled and inspected during the course of a day anyway. They will discover that they don't need to check every bag in order to reach that capacity. They will discover that the cost of maintenance of the machines and training all the specialised staff will not be worth what they recoup in petty import taxes. After a few months of queues, complaints, and bad publicity, they will go back to selective x-raying again.

Doing it before the baggage carousels means the equipment capacity should not be an issue so queues will also not be an issue.  However, in practice I don't think all stations will be manned all the time, but the traveller will never know the detail.  This randomness is a regular part of security features.

[BritManToo]

The x-ray checks aren't all that clever, they missed my 170gm tube of toothpaste this weekend.

And they gave up on the fingerprints after four fingers on my left hand.