My friend would like to bring his dog to Thailand from South Africa . He has been quoted a ridiculous price for the service and paperwork. He also heard that if he traveled with the dog from South Africa it would be considerably less. Does anyone have any knowledge or experience about this? He is currently living in Thailand with his Thai wife and is planning to go back to South Africa for a visit and would like to bring his dog of 8 years back with him.

From origin:
Export license, full bill of health, including vaccination reports etc (in EU we have a passport for dogs), dog must be chipped and a ICAO ( or was it IATA ) approved animal transport box, with strict dimension requirements for dogs transported as Cargo (check airlines that even carry live animals and their requirements). My dog from EU cost about 1½ first class tickets, and was a pain in the ass negotiating with the carriers cargo dept, because the combined weight of the transport box and dog was on the carriers limit (50kg) where >50kg would've needed to reserve the same coll space by volume (thousands of euros pure flight) vs. set fee of excess oversized cargo (like canoes etc).   
From Thailand:
Import license from livestock dept, if country is not deemed rabies free, I believe 30 day minimum quarantine on owner's buck, also check whether the breed is not on the banned list, or risk paying a big brown envelope / dog euthanized.

My experience was about 5 years back, so changes in the policies might've been changed, and now at least some low cost carriers (nok/air asia) might not even approve live cargo inside the Kingdom. 

It's an expensive pain in the ass in any case, and for older dog could be very hard a journey. What I found was that the entry to Thailand was a lot easier than the EU-side, so I'd expect a lot more issues with South African export dog. Good luck.

Thank you Jabis, I will pass this on to my friend. He has plans to travel back to South Africa in September so there is some time to get all the info about getting his dog here.

4 minutes ago, Bears said:

Thank you Jabis, I will pass this on to my friend. He has plans to travel back to South Africa in September so there is some time to get all the info about getting his dog here.

Here's the checklist from DLD Thailand: http://en.dld.go.th/index.php/en/pet-travel-menu/importation-animal-animal-products