Thai Customs And Laptops / Hard Drives

[neo2025]

Hi Guys,

I will be entering the Kingdom on a 60 day holiday visa, but have the intention of finding work and staying for 2 years.

I will be carrying two laptops and some external harddrives in carry-on luggage (huge amounts of music, applications, movies and TV shows).

Do these external drives and laptops need to be checked in / declared?

Are they likely to want to examine the contents or be suspicious about the amount of data, particularly as I am only entering on a 60 day holiday visa?

If a partition had (normal) porn on it would this cause problems - and if so could I just encrypt/password protect it to get around this? The partition is Mac HFS+ journalled anyway - so unless they have Macs at the airport this would make it harder to read the data anyway.

Would appreciate any advice.

[Crossy]

You should have no problems, I've entered numerous times over the past 4 years with a stack of portable technology (needed for work) and never been stopped.

BUT. It is not wise to travel anywhere with un-encrypted 'gentlemens files' on your machine, the rules as to what is acceptable vary all over the world, remove or encrypt it, look at Truecrypt (not sure if it's available for Mac though).

EDIT I put my portable drives in checked baggage, mainly coz they're quite heavy.

Edited August 22, 2008 by Crossy

[Crushdepth]

Do these external drives and laptops need to be checked in / declared?

Are they likely to want to examine the contents or be suspicious about the amount of data, particularly as I am only entering on a 60 day holiday visa?

If a partition had (normal) porn on it would this cause problems - and if so could I just encrypt/password protect it to get around this? The partition is Mac HFS+ journalled anyway - so unless they have Macs at the airport this would make it harder to read the data anyway

If both laptops are obviously new there is a small chance they take an interest in 'taxing' you, but most likely not. It's unlikely that they would look at your hard drives as the regular customs guys would struggle to turn a computer on, but there is a small chance of getting caught in a random Gary Glitter inspired 'crackdown'.

Porn is illegal and will definitely cause you problems if they find it so delete it, or if its irreplaceable footage of your favourite barnyard friend then at least encrypt it.

[Kerryd]

I've brought a desktop computer through without question or even a glance. I've (recently) brought my laptop (as per usual) and even a couple of hard drives (from my old computer in Canada) in my cary-on. Again, not even a question or glance.

I sometimes worry when going through airport screeners. Laptop and cables. Digital cameras (2) and cables. iPod and cables. Electric razor and cable. My carry on must look like a jumble of wires and metal objects, yet I rarely (once in the last 6 International and 2 Domestic flights) have anyone look inside. And that one time (Dubai), the woman asked me to open the bag, I pulled out my camera and she just dismissively waved me off and told me to carry on.

[pattaya_girl]

I brought a Laptop from the UK last year, no problems whatsoever, but they did open the laptop bag, and felt the keyboard, and did the xray pen on it.

[a2396]

I wouldn't worry about Thai customs as much as going to back USA. Anything & everything is subject to search, without any probable cause. The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter.’ “ Welcome to America. Let's see that pocket litter. (See attached).

Travelers_Laptops_May_Be_Detained_At_Border.rtf