We got stopped at one of those police check points last week while on a road trip. We still have red plates. The officer asked to see the book. He told us we had failed to note in the book that we had left our home province and driven to a new one. We took care of this "discrepancy" by donating 100 baht to the officer's whisky fund.

We doubted that there was such a requirement so my GF read the instructions in the book. Sure enough, the officer was mistaken.

In fact, you're supposed to make an annotation in the book each and every time you drive the car. Go to Lotus for a case of Chang, make a note in the book. Drive into town for a meal, make a note in the book.

Of course, no one actually does this but it does give the boys in brown a golden opportunity to enhance the whiskey fund....

On a personal advantage level, they're quick off the mark

You only need to make a note in the book everytime you leave the Changwat the car is registered within. But you are still not supposed to drive at all with red plates after 18:00pm until sunrise.

Sorry to be contrary, George.

I had my girlfriend re-read the instructions in our Red Plate book. She reports that it definitely says that every trip, no matter where, must be logged.

I asked her if it didn't say only to log trips outside of our changwat. She said, "No, every trip."

However, the cop who scolded us also thinks that only trips out of the province need to be logged.

Crazy.