Thai Drivers licence for car

[midasthailand]

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but have just returned to my apartment having attended the Licence issuing venue near Bang Chak BTS station to attempt the E-test to obtain a Thai drivers licence.

 

I have been driving for 46 years with no serious accidents on three continents and consider myself to be a very competent driver. I have been driving in Thailand, mostly Bangkok for seven years using my Australian licence.

 

Thought it was time to get a Thai licence so off I went. Spent the morning watching a 2 hour video on Thai road rules (most of which I see broken uncountable times/day) then went up to the third level to take the e-test after studying the English language booklet provided.

 

Sat my first test, result 42/50 - FAIL. Very few of the questions are written in intelligible English and quite a few of the questions had no right answer (according to the English language booklet I studied) Many of the answers to the questions were not in the learning booklet or in the video I watched.

 

So I tried again after lunch, result 44/50 - FAIL again, this was a completely different test and again was full of errors, 1 question was repeated 5 times through the test (pretty sure I got the answer right all 5 times!)

 

After both tests I was given no opportunity to see which questions I got wrong (making it extremely hard to learn from my mistakes, or theirs!)

 

Bottom line, after spending most of Tuesday there doing the eye tests and reaction time tests and nearly all of today, I am no closer than before to having a Thai drivers licence, due mostly, I believe, to the ineptitude of the Thai transport ministry in not having the tests professionally translated to English.

 

Next step will be to return on another day and do the e-test in Thai! At least there should be no errors in that one!

 

Footnote:

The pass mark is 45/50

[Kwasaki]

12 minutes ago, midasthailand said:

I have been driving in Thailand, mostly Bangkok for seven years using my Australian licence

So why didn't you use your Oz DL to get a 2 year Thai DL. ?

[midasthailand]

Just now, Kwasaki said:

So why didn't you use your Oz DL to get a 2 year Thai DL. ?

Didn't know I could, I was in and out of the country on a monthly basis for many years but business model has changed to allow me to spend longer periods here. My understanding was that I was legal to drive on my Oz licence for 3 months so previously I just didn't see the need.

I had my passport, my Work permit, My med cert, my Oz licence and had expected to just do the eye test and reaction time test and be issued a licence but that turned out to be not the case.