Because the Swiss international driving permit is issued under the 1968 road regulation, it is not accepted in Thailand. Here I describe the process of getting a temporary Thai driving License, when entering Thailand from Poi pet / Aranyaprathet.
As at January 2017:
- Obtaining documents from tour operator:
The „temporary permit“ and the „residence certificate“ are needed. - Translation of driving license:
A translation of the domestic driving license is needed and it has to be notarized by an embassy. We did that at the Swiss Consulate in Vientiane (17.963641°, 102.605627°). We had to look for ourselves for an licensed translation office and found one here (17.951934°, 102.62273°). - Health certificate:
Available at hospitals or dispensaries. Cost: 50 Bath. We got ours at a dispensary in Sa Kaeo (13.818934°,102.070123°). The process took us 5 minutes. The certificate looks like this:
Medical certificate
- Copies:
of Thai visa, entry stamp, first page of passport and temporary permit are needed. There is a copy shop at the DLT in Sa Kaeo. - Visit the DLT:
Don’t trust google maps to find the DLT in Sa Kaeo. The location is wrong. The correct location is 800m away on the right side of the road, if moving away from the center (13.8401890°, 102.0467100°).- We gave our dossiers to the nice guy at the information desk, first floor. He checked all the documents.
- When all was good, he sent us to counter 10, where we were told to come back at 12:00.
- At 12:00 we had to watch an information movie about traffic in Thailand (1 hour) and do an test for reaction and color vision.
- After we passed the tests, we paid 210 Baht per persons, they made a picture and printed the driving license!
Location Dispensary and DLT: