Monday, February 23, 2009

Crossing over to Thailand: Day light corruption

It was Chinese New Year so a lot of Malaysians crossed over to Thailand through the North border. We were heading to Hatyai on a family trip. We stayed one night in Butterworth and had to walk up at 4am in order to arrive early at the border.

Well, we arrived around 8am and still hit the huge crowd. It took us around 2 hours to pass through. We were told to put RM1 with the passport and custom form. It was written no where that we need to pay a fee, but these officers just happily accepted it. On the way back Fabien discovered that other people were not paying RM1 so we asked all of our family members to withdraw it from the passport. Amazingly, the officer asked for it and some of my family had to pay.


The worst part was the day light corruption incurred in front of our eyes. Some people managed to pay like RM50 through the back door and they jumped queue and enjoyed the fast processing service.


Finally we arrived in Hatyai, even Ronald McDonald has the praying gesture in this Buddhist country.


We laughed so hard seeing this sign. Thailand grows and exports it's durian but most of the hotels here ban it.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Bee Ean,

    Yah... if you hold European passport and don't pay (or more like if you look white), then the Thai side don't dare to ask. If look brown/yellow...they will ask, otherwise will give you lots of trouble. Some european just ask for receipt and they dare not ask for it.

    It used to ne RM2. So..looks like there is a discount in bad time ?!

    ReplyDelete