We had no vehicle insurance, experienced no tolls and no carnet was required during our time in Thailand. On entry at the Thailand border, customs did provide us with a Simplified Customs Declaration Form for temporary importation of our vehicle with a fixed duration of 30 days. The form is a signed agreement, provided free of charge, to agree to export within the time limit provided else be liable in our case, to pay a sum of 900,000 Baht (45K GBP) if breached. Realising that we would probably want to spend longer we found the following information.
A) Should a vehicle exceed the fixed date, a fixed fine per day of 100-200 Baht is payable (but not exceeding a total of 5,000 Baht), up to a maximum period of 6 months. This is subject to the vehicle owner’s passport still holding a valid visa for the duration of stay.
B) Extensions are possible and can be granted for a further period of 30 days per application, up to a maximum of 6 months. Usually available at local customs or border customs office.
As each of us were holding a 60 day Thai passport visas with only 30 days import allowance on our vehicle, we decided to go for option b) and obtain an extension at Customs for a further 30 days. To do this, we visited Customs House based in Prachuap Khiri Khan (120km south of Cha-am) - the nearest customs point to where we were based. Vehicle, driver, driver passport and all vehicle paperwork were required and checked. The process took only 5-10 minutes, was free of charge, very professional and no hassle - the officials were lovely and we even brought us coffee and water while waiting. We weren’t sure about option A), as we had no-one to ask so decided not to take the risk and instead get our paperwork in order. However, in theory there should be nothing wrong in opting for A) if you are prepared to pay the daily fine which isn’t very much. On exiting Thailand, the TVI form was a standard customs handover process (we could see tons of these forms for foreign vehicles piled high) and while we couldn’t guarantee it, we reckon option A) would not have been a problem.
Other options to consider
C) It would have been easier on arrival to the Thailand border if we had asked for temporary importation to equal our passport duration in the first place i.e. 60 days vehicle import allowance to equal the 60 day visa in our passports. We believe 30 days is the standard grant - but that it would be worth asking for more on arrival (saving any customs hassle or exit concerns later). To support this, a motorbike has the same consideration as a motorcar and we met a guy who managed to get 60 days at the border on entry for his motorbike. He said he had to make a bit of a fuss as the border customs were not keen but they did grant him the 60 day period he wanted before entering Thailand proper.
D) You can take your vehicle to an exit border (without actually exiting) as long as you have a valid passport visa and arrange the vehicle extension at customs there.
E) All else fails, you can exit Thailand and re-enter again from scratch with a new temporary import document.
For latest Thai Customs information, please click here. (if this link doesn't work, try this [url=http://www.overlandwithkids.com/2011/01/in-and-around-ch-am-temporary-vehicle-import-procedures-thailand/]Overland With Kids |

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