Thai diplomat in Vietnam says showing money to get visa stamped abnormal

The counselor at the embassy had a meeting with the Consular Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on issues regarding the customs rule requesting that Vietnamese tourists prove they are carrying US$700 or 20,000 baht to be allowed to enter Thailand from Cambodia at the Poipet border gate, according to the source.

As Vietnamese and Thai tourists currently enjoy visa-free access to each other’s countries for 30 days, it is abnormal to have them provide a proof of funds, the counselor said.

The Thai Foreign Ministry is reviewing the customs rules at the international road border gates in Thailand and will release its official response to Vietnam’s Consular Department in the shortest time possible, he said.

Tourists concerned

The wave of protests against what Vietnamese tourists believe to be a discriminatory customs rule still continues among holidaymakers since Tuoi Tre first reported the issue on Tuesday.

In complaints sent to the newspaper, many holidaymakers recounted how they were “offended by the unreasonable customs rule” at Poipet.

Besides having to prove to immigration officers at the border checkpoint that they are carrying $700 or 20,000 baht, Vietnamese passport holders are also required to pose for a photo while covering half of their faces with the money.

Local travel agencies, meanwhile, are busy contacting their Thai partners for clarification over the issue, and at the same time persuading their Vietnamese customers that they will not be “insulted” at Poipet in an effort to keep them from canceling their tours.

“Some customers who booked tours to travel by road to Thailand from Cambodia in the last week of this month have demanded to switch to traveling by air,” the director of a tour organizer in Ho Chi Minh City toldTuoi Tre.

“We had to persuade them that it would be costlier to fly to Thailand and reassure them that they will not be insulted by the customs rule to make them change their mind.”

The controversial rule mostly targets Vietnamese passport holders who travel on their own in a bid to prevent them from illegally staying in Thailand and working without a permit, Chutathip Chareonlar, director of the HCMC Office of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, told Tuoi Treearlier this week.

Employees at travel agencies in HCMC said they had to reassure customers that they are not subject to the proof of funds regulation as all of their expenses are ensured by the tour organizers.

Comprehensibly, those who travel to Thailand without using services from the travel firms are not at ease.

“Many holidaymakers who travel on their own worriedly ask us if they have to provide proof of funds at the Thai checkpoints,” a source working at HCMC-based Tan Son Nhat International Airport told Tuoi Tre.