Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are posing the question "do foreigners need to carry their passports all the time here in Thailand?" This is kind of one of those things a few years ago, was a bigger issue. I think especially during this present high season this is not going to be something Immigration is going to be all over people about. That said, it's always been my rule of thumb and before I became a Thai citizen, I always had a Thai driving license although I have never driven in Thailand, I just used it as an ID or I always had a copy of my passport, and my latest visa on me at all times. My opinion that is not a bad idea. In the era of smartphones, I think a photo of one's photo ID of their passport as well as their visa is also not a terrible idea either.

I actually created an app specifically for this purpose, the Immigator App. I will probably go ahead and dust that off now that we have kind of come around the dark side of the moon with respect to this pandemic situation and maybe roll that back out because I designed it specifically for this purpose. It is kind of like a wallet to keep your travel documents in so that you can just sort of immediately pull it up if you need it or if God forbid you lose your passport or it is stolen or something you have got copies of it sort of even a duplicate of it out there in the cloud.

So, the thing to take from this video though is No, don't fret greatly if you're walking around without your passport it is not going to be the end of the world. But, it is probably not a bad idea if you have got a smartphone just take a photo of the ID page of your passport and a photo of the Visa stamp that you got stamped in on, your latest one that keeps you in status up to the point that you are in Thailand. Not a terrible idea as well if you don't really like doing that on your phone maybe have a have a hard copy of it, just make a copy of both the ID page and the Visa page, fold it up, keep it in your wallet, keep it in your purse, whatever. If the need arises and it very likely won't where somebody wants to see proof of your status in Thailand, you just pull that out and say look I don't carry my passport on me for obvious reasons here is my travel documentation and in most cases I think that is probably not going to be a major issue.