Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing passports in Thailand. Do they need to be carried with you at all times? I thought of making this video after reading a recent comment on our channel, quoting directly: "Out of the blue question, when walking around Thailand, Pattaya and Bangkok specifically, do you really need to carry around your physical passport or can you just take a picture on your phone of the first page with photo info and current stamp? I have been to Thailand several times and I was wondering since lately I have been seeing stories about police randomly checking tourists to see if they have overstayed?" 

Yeah it's not so much they are randomly checking tourists. We have talked about this in the past, checkpoints come up every once in a while. Usually there are kind of reasons for it; there is like a big event or there is a situation kind of is brewing where there is like tension around a given neighbourhood or something so the police there is kind of an extra presence and as a result of that extra presence they may ask to see whether you have your passport and your Visa stuff in order. That said, I actually developed an app. some years back. COVID kind of came in and absolutely crushed my soul on that one but I developed an app. precisely for this function which was take photos and everything, hold it in a sort of wallet and it had timers and stuff on it where you knew when your Visa would come up, your expiration date, things of this nature. I may roll that thing back out now that we are sort of back to some degree of normalcy at this point.

But the point I am trying to make with this video is, no you don't necessarily need to carry that around with you at all times. Carrying a copy, a paper copy of your passport photo ID page and your Visa is usually quite helpful even on your phone. If it was me and I am a little bit of a throwback, I would probably just carry around a paper copy of passport ID page and the Visa stamp stamping you into the Kingdom. That should be sufficient for anybody that wants to see it and that's about it. I wouldn't worry greatly other than that. Now if you run into some sort of problem where a paper copy of your passport isn't considered enough, you are probably in a situation where you are being detained anyway. If that's the case they are going to end up seeing your original passport and all that good stuff anyhow. So that is the thing to take away from this video is yeah, carry a copy, maybe even a copy on your phone but if it was me I would carry a paper copy just to be on, again I am sort of old school so that's the way I think of it.