We have an early start with our tour guide Win in our bus to head to the port of Laem Chabang as we have an appointment with our shipping agents and the Thai customs officials to do the paperwork that will enable us to get our cars through the process of obtaining a temporary import of vehicle permit.
The drivers all sign copious documents which are bundled up and sent upstairs for checking. We are told that they will probably be finished by about 2 pm and they would call Win. So while we are waiting we head to Pattaya Beach for coffee and lunch.
At 2 pm en route to the warehouse where the cars are stored Win gets a call to say they are not finished & it will probably be another hour before we can arrive. So we stop at another mall where there is a Starbucks and we all settle into anxiously waiting for “The Call”. While we are here our shipping agents arrive with yet more papers to be signed by a couple of the drivers that weren’t quite right (the papers not the drivers), and we were told it will be a bit longer to wait.
Finally we get the call at 4:15 pm to say we can go & collect our cars!
With great excitement we arrive at the warehouse to find our cars in 2 lines of 4 so there is a flurry of activity preparing them to start. All but 1 car started as it didn’t have enough fuel, so one of the shipping agents went off to collect fuel for us and Burgundy finally burst into life.
The tour company we are using organised a banner for us, which is fantastic. When we were all ready to leave we filed out behind one of the tour company vans that led us back to our hotel. It was a very long and exhausting day but we were eventually successful in getting our cars through the Thai customs process in 1 day thanks to the efforts of our shipping agents & tour company who worked with the Thai officials to accomplish this.
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