[snova]

I guess if you are lucky and the club has not been raided recently, the club may not check ID. Here's a letter printed on today's The Nation by a 50 something farang on this subject.

Police-state tactics fail to impress tourists

My wife and I are in Thailand for about three weeks as tourists. On Sunday, after dinner, we wanted to have a drink at the well-known Q Bar on Sukhumvit Soi 11. Both of us and another friend could not enter the place because we didn't bring along our passports, which we kept at our hotel, the Conrad. I understand that the Interior Minister in Thailand is very eager to prevent underaged patrons from entering pubs and bars. However, all of us are around 50 (yes, 50) years old. Today I read in your newspaper that many foreigners were fined the day before at the same bar because they didn't carry their passports. I have never been in a country where middle-aged, well-behaved tourists are harassed methodically and probably for easy-money extraction like in the so-called Land of Smiles. Nowhere are tourists required to carry their passports day and night because the risk to lose them would be too high, and embassies would be very busy issuing replacement papers. My conclusion is that systematic harassment of tourists who are keeping Thailand afloat by spending billions in foreign exchange here is due either to police corruption or to a moronic policy of a blustering interior minister or both. I recommend the Prime Minister look into this matter urgently and very carefully, adjust the police-state methods applied at present and relieve some idiots from their positions. Please.

Dr Frank Sirninger

Bangkok