Saturday, 5 March 2011

Thai Driving Test - March 18, 2008

We woke early, well about 6.30 so that we could get to the Transport Office for 8 as that was the time Nit needed to register.  We arrived at 8.10 and of course registration had just begun.  Nit was upset as last year you just needed to pay 500Bht and they’d handed you a licence.  Now he had to do a mornings school as well.

But the first task was to fill out the registration forms which required his names to be transliterated into English.  He knew his first name, but not his second name so I was called on to transliterate syllable by syllable.

We sat around waiting until 10 when Nit, and the other candidates were called to go to ‘school’.  What followed was apparently a couple of hours being talked at by the police, a large proportion of which the vast majority of attendees slept through, including Nit.  Still they had ‘attended’.  The first group, which did not include Nit then sat the theory and took the practical test.  Nit appeared and we had lunch.  Then he returned, sat the theory and returned reporting he had passed.

Then the practical which involved driving up a ramp, stopping, doing a hill start, driving between a row of cones, stopping again, and then reversing down a parallel set of cones, then driving forward to get your form signed.  Nit managed this without hitting anything and duly collected 300bht from me to go and get his licence.  Watching other candidates it was obvious that if you did made a mistake, you weren’t failed, you just went round the course again.

Driving licence to the better we headed home for an early night as it was reliably reported we needed to be up at 5.30 for the wedding!

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