Originally Posted by some9one
did you pay the "fine" by folding a 100 u.s. dollar bill in your palm and shake hand with the police officer?
No because he was a Texas police officer with a big gun. The US is a foreign country to a lot of us
Originally Posted by RustyC
I've been the passenger at some arbitrary stops. "Road tax" stops happen to farangs in Thailand outside the cities all the time. You're supposed to play dumb on language but you can try to bargain the fine down (B100 or so). And you can't get a receipt or the price goes up, and you definitely don't want to go higher in the chain or the bribes would get bigger.
The 'standard' fee in Bangkok is apparently B200 for farangs and B100 for Thais. Fortunately I've never been stopped but our driver has been stopped for B100 a couple of times. I agree that it's easier to just pay on the spot - a friend of ours got pi55ed off with getting stopped so she took it up the chain and ended up in court. The judge there asked her "Why didn't you just pay the fine to the policeman at the time?" and promptly fined her B2000 for the obscure law that she had broken!