Originally Posted by
AMRivlin
not sure what you are saying, but the departure tax is not levied for transits. If you dont go through customs you will not pay it on departure. If you do go out to the city, you will have to pay it in some method.
Originally Posted by
sfvoyage
In the 'old' days, that's true. However, I thought as of this month, BKK has joined most other modern airports in having the airlines pre-collect departure tax at ticket issuance.
In theory,
sfvoyage should be correct -- now that the tax is collected when the ticket is issued, and payment is verified by the airline rather than by the hole-punchers, transit passengers should be free to pass through customs if they so desire, without having to pay 700 Bt for the privilege. (During a long transit someone might actually want to try to rush into town, but even during a brief layover a trip "landside" might be useful if one wanted to buy something ordinary, rather than just the overpriced King Power luxury goods available airside.)
Has anyone tried this to see whether it's possible? If the hole-punchers are totally gone, I guess it must be doable -- who will try to collect money from you if you already have a BP and there's no tax checker in front of immigration? (I'll have four hours in BKK next week, so this is of more than academic interest to me.)