SNM095: International Driver’s License

speaker 0:   0:00
don't get sideswiped by an international driver's license on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Convert Kit To find out how Conferred Kid can help you grow your business, save money and increase your relationship with your email list. Head over to serve no master dot com Backslash Convert kit Right now, Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. It's part of my continuing Siri's While I'm traveling, I want to bring up another really, really important topic that we often don't think about what we're heading abroad, and it kind of brought. It came on my mind because someone I met with the other day a young guy, a really awesome guy who was visiting Thailand and told me that he had rented a car while he's here now. I rented a car around 10 years ago, in fact, was either 10 or 11 years ago when I was visiting here in the South. I read to the car internationally, and that was in an accident. Fortunately, I had taken the insurance so everything was able to take care of itself. But I was in a very vulnerable situation. So what I want to teach you about is how to prepare yourself for going abroad and some really important steps to take so that you don't end up getting sideswiped or end up in a very dangerous and precarious situation. You can end up in a prison internationally if you don't take the right steps and you do not want to go to international prison. One of the first things you need to look at if the international driver's license system see getting international driver's license is really, really complicated if you don't know how it works. If you go online and search for international driving lessons, you'll see dozens of websites that offer to make you with the most beautiful, amazing one thing look like passwords, their leather bound and it's very tempting to buy one of those. But those Web sites are almost constantly in the middle of lawsuits and cease and desist orders because every single one of them is illegal. They're all fake on Lee to organizations in United States are allowed to make Riel National Driver's license, every single other one's fake and some of those fake ones they cost 100 200 bucks. The real one is around 30 to $35 you can only get it from Triple A. The other place you can get it is from the 88 which is I don't know that one. I think I think your play owns them. If not, it's the American Automotive Tourism Association. Something like that. That's the name a ta. So it's on Lee these two organizations. So if you're gonna get when you go to the Triple A office, it looks like crap. You bring in a picture. It's like a little do side a piece of paper. It's not fancy, like the other websites offer you, but it's the only Jet one. Now. This does not make you bulletproof. The second step you want to take is hop over the old Internet and look up who is a signatory of the international driver's license treaty. There was a law or treaty from around 1962 or so were 1967 or maybe even a little earlier, where all the country said We'll offer reciprocity for driver's licenses, but you have to have this other piece of paper, so you have to have an international driver's license and your original driver's license. Together, you hacked up both. You can't have one or the other. Individually, they're both worthless. You have to have your American driver's license from one of your home. State is mine would be a Florida license, and I have to have that special driver's license with me. So that's the first thing to understand. Get it from the 1st 2 things, really get it from Triple A, and you have to have both together separately. Each of them doesn't mean anything that will offer you the first layer of international driving protection. The next thing you do is find out what countries are the country. Visiting is a signatory and also what the rules are. Every different country has rules. Some countries say Hey, every time you come into the country, you get 30 days and you can drive as much as you want on your license. But beyond that, you have to do something else. Some countries let you stay for a year. I believe, if I remember correctly Japan, you can stay for a year before we have to get a driver's license. And every country, depending upon your type of visa, will depend upon the tree set. When I was in Japan, I was there on a work visa because I was teaching high school for the government. So that meant my visa wasn't constantly resetting. Where'd you get a tourism? Busy to a visa? When you come back often times that will restart. So where I live right now, it's 90 days. So every time we leave and I come back, I could drive for 90 days if I want that's level to understanding these things. Understanding the rules now some countries driver, the Levinson countries drive on the right. They all have different choir mints. Recently, my girlfriend actually took her final driving test to get her full driver's license. She'd never done before, but we worked through it. We finally got to the permit. You have to get a permanent wait a long time before you could take it, even when you're adult, where we live. But on the island where we live, probably 95% of people don't have driver's licenses. People's people can't afford the boat to be allowed to get one. But because we're foreigners, we don't wanna have interactions with the police were more vulnerable. We don't wanna have that risk in our lives. So we take care of all of those steps and looking at the test questions in helping him prepare for the test. It's interesting how similar in other countries most of the things are sea road signs are pretty international. Most people, if you've been driving for more than a couple years, you can figure out 99% of the signs you see in other countries. When she showed me the list of all of the roadsides, we're only about one or two that I couldn't figure out right away. But the rest of them were very similar, and there's a pretty good internationalization as faras those signs. But when you're dealing with being abroad for longer, you have to learn the process of getting a driving lessons, other countries, and this is something important. I have done this twice Now, in two different countries. I've passed driver's test. I passed the most brutal driving test there is, which is the Japanese driving test and the Japanese driving tests. You have to go through what I can on Lee decided to describe as a course. You combined miniature golf with driving. That's what it would be like. Things pop out there. Suddenly there's a family in a row. There's a dog over there. They have this course that you go around and you have to know where all the tricks are. See. The driving test is nothing like real driving. In the Japanese driving test, you have to have your wheel, your left wheel on the white line that signifies the side of the road for the entire test. Now this is a test rule. If you were to drive like this on the roads in Japan, you would kill thousands of Children every day. You have to drive where part of your car is exactly what Children walk to work in Japan. Some between 80 90% of Children walk to school when they're younger. Now, for some reason, the driving test and this is how things are rules rule, right. The driving test. You cannot drive the way you do in real life. You failed the driving test. If you drive in a way that would keep the Children safe from your life, you feel the driving test. So the way the driving test works is right next door to it. This company that teaches you had a past the driving test has just made a duplicate an exact duplicate of the other course, and you go through and you pay. I don't know 50 bucks and take a couple of lessons, and they help you practice the course until you perfect their course and you learn all the secret rules. See, it's not about whether or not you're a safe driver or not. And the Japanese driving test. It's simply about can you do every single step on this list exactly the way it's supposed to be done. They're not looking for innovation. They're not looking for your ability to adapt to an emergency situation. They would never let you take the driving test on a real road. It's only a test of Can you memorize this course? And I remember I'm even looking back. It's amazing that I passed it the first time I tried it. I totally failed. So I went to take a bunch of lessons. And the hardest part is there's a moment in the course where you are going up a hill that's very steep, and you have to stop in the middle of the hill and you have to stop your car. And because I was taking a test on the manual, have to bring your own car because was Emmanuel. I had to stop the car, pull the emergency brake, and then you have to do it going up. Health start from engine turned off, which, if you've driven a stick shift or manual most people outside of America have. It's really hard. It's the hardest thing you could have to do. And it's especially hard when it's on the other side of the road. See, Japan drives on the opposite side of the road America. So I passed driving test on the left and on the right. This experience taught me that every country approaches it differently. One of the things that changes is how countries do reciprocity. If you get your foreign driver's license in the right way, you oftentimes don't have to take the test. But if you wait too long, they go, Oh, you've been here more than a year. Reciprocity is closed, so there's the period of time where you can drive on direct your driver's license. And then there's a period of time where you could turn that into a domestic driver license after that, have to take the whole test, and it can be brutal. I would never want to take the English driving places. Tasci. In America, almost everyone passes. I almost killed a guy when I was 16. On my driver's license test, the guy screamed, We're almost in a massive car accent. But it wasn't my fault. I simply hadn't seen the person. Person coming the other way was blasting toe. Stop sign that any notice or was it my fault? So he's still in the past. Me in England. Whoa! It's hard to pass most people. It takes 5678 tries because it's so hard to pass the driving test. So every country has these different rules now the reason you want to be on top of your game and really understand how international driver's license workers first. I don't wanna get scammed and waste a bunch of money when you have this inertia driver's license in the sequence look so nice. They have pages in every different language and supposed to be so helpful and supposed to pass on the different rules. Seat the classifications on your driver's license or usual. Where people get confused is like, Oh, do you have a driver's license for driving motorcycles? You only have one for cars. I see this all the time. He will go to India, They go to Southeast Asia and they have a driving license that only covers driving a car. And then they rent a scooter or motorcycle, and often times they don't know the rules for reciprocity. They think they have a driver's license, but they don't. It's guess what. I don't have a motorcycle drivers license. I can't drive a motorcycle American. My driver's license. Why would I be able to do it abroad? This is an area where many, many traveling foreigners leave themselves shockingly vulnerable. They don't understand what they've done they get into a car accident if they get pulled over and they pulled their driver's license go well, this is great. You're allowed to drive a car, the same car going to jail or really what it is. It's fine time when you get arrested in where you run into the traffic police. In these types of countries, you have a period of time where you can bribe your way out of the situation. Now you might say you have, ah, moral issue with bribing, and that's fine. You only have about 15 minutes to make this decision. Most police officers in these foreign countries loosen the culture. I live in many other cultures. They're making 101 $150 a month. They're making nothing, and you get pulled over and you got a couple $100 in your pocket once you enter the system. Once they, uh, once back up, police arrive or you end up in the station. The tiger named to the computer, they start filling out a piece of paper. The price of bribing goes up almost 100 fold. So what would've been a $10 bribe could turn into a $10,000 Reiber $1000 arrived and it might not even work at that point because having someone go missing from their records, that's something that will be noticed. You end up in a very complicated legal situation, and I I have friends who have been caught up in some serious dump stuff internationally, and the price of bribing your way out of stuff can be really expensive. I had someone had to pay $25,000 to get out of traffic problem because he refused to pay the initial bribe. And once you're in jail, that's when things get really, really expensive. You have a lawyer than negotiate. Get him out of jail. You don't want to leave yourself vulnerable through ignorance or through taking advice from other people. Most other Backpackers, they don't think about stuff. When I was in India, I lived in Goa for three months. A few years ago, every single foreigner had an injury from a car, a motorcycle accident. You see all these foreigners and what you'll notice is when people go abroad, they start to think number one. The law no longer applies to me, and number two, the the laws of physics no longer apply to me. Would you drive a motorcycle having never driven a motorcycle before? Would you rent a motorcycle from someone who can't afford to maintain it and then drive without a helmet? People who drive motorcycles with helmets die all the time on my island. Most people don't care how much they can afford them to guess what. Mike, my daughter has an awesome custom. Hello kitty helmet that I ordered online for. It looks really, really cool. It's very cute. She goes to school and none of the other kids where the helmets, they wear helmets. That's fine. My job is to make sure she makes 18. My job is to protect her. My girlfriend also has a really nice helmet. I said, Get the most expensive helmet you confined to get something really awesome, even though on part that's happened. In fact, I'd love to say I was I was perfect with this. We only really reassessed our house safety because we started slacking off and then her dog got killed. So that's what I said. You know, we got to be more strict about safety. We're not. No, we're living on a tropical island. But guess what? Other people are idiots. Dog getting run over wasn't our fault. The local ambulance, right over for no reason. Right in front of my kids. Totally brutal. And I had a moment, I said. They have to use this. It's a teachable moment. I have to learn from this experience of the least. This dog gave his life for something. At least losing our dog hat would have some meaning. And I said, You know, this is what we gotta get, How much for the kids? We've got to be more strict. We can't be I little living. So even I, you know, living abroad for so long now where we live. Before we lived in the city, we always wear helmets because it was enforced because you have to. But we started slacking off a little with island living, but we've kind of dialed in again so that that's no longer a problem for us. We really tightened up safety and made sure that we have things in place to make sure that our new dog can't get hurt in the same way. But we had to learn a lesson the hard way a little bit, so I don't want you to have to learn a lesson the hard way. Just because you're traveling abroad doesn't mean you're suddenly invincible or suddenly above the law. One of the people I was talking to a few days ago I was talking to someone and they had seen another foreigner buying drugs on the street and turned out they brought him from undercover cop. And if you've ever seen Brokedown Palace, you know how that ends. Now if you haven't seen Brokedown Palace and if you have kids, you need to watch that. There's other choices you can watch. Others one about Turkey called, I Think Midnight Express. There's one called Retarded Paradise with Vince. Fine. There are a couple of movies about this and guess what? They're the real deal. You do not want to go to international prison, especially for a drug thing in Thailand, that person could be looking at anywhere from eight years to life. People think it's so cool to buy drugs internationally. Believe me, you'd much rather deal with the United States justice system. Yeah, there's a lot of unfairness, but at least you got a shot. At least you could have a lawyer understanding other countries legal systems before you go there is very important. Here's something that most people don't know in Japan. When you get arrested, you don't see your lawyer for 30 days. Answer to that is that 98% of people who are arrested for a crime in Japan confessed to it. In fact, they recently had a scandal where taxi Driver was arrested and confessed to a series of brutal murders. Turns out the real killer was a serial killer ended up killing 10 or 15 more people. They finally caught that person. And instead of the first guy, why did you confess? And they said, Well, the guy goes, Well, you guys said you would kill me But if I confess, you only give me 40 years So I confessed. Now mixed in police. Think about this. There are a lot of things someone could do to your body that after 30 days won't be there. Interestingly enough, every single day, after a morning of getting smacked around, maybe in a little bit of water boarding at every day at noon, from noon to one, you'll get lunch no matter what and Then at one o'clock, they start writing again. Additionally, the lawyers, the prosecution process, prosecutors and judges I get paid a bonus for confessions. So the entire system, even though there's a very low crime system in Japan what, you don't want to enter it, you do not want to get involved. Your best hope is to get deported. Pray for a deportation, because otherwise you're gonna be on the other side of the wall. This is why I recommend watching some of those movies that show you what really happens when you start playing around with law internationally. And it's not just drug laws. A lot. People mess around that with traffic stuff all the time. You get into a traffic accident, you better break out your money and start bribing people. My friend was in a situation where it was the other person's fault. This lady back into the road and smashed right into his motorcycle in a van. She almost killed him. He she started asking for money, blaming him. She was staying in a hotel in the security guard for the hotel, of course, choosing the local lady over and the guest of his hotel over the foreigner backed up her version of the story. He ended up in court. He ended up at the police station trying to say no. This is what happened there. Lying. Guess what? Doesn't matter. Two against one. You gotta shut up your mouth. He had to pay a bunch of money, end up having to pay, I think, $500 to get out of a situation, which is a lot of money. Because the initial bride was gonna be around $50. He at that point had to pay money to the woman and money to the police. And you can say I would never do that. Well, they'd taken his passport. See, As soon as you interact with the police and you get in trouble, they take your passport. The first thing they dio. One thing that you want to be aware of is will the embassy help you and the interest? Nope. The embassy will help you if the following conditions are met. You are currently famous entertainer. And when I say currently famous, I mean movie star or TV show star on a show. That's on right now. If you're on a show that's in syndication or a show that was canceled five or six years ago. Know if your face position you better be on tour or you need to be related to a politician and not a state politician. You related to, ideally, a senator. If you're related to a congressman, you might get saved, but probably not what the embassy does. The embassy checks in and they will try to actively stop them from torturing it. That's the one thing the embassy will do. The embassy will come in, a Red Cross will come in and we'll check you for marks to see if you're getting tortured. But they will not send you home because you're American. They will not help you out in that way. And that's the first thing everyone says is. Get me the embassy and again watch Brokedown Palace. This is very real. I know that this is a little bit of an intense story. You thought we're just gonna talk about the fun and excitement excitement of getting a driver's license, but you can end up in a scenario. Very simply, You go broad, you don't really think about it, and you get the wrong form of driver's license or you don't have the right. You're in a country that doesn't have reciprocity with American driver's licenses or you have, Ah, car license. How about this? You have a car license and then you rent an SUV because you don't know. In some countries, they consider an SUV to be different type of vehicles. Your license, It doesn't cover the vehicle you're driving, you get into an accident, and because you're you're like I'm in the right and the embassy will cover me. So you know I'm not gonna bribe these fools. I don't care. You know, I'm in the right. You think that being in the right is enough? And now you're in jail and your Children are staying across the street from the prison and you're gonna have to spend 2050 or $100,000 to try and get out. Or you're gonna have to try and pay all the prison guards to try and escape. You've ended up now down in a pretty serious situation. I don't want that to happen to you. Understanding the way things work in other countries is very important. Every time I've dealt with the police internationally I've been on my toes first thing out of my mouth. This this seems like an expensive mistake. How much does it cost to fix this type of mistake? What's the fine? Be aware of the rules where you're going, do everything you can to do everything right, and that will protect you from level one problems. A level one problem is jail or a four figure bribe. Now, the next thing you need to be ready to expect is that when you get pulled over most other countries, you are gonna have to pay a level to bribe, no matter what. I one time passing through a security gate between one city in another city, right? They have guards sometimes guarding. I don't know the entrance from different neighborhoods, neighborhoods that the right word but, like, you know, different bridges or whatever in the same city of different sections of the city. And they stopped me and he pulled me over and he looked at that. I was it said on the back of American license. It says if you move, you have 90 days to notify. You have 90 days to notify your new state or the state where you live if you change address. And he looked at that and goes, well, you use this is you obviously haven't notified me and I said What? First he looked at the organ donor thing I said no are condoning has nothing to do with here. Then he looked at the other one goes, well, you've obviously been in the Philippines more than 30 days. That means you have to pay this. You have to pay a fine. What can you do? We ended up paying a fine of, I don't know, 12 or $13. That's what defines supposed to be. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough change, so I had to pay double to find. He asked for to pay double the bribe, and it happens and you can complain about. And that's a dumb thing to do, because any time you interact with the police, I mean you get a ticket in America is 10 times more than that. Fine, right? Or sometimes 20 or 30 times when I had to deal with the police in New York, that was a lot worse. My experience with the police in New York was very disappointing. They wrote me a fake ticket because they said I was parked on the wrong side of the road or standing on the side. I said, No, this is right. Now the guy goes, What are you gonna D'oh? I know you're from out of town. You're not gonna come back to court to fight the stick it anyways, so that was my experience. So don't pretend that police and other countries are any worse. They all do it. They're all trying to bring in money. It's just in America. There's laws that allow him to do it a little bit more. But it's all the same thing. What I want you to do and think about this with other areas of your travel, whatever you're going abroad, anything you're doing, do your research and do it right. Don't show up with the wrong type of driver's license. So drying the wrong type of car Don't make his own mistakes. Honestly. What? I really recommend us. Don't run a car. He will think it's so cool to go to another country where they don't understand the rules and to rent a car. Whatever. Oh, man. What do you saving? Nothing. I take expensive taxis will, every time I take a taxi cost me two or $3 I'm taking to a taxi somewhere and back every day. So I'm spending maybe $56 on taxi today. But guess what, Wen in the back of the taxi, he gets an accent. No problem for you. In some countries, when people see a white person driving down the road and they see a western driving down the road or they see that rental car sticker down the road, they will throw one of their Children in front of your car in the hopes of the child would be seriously hurt. Hopefully not killed but the child be super her in front of your car and you are gonna have to pound the nose. Every country has different rules for, but in many countries they try and figure out how much money that child would over and over its life, and that's we have to pay. So if you run over a doctor, it's way more expensive than if you run over a janitor because they do a mathematical calculation of life. Now that's some countries. Not every country does that. They all have different rules. But don't be surprised when you go to a poor country. And even if you're driving a motorcycle, someone shoves, Ah, cram or a baby carriage in front of your motorcycle or your even your Vespa goes for them. It's a massive payday. Yeah, there, kid gets hurt, but they got seven other kids now the rich I love living international love traveling abroad. But as I've gotten older, I've become a little more security conscious, and I want to pass some of that knowledge on to you so that you don't have to learn the hard way. And if you pay attention to these lessons, you don't have to get run over by an international driver's life. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's bestseller, serve No master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. So you just listened to another amazing episode of the serve? No master podcast. Make sure to subscribe, and we're back tomorrow with another amazing episode.