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Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

Unless you are traveling to some weird place almost everywhere will accept a standard driver's license if it has English on it.

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Vietnam famously doesn't. You can rent a motorbike without showing any sort of license, but in the most touristic areas (eg Ha Giang loop) the police picks out foreigners to check and get their bribe.

And I have a vague remembrance (take with a whole rock of salt) that foreigners from many countries technically _cannot_ legally drive there even with an IDP, because there's 2 competing IDP standards or something like that. But I'd guess you'd be fine

Yeah, the actual law is irrelevant most of the time, since it's just a shakedown. I did encounter one cop who knew about the 2 different IDP conventions and was able to extract the coffee money even if you had one. If you don't want to pay, offering to accompany them to the station to pay there (and get a receipt) usually works, especially if you're out in the countryside, since they don't want to give up on the chance to stop a bunch of other people. If you do choose to pay, they'll usually share your license plate on a WhatsApp group with the other local police if you ask them to, so you won't get hassled again for the rest of the day.

Not sure why but I'm quite tickled by the existence of WhatsApp groups to coordinate who's paid their bribe for the day. I think it's the thought of breaking the law being done in an orderly way.

You may enjoy the second image in this article, of looters forming an orderly queue and making sure not to obstruct the pavement while doing so:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023924/London-riot...

Interestingly, the article complains about the looters using BBM to communicate, which is a bit of a blast from the past.

Two 'weird' places I have visited this year that required an IDP were Japan and Taiwan.

Indonesia and Sri Lanka require it too.

Japan.

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