The Singapore Forum

Can you beleive it! If you fly in from Penang you are not allowed to bring in duty free booze.

I had the girls coming! Nothing to drink in the house!! Life was looking nasty short and brutish. Lucikly the girls arrived after me that night and go some but WHY OH WHY can't you bring in duty free from Penang?

Anyone know? Penang is the least muslim of all Malaysian states so it can't be that.

I think you have to be out of the country for five days or something.

Sadly I was.... sob. I know there is a 24 hour ban but not 5 days. Laydee at the duty free said it was because I came from penang nothing to do with timeframe.

Perhaps your reputation preceeded you?

Serves you right for going to Penang

So, where did you and the 'girls' party?

I thought it was a total ban on Duty Free from Malaysia these days?

THey have banned Singaporeans and Singapore residents from buying gin less than 50km from the causeway. Seems that the Msians are getting fed up having to subsidise the drinking habits of tai tai's, expat wives and lawyers

Seriously, I think this is now the case. Seem to recall Neo trying to bring some booze in for one of our parties (because we only had about 40 bottles already) and being told the rules had changed. Googling has limited success, but a few travel sites do mention it.

We had a fab time, went to Clarke Quay for a quiet dinner, met a couple of old and new friends at The Pump Room and ended up in the VIP lounge (read: 80's music) at the Ministry of Sound until 5am, all very satisfactory. Very impressed with ourselves that we could pull enough to get some nice unsuspecting boys buy us drinks and that we could still dance until 5am - all at the ripe old age of 32

Kooky wrote:

Seriously, I think this is now the case. Seem to recall Neo trying to bring some booze in for one of our parties (because we only had about 40 bottles already) and being told the rules had changed. Googling has limited success, but a few travel sites do mention it.

Seem to recall this was the rule when I was doing my weekly trips to KL.

Didn't hamper the booze stock at mine of course

Aliya wrote:Can you beleive it! If you fly in from Penang you are not allowed to bring in duty free booze.

Nothing unusual about that, the restriction applies to all flights from Malaysia (happened to me). The reason is if they allowed purchase some people would go back and forwards all day the way they used to between Dover and Calais. Here's a little trick you can use find somebody off another flight not from Malaysia and exchange ticket stubs unless of course they are buying for themselves. Bod and Kooky are right.

If memory serves me correctly, I thought the rule was always in place and has been since yonkers because travel between Sin and Malaysia is considered akin to domestic travel.

It used to be that you had to be out of Singapore a certain amount of time (48 hours?) but it changed in the last few years. The customs site does refer to it, but I can't find anything explicit.

it changed halfway through 2003, IIRC...

so, been like this for around 5 years now.