a few months ago, i made a point of looking into all of the drone laws for the places where i will be traveling this summer. basically what i found is “it is legal to bring a drone here and fly” in every country. but today i did some deeper research and i found out that in thailand and vietnam there are some specific restrictions on flying drones.

in thailand, you need permission from the what looks to be their versions of the fcc and the faa to fly a drone in-country, and you need insurance on the drone to boot. from what i can tell, insurance costs anywhere from $10 per flight to $100 for blanket insurance. but all of the insurance places are super sketchy so i need to do more research. essentially it is probably likely that i won’t be flying most places there because it isn’t worth the risk of losing it.

in vietnam, it appears that i will need to register each flight plan with their version of the faa at least 14 days in advance. i wasn’t able to find any official web page that verified this or provided a place to complete the registration, and from what i gathered, i will need to submit my flight plan in vietnamese. so yeah i am pretty much fucked there.

once i confirm all of the details, i am going to post clear instructions here about the drone certification process in thailand and vietnam. and if i find any other problem areas i will highlight them, too.

and here i thought i would get a drone just to have a good time. the more i look into it, the more involved i realize this whole drone thing is.