Thailand on a Spanish Licence — Left-Hand Roads and a Required IDP

Thailand is built for a road trip — coastal loops, mountain passes, islands you reach by car ferry. For a Spanish driver the rules are manageable, but two of them break the easy habits of driving around Europe, and either one can start the holiday with a penalty.

The EU licence stops working at the airport

Across the EU your Spanish licence is accepted with nothing extra. Thailand is outside that arrangement, so you must carry an International Driving Permit alongside your national licence. The rental desk won’t hand over keys without it, and a checkpoint stop without one means a fine. Arrange the IDP in Spain before you leave — it cannot be obtained on arrival. Carry the IDP, your licence and your passport as a set, and confirm the detail through our driving permit checker.

You cross to the left

Spain drives on the right; Thailand drives on the left. That flip is the thing most likely to trip you, and the danger window is your first day — roundabouts now turn clockwise, you pull out of fuel stations on the opposite side, and the instinct is to look the wrong way at junctions. Thailand’s dense motorbike traffic, weaving past on both flanks, makes it sharper. Start on quiet roads, check mirrors with intent, and don’t trust your reflexes until they reset.

Speeds, alcohol and the rest

Limits are 50 in town, 90 rural and 120 on the motorway — the same motorway figure as Spain, so no recalibration needed there. The alcohol limit also matches home at 0.05 BAC, but with routine breath checks, treat it as zero. A typical speeding fine runs THB 500–1,000 (≈ €13–26); work yours out on the speeding fine calculator.

Fuel is around $1.25/litre and the emergency number is 191. The full ruleset is on our Thailand driving guide.