And if you want to stay updated, subscribe to our daily RSS Feed or follow our stories on Twitter! Thanks everybody!
Since a couple of years back, when i was once lucky in my life and won one of the first available DVD players, i slowly traded my VHS tapes against DVDs, being a real movie lover and creating a wonderful DVD Collection including more then 500 movies of all genres and countries.
Then i decided to move to Singapore and until my Moving Company Operator went through my inventory list, everything was ok. The we reached the entry “500 DVDs” and his eyes got bigger and bigger…”We might have a problem there…”
The Collectors Horror
As so many things in Singapore DVDs are bad in the first place, they are able to cary information, movies or whatever you put on them that is not “in line” with the Singaporean idea of information that Singaporeans should see/get.
Means, if you intend to import more then the usual amount of DVDs the average traveller carries in his big (which 500 DVDs definately are), the customs will put their hand on your movies and start, what in the end forced me to leave my treasures behind.
(Read: Singapore Customs Regulations)
Paying Others To Watch Your Movies
Every DVD gets a general tax surcharge in the first place, and even if that surcharge is not higher then 3$ or 4$, when you arrive with 500 DVDs in your bag (or container) you can easily calculate how insane this would be.
Now, every of your movies must be named on a list and if there are titles that are not (yet) on the official list the customs check on censored or forbidden movies, the movie gets watched. By the custom officers. And you pay them. And if they decide for you, that the movie is not suitable for you (yes i lost my sanity on this one as well), then you still pay them for having watched the movie but you will have to either leave the movie with them or send it home again.
An Forbidden Poster
I never really understood the concept of people who never met me before deciding what i should watch and what not, but after a friends DVDs were denied upon reason like “Bare Woman Chest on Poster in Bar, from 1:24:09 to 1:24:10″, then i dont even want to try with my bunch of underground movies.
My friends back in Europe, are happily enjoying my collection now, saving their money off not having to rent any movies anymore…and i am happily enjoying the fantastic program on Channel 5. Who needs the “Terminator” if i can get “Auntie from hell” anyway.
by an Asia experienced 26 year young expat living and surviving in Singapore since years!
Discovering new interesting and strange things everyday, he provides guides, news and tips for how to survive Singapore and how to best prepare for it.
Follow him now on TWITTER and get the full AngryAngMo dose!
Or Subscribe to his RSS FEED and get all the daily updates automatically!
Follow Me On Twitter
RSS Feed
Stumble it!
16 Comments for this post
Dec 1, 2008 at 10:24 am
Welcome to Singapore. Home of censorship, illogical “rights” and no freedoms. Oh did I mention no rights?
Dec 1, 2008 at 12:54 pm
welcome to Singapore Land.
You will realise that in singapore land the more money you have the more you are allowed to do.
Dec 1, 2008 at 9:07 pm
If things piss u off so much in S’pore, y stay? Y not go back to where u come from? I’m sure u would be a lot more comfortable there…
Dec 15, 2008 at 9:19 am
[...] A country that officially censors and blocks the playboy magazines webpage, uses big black bars to cover, actually already covered (not even half exposed) female body parts and has public discussions about people kissing in public, does certainly not allow you to import more unfaithful material. But stop, no need, who cares about playboy.com if there are approx 1 gazillion other (not blocked) webpages freely available, so again, leave your collection at home :) (Read: Why You Shouldnt Bring DVDs To Singapore) [...]
Jan 6, 2009 at 10:05 pm
On a holiday to Hong Kong, I happily loaded up on my Asian DVD collection – and got into trouble at the airport on the way back. It’s so fucking annoying that if I get a job offer in another country, I’d seriously think of migrating.
Oh, and shut the hell up, auntielucia. Singapore’s not the diamond the government wants you to think it is. It’s little more than a stainless steel chastity belt. And don’t even get me started on the hypocrisy.
Angry Angmo: Maybe this might work for you. When I came home after college, I had something like 300 DVDs. I bought a huge DVD album – several, really – and took out all the discs from their cases. The discs I brought back in my luggage in the album, hoping that they wouldn’t be looking out for loose discs, or that even if they saw them in the X-ray machine they’d think they were CDs. I had a backup story that I’d bought them in Singapore and brought them abroad with me – Customs people are illiterate anyway. The cases I mailed over, labeling them on the package as “Plastic DVD cases” (which was true). I assembled the components once they arrived (which was a huge pain in the ass), and I had my collection again.
Jan 31, 2009 at 2:08 am
One more reason to stop my husband from moving to Singapore!!!
Feb 5, 2009 at 4:00 pm
rip them all into hard disk and convert to divx/avi if you want to save space then keep the dvds at home… and oh, encrypt the drive.
Feb 9, 2009 at 7:02 pm
how about bringing some review materials(intended for exam) in e-book format,is this not allowed too?
Apr 13, 2009 at 4:50 am
Oh boy… I ‘m going to move to singapore in may and was actually planning to bring at least some of my over 1000 DVDs with me… I guess I can forget that since I’m pretty sure a lot of them will be considered “bad” for me (I guess I have to leave most of my Anchor Bays, but maybe I can get my Criterions through customs…).
Apr 13, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Oh dear, criterions, 1000 DVDs, doesn’t sound too good :)
As you can see I had the same problem, try to break your collection down to maybe 100 favorites and then bring them over without the cases..or rip them on your PC harddrive
Apr 15, 2009 at 6:56 am
I guess I really will just take about 100-200 DVDs with me… and most of them without the cases. About ripping the movies, I guess this would just take too much time, so I will see what I’m going to do. Or I’ll hide the “bad” movies in the cases of the “normal” ones ;-).
Jun 21, 2009 at 7:19 am
I really wonder why you would want to bring so many DVD to a foreign country. Imagine a Singaporean bringing that many DVDs to Germany. Wouldn’t your customs think he wants to sell counterfiet DVDs later? Plus you need to do some research on where you go and what kind of society there is. Don’t expect that everywhere there’s an open society like in Europe. I stayed in Singapore, too and I think, while in Rome, do like Romans do. I just don’t get people who go to a forein country and later complain how the system works there. You’re making money, taking some local’s job, you should be happy about that.
Jul 16, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Good topic to blog about. Why do people buy DVDs in first place when you can always rent what you want !!..
enjoy
Sandeep
Jul 24, 2009 at 11:04 am
Nino, believe me, I’m not taking some local’s job. I’m here, like many expats, because locals don’t have the skills to do my job. Oh, and before you blub, any major city in the world has expats of many nationalities doing jobs – it’s a by-product of a global economy and people who think otherwise need to grow up.
Sep 3, 2009 at 9:47 am
I shipped my whole collection from the UK with no problems. About 50 box sets, and about 300 “backed up” copies. All labelled in the shipment DVD’s.
I guess I was lucky?
Aug 2, 2011 at 7:40 pm
You can leave your sense of reason and logic when going into a chinese country. They go by rules, not reason – except for HK which was formerly a british colony. Singapore was once a multicultural country, and then, they censored all thought and difference. There’s more money to be made from rule-abiding chinese citizens than thinking ones.
Leave a Comment