controlled goods

[luningning]

Hi everyone,

I noticed that CD-ROMs are listed as a controlled good at the immigration checkpoints.

I have a ton of burned disks (CD-R/DVD-R) as well as store bought disks including music cds and vcds. I'm wondering how much of a hassle it will be to bring these through customs/immigration.

Has anyone had any problem with this? Will I need to declare my disks when I'm entering? Should I leave the pirated stuff at home?

Thanks

[Rose12]

I don't have an answer but I do have a related question. My husband and I have a modest record collection and we were thinking of converting them all to cd to save space and cd players are a lot more common that turntables these days. Would this also present a problem?

[luningning]

I don't have an answer but I do have a related question. My husband and I have a modest record collection and we were thinking of converting them all to cd to save space and cd players are a lot more common that turntables these days. Would this also present a problem?

Hi Rose,

Your question is an interesting one.

My impression after researching this on the Media Development Authority website is that they are mostly interested in pornographic and pirated videos. Almost every question relates to videos and I see no mention of software or music.

Additionally, I found this: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/archive/ ... 82799.html

Basically it says not to worry about it. Someone suggests not even declaring the CDs but I'll admit, I'm a little nervous to take that approach.

I will be flying to Singapore early tomorrow morning. I'll try to come back here and let you know how my experience goes.

[tilly1234]

Hi there,

I had some boxes shipped from Europe to Singapore a couple of weeks ago.
As I didn't want to declare each and every single item individually, we just named it "personal belongings" and specified only very roughly "clothes, cutlery, books, music CDs etc".

Wasn't any problem to get my boxes through customs.
CDs were bought as well as burned. No videos or DVDs though.

I think you won't have any problems!

[luningning]

I think you won't have any problems!

Thanks tilly. I guess I can stop worrying about this now and focus on the million other things I need to prepare

[luningning]

It turns out there was nothing to worry about.

Singapore really knows how to make immigration and customs a breeze. I was very impressed. Especially after going through Manila's implementation: go through security, check in, go pay a fee, check in again, get in line to pay another fee, get in line to show your receipt for paying the fee, get in line for immigration, get in line to show that you got in line for immigration, get in line to go through security again

Anyway, my experience consisted of me simply strolling through the green exit door labeled "nothing to declare". You don't even have to talk to anybody!

[viajera]

it doesn't mean they don't do random checks, though.

rose12, consider saving your music files in an external drive. you can still burn them into cd's once you're here.