The one-page card every traveller should carry.

Why a card, in 2026

Every adult in the household has a phone, and in the moment that matters the phone is in the other bag, out of charge, locked by a child, or in the hands of somebody who is too distressed to type. The families who have needed help in Thailand have almost never been the principal; they have been a grandmother alone in a hotel room, a teenager separated from the group at a mall, a nanny at a beach with two children and no Thai. A card in a pocket, in Arabic and English, with Thai script for the addresses, works for all of them and needs no battery. We print one for every adult, every older child, and every driver, and we laminate it, because it will be carried for three months.

The card is deliberately short. A card with thirty numbers is a document, and documents are read later. Ours fits on one side: the office coordinator, the national emergency and tourist assistance lines, the hospital the family is registered with, the hotel or villa address in Thai script, the family's embassy, and one number at home. Anything else goes in a separate folder that nobody will open in a crisis and everybody will be glad exists afterwards.

The national lines

Thailand operates a small set of national emergency numbers, and the ones that matter to a visitor are the general police emergency line, the medical emergency line operated by the national emergency medical service, and the tourist assistance line run by the Tourist Police, which is staffed to handle foreign visitors and is the one we tell families to memorise. The Tourist Police are a distinct service from the ordinary police, they exist specifically for visitors, and they are the right first call for theft, loss, a dispute with a vendor, harassment, or any situation where a family needs a report and does not know how to begin. English is available on that line; other languages are handled through interpretation and are not guaranteed instantly, which is another argument for the driver being reachable.

For a medical emergency in a city where the family is staying at a private hospital's doorstep, our standing advice is to call the hospital's own emergency and ambulance line rather than the general service, because a private hospital ambulance goes to that hospital, where the family's file, its interpreters and its international department already are. That is a preference, not a rule: in a genuine collapse, in an unfamiliar place, or on a road, the national medical line is the correct call and speed beats preference. Both numbers belong on the card, in that order, with a note in plain language about which to use when.

• National police emergency line.
• National medical emergency and ambulance line.
• Tourist Police assistance line for visitors.
• The private hospital's own emergency and ambulance number.
• The hotel or villa front desk and the duty manager's direct number.
• The office coordinator, available at any hour.
• One family number at home who is briefed and awake in a different time zone.

The hospital line, arranged before it is needed

The single most useful thing a family can do before travel is to be known to a hospital before it needs one. Bumrungrad International, Bangkok Hospital and Samitivej all run international departments accustomed to Gulf patients, and Bumrungrad in particular treats a very large international caseload and provides medical interpreters in more than twenty five languages including Arabic at no cost to the patient. Being known means the international department has the family's names, dates of stay, hotel and any existing conditions on file, and that the family has the direct line to that department rather than a switchboard. It costs nothing and converts a frightening evening into an administrative one.

Outside Bangkok the same principle applies with different institutions: Phuket, Samui, Hua Hin and Chiang Mai all have private hospitals used to international patients, and the family should know the name, the address in Thai script and the drive time from where it is staying before the first day out. For a family travelling for treatment, the hospital's own international coordinator becomes the primary contact and belongs on the card in place of the general number. Note what the card does not contain: no diagnosis, no medication instruction, no clinical advice of any kind. That belongs with the treating doctor, in the file, and nowhere else.

Embassies and consulates: how to get this right

Every Gulf state maintains a diplomatic mission in Bangkok, and the missions of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman are all represented in the Thai capital, as are those of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Bangkok's diplomatic quarter is concentrated in the Ploenchit, Wireless Road and Sathorn areas, though individual missions sit elsewhere in the city and consular sections sometimes operate from a separate address to the chancery. We deliberately do not print addresses, telephone numbers or hours in a guide like this one, because embassies relocate, change consular hours, move their emergency lines and update their appointment systems, and a wrong number on a card is worse than no number at all.

The correct method is short. Before travel, look up your own country's embassy in Bangkok through your foreign ministry's official website, take the consular section's telephone number and the out-of-hours emergency number, note the address including the Thai rendering if the site provides it, and check whether your ministry operates a travel registration service for citizens abroad, as several Gulf foreign ministries do. Write those onto the card yourself, and re-check them before each trip rather than reusing last summer's card. A consular section can help with a lost passport, a death, a serious arrest, a hospitalisation and contact with family at home. It cannot pay bills, cannot get anyone out of a legal process, and cannot act as a lawyer, which is worth knowing before the call rather than during it.

What else the folder should hold

Behind the card sits a slim folder, held by the coordinator with a copy in the room safe. Passport identity pages and entry stamps for every traveller. The travel and medical insurance policy number, the insurer's twenty four hour assistance line and, critically, the pre-authorisation procedure, since a private hospital will ask for a guarantee of payment and a family that cannot produce one pays first and argues later. A list of current medications by generic name, since brand names differ between countries. Any allergy, written plainly. The flight record locators. The villa or hotel booking confirmation with the manager's name. And a single page in Thai script giving the address of the accommodation, which is handed to a taxi driver and ends every conversation about directions.

Rehearse it once

On the first evening we ask the family to spend five minutes on three questions. If you were separated from the group in a mall, who do you call and where do you wait. If someone were unwell in the night, who do you call first. If a child were unwell and the adults were out, does the nanny have the card, the address in Thai and the coordinator's number. Five minutes at the start of a three-month stay, and the answers hold for the whole summer.

Emergency numbers, consular contact details and hospital arrangements change without notice. Verify the current national emergency and Tourist Police numbers with the Tourist Police of Thailand, verify your embassy's consular and out of hours numbers through your own foreign ministry's official website, and confirm hospital contacts directly with the hospital's international department before travel.

This briefing is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Thai rules change frequently and individual cases differ. Verify current requirements with the relevant authorities, including the Immigration Bureau, the Board of Investment, the Land Department, the Department of Business Development and the Revenue Department, and take advice on your own facts before acting.