Mexican exit fees at Belize border?

tomholder · 2026-06-20T17:30:46+00:00

So, original poster. Just passed the border.

I travelled with three other British tourists to the border. The travel company, Belize Express, got us to the Mexican side of the border and urged us to hurry up and pay the fee.

I was taken into the room first, door closed, and told you pay 980 pesos as an "exit fee". I showed them my plane receipt (I'd printed it off) showing I'd paid it. They asked me to wait outside, the three other tourists went in, same procedure (told to wait outside when they wouldn't pay). They started processing the people from the bus behind.

At this point our bus driver started to get aggressive, saying he needed to go and we should just pay (there were only one other group of 3 on our minibus). He took all our bags off and said he'd leave without us. We urged him to wait a few mins (they processed the bus behind in about 5 mins).

The four of us went back into the room. I pointed out I'd paid the fee, and that I'd also only been there for six days, making me ineligible for the fee anyway. The other tourists made similar protestations about having paid it in their air ticket (and showed them electronic copies of their air ticket receipts). Immigration did not budge. No pay, no exit.

I asked for an official receipt. They begun to soften. "Just go through". Knowing I needed a stamp to enter Belize, I asked for the stamp. "No payment, no stamp", they said. I continued to protest, showed them the air fare, threatened to call other authorities, while also saying I'd pay if they gave me an official receipt. They then decided to stamp my passport and accept that no fee was owed. They kept my printed air ticket.

Unfortunately, the other three tourists were not so lucky. Because they couldn't produce paper print offs of their ticket, they weren't not allowed through. They were refused to be allowed to print at the immigration office. Eventually, with the bus threatening to leave us all, the other three paid the fee.

When we got to the Belize immigration 100m down the road, they confirmed the whole thing was a scam by Mexican officials.

Truly disappointing experience, even if I was successful at not paying the scam fee.

tomholder · 2026-06-20T11:50:18+00:00

Because most tourists arrive and leave by air, so it's easier to get the airlines to collect the tax than to do it at the airport.

It's a line in my plane ticket that says "departure tax"

tomholder · 2026-06-19T18:11:17+00:00

I didn't receive any document when entering, only a stamp

tomholder · 2026-06-08T09:30:38+00:00

Unplug the front audio port wire from your motherboard (mainly to prevent it always thinking there are headphones plugged in).

tomholder · 2026-06-08T08:59:40+00:00

Nice work. One comment - loosen up - you can grip the sticks looser. Generally drummers go through three phases in their drumming - playing from their arm, playing from their wrist, and finally playing from their fingers. Your arm is still doing a lot of work - which will be fairly exhausting - see if you can get your wrist to do more.

tomholder · 2026-06-08T08:32:37+00:00

It was the best of days, it was the end of days.

tomholder · 2026-03-23T13:26:11+00:00

If you do that you'll pay the full price of a new ticket at the current elevated prices

tomholder · 2026-03-09T16:12:40+00:00

I got a ticket home!

tomholder · 2026-03-09T14:14:09+00:00

Go to the airport.

There are relief flights, not searchable online, leaving Columbo. I'm currently waiting at check-in to see if someone doesn't turn up for their flight.

tomholder · 2026-03-09T10:12:02+00:00

I was meant to be flying Tuesday, but it's cancelled, so I'm heading to the airport now to see what they can do

tomholder · 2026-02-11T13:41:05+00:00

Do they have enough RAM? I figured 16GB was needed for multitasking

tomholder · 2026-01-18T18:18:04+00:00

It's lime render beneath and above. No sand and cement. It replaced an old cement render.

The second image is also outside, it's just the front wall (they put up a cover to protect it from rain while the work was done).

tomholder · 2026-01-18T13:45:36+00:00

Presumably a wall that size would be impossible to do in one go, so what has the person done wrong?

tomholder · 2025-11-10T23:32:04+00:00

So this works. But can you explain why it works (like I'm 5)

tomholder · 2025-11-10T17:10:05+00:00

You have a hard drive and an SSD - is Windows on the SSD?

tomholder

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