Dubai Forums Dubai Expat Forums Dubai Expat Help Forum

My personal effects are being relocated to Dubai via a company we contract out with. Everything will be shipped in a 20' container dedicated to my goods. I'm in the process of organizing my own checklist (sanity check) of what they are taking.

Big question is my music/movie collection. I know not to bring anything deemed blatantly immoral, but what about items such as violent or racy films? I have a lot of old John Woo / Chow Yun Fat gangster flicks, HBO series (rome, sopranos) and such. Same with music, a large collection covering many genres.

Do I have to worry about having some of my stuff arbitrarily confiscated if customs cracks the security seal on my container? Or is this a very rare scenario?

i brought similiar movies and they opened the box with films in it and passed it thru. plus you'll find most if not all of those movies/shows here already.

It really depends on the officer on the day.

They went through every single box of my shipment (120 boxes), confiscated a few CD's, some games - (Scrabble, etc) and some bronze statues.

Anyhow, the officer that confiscated them left for lunch and the officer that took over, packed all the confiscated items in another couple of boxes and told the moving guys to deliver them to me as a 'welcome to the UAE' gift!

If you have a small amount of DVD's perhaps pack them in your luggage and bring with you on the plane. I have never had my bags checked here after dozens of trips through the airport.

I brought loads of CDs in with swearing, not an issue. DVDs, well I don't have many but as long as they don't contain adult material then you should be fine. 99% of the main Western programmes and films are already shown here, OK sometimes they're dubbed but equally I've heard one c**t and numerous f**ks go out at ridiculous times like 7pm at night on TV here, so they don't check too much.

Great guys, thanks. Relocation company shows up tomorrow morning so a bit of last minute scrambling for me.

I wish you still had time. If I were you I'd buy big capacity external harddisk and rip those DVDs and CDs into it, hand-carry it, instead of bringing the discs (more heavy and obvious of being checked). For more security, hide the directories

Or you don't carry anything. Hook up a fast internet connection, and re-download from Internet

Lesson learned. I lost my 2 big folders (about 300 discs) software/games CDs and DVDs (some original some not though) at the customs (not in Dubai) when shipping it. You'll never know.

Now I'm happy with just 3 small external harddisks with HDD player case (to hook to TV directly) for each, enough for tons of DVD quality movies/series and MP3s

good advice from xty-- just what i did-- much easier

just don't bring p<3n in-- they get squirrely about that kind of blatant stuff

Well backed up all my music on one of the new larger capacity Ipods I bought today. At least I'll have the music with me while my computer is in a container at sea somewhere.

Already figured that about any sort of adult material, but hey that's what bringing the lady along is for right (hope she doesn't read that)?

Sydneysider wrote:just don't bring p<3n in-- they get squirrely about that kind of blatant stuff

as long as we can re-download, that's fine