At the entrance to a gaming room in Monte-Carlo, staff check something most British visitors never think about: the passport in your pocket. A foreign one gets you through. A Monégasque identity card does not. Monaco is far from alone in this. In several countries the law separates visitors from residents at the door, and the reasoning behind each rule is different. One goes back to a nineteenth-century attempt to rescue a bankrupt treasury, another rests on religious law, a third came from a government that watched its own population run up debts.
None of this affects anyone at home. British residents are free to play wherever they choose, online included, and the only condition is that the site holds a licence from the Gambling Commission. Working out which ones do is easier with a list to hand. Specialist portals such as Legalbet.uk, for example, keep a catalogue of licensed online casinos available in Britain, including sites that have launched recently.
Here are five countries where the split still applies, why it exists, and what else deserves your time once you are there.
Why Some Countries Let Visitors Play but Not Their Own People
Three motives come up repeatedly:
- protecting residents from debt, usually after the problem had already become visible at home
- collecting money from foreign visitors without opening the activity to the local population
- religious law, which forbids gambling for citizens while tourism policy carves out an exception for guests
These overlap more often than not. Egypt’s rule draws on religion and revenue at the same time. Monaco’s began as economics and has since hardened into tradition.
1. Monaco
Charles III opened the gaming rooms in the 1860s with a treasury close to empty, and the whole plan depended on money arriving from abroad. Allowing Monégasques to play would have defeated the point, so they were shut out from the beginning. The revenue did its job: by 1869 the principality had stopped taxing residents’ income, and has not reintroduced it since.
Passports are checked at the door. The restriction covers venues on Monégasque soil and does not extend to online play, which residents can access freely.
There is plenty to fill a day here beyond the gaming floors. The Oceanographic Museum stands on a cliff above the sea, and Jacques Cousteau ran it for three decades. The Prince’s Palace opens to visitors over the summer, the Jardin Exotique climbs the rock face above the port, and Larvotto is the only proper beach in the country. Nice airport sits around half an hour away by road, so the principality slots easily into a wider trip along the Côte d’Azur.
2. South Korea
South Korea runs around seventeen casinos, and all but one admit foreign passport holders exclusively. The exception is Kangwon Land, high in the mountains of Gangwon Province, where Korean citizens may play. It was built in a former coal-mining district, part of an effort to bring work to a region that had lost its industry.
The logic behind the split is blunt. Gambling is treated as a social risk for the domestic population and as a tourism product for everybody else. Most foreigner-facing venues sit inside hotels in Seoul, Busan and on Jeju Island.
Korea gives you a great deal for the flight time. Seoul pairs royal palaces with night markets and mountain trails that start inside the city limits. Busan has beaches, a vast fish market and hillside villages painted in blocks of colour. Jeju is built around volcanic craters, lava tubes and a coastal walking route that circles the whole island. Temple stays, where guests join the daily routine of a working monastery, are available across the country and usually run over a weekend.
3. Cambodia
Cambodian citizens have been kept away from casino gambling since a 1996 law on the suppression of gambling, which applies to them and not to foreign visitors. A 2020 law on commercial gambling management put the industry on firmer footing without touching that restriction. Locals can still take part in state-sanctioned lotteries.
The boundary has shifted once already. Slot machines were open to Cambodians until 2009, when the government cut off access following complaints about debt and violence linked to them.
Gaming venues cluster near the Thai and Vietnamese borders and along the southern coast, but almost nobody comes to Cambodia for them. Angkor is the reason to book. The temple complex outside Siem Reap covers an area larger than most European capitals, and three days barely take in the main routes. Phnom Penh holds the Royal Palace and the National Museum, along with the memorial sites of the Khmer Rouge period. Further south, Kampot has pepper farms and river trips, and the islands off Sihanoukville still have quiet beaches.
4. Vietnam
For decades the rule allowed no exceptions: casinos served foreign passport holders and nobody else. In 2017 a government decree opened a pilot scheme letting Vietnamese nationals over 21 play, provided they can document a minimum monthly income and do so at a complex built with investment above a very high threshold. Only a handful of venues qualify. For the rest of the country, the original position stands.
The scheme was written as a three-year trial and has been reviewed since, so the current status is worth confirming before you travel.
Vietnam is a long, narrow country and rewards picking two or three stops rather than racing through. Ha Long Bay is best seen on an overnight boat, once the day-trippers have gone. Hoi An keeps a merchant old town of tailors’ shops and lantern-lit streets. Hanoi is dense, loud and excellent for eating. Phu Quoc, where several large resorts sit, has the beaches and the diving.
5. Egypt
Egyptian law permits casinos only inside licensed four- and five-star hotels, and entry is restricted to holders of non-Egyptian passports. Dual nationals are admitted. Oversight sits with the Ministry of Tourism, and roughly fifteen venues operate in Cairo and in resort towns such as Sharm El Sheikh.
Three practical points if you plan to look in:
- the passport is a regulatory requirement for entry rather than a formality, so bring the document itself
- the minimum age is 18 at most venues and 21 at some
- play runs in US dollars or euros, and Egyptian pounds are not accepted
None of that is the reason to fly, of course. The pyramids at Giza sit on the edge of Cairo, close enough to reach in a morning. Luxor holds the tombs of the Valley of the Kings and the temple complex at Karnak, and a Nile cruise between Luxor and Aswan covers several sites in one trip. On the Red Sea coast, Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada offer reef diving that runs year round, with water warm enough for British visitors in January.
Not Always a Ban: Entry Fees, Visit Limits and Other Rules
Outright exclusion is only one approach. Several countries slow their residents down instead of stopping them:
- Singapore charges citizens and permanent residents an entry levy that foreign visitors do not pay
- Japan plans to cap how often residents can enter its future resorts, and to charge them for the privilege, with no equivalent limit on overseas guests
- Malaysia draws the line by religion rather than nationality, as Muslims may not gamble
The mechanism differs; the intention rarely does. Money from abroad is welcome, and domestic participation is something governments would rather keep small.
What This Means If You Are Travelling From the UK
Carry your passport, not a driving licence or any other form of photo ID, if you intend to go anywhere near a gaming floor. Several of these countries treat the document as the legal basis for admitting you, and staff have no discretion about it.
Check the age threshold too, since 18 is not universal, and expect foreign currency to be the only option in some places.
One last point worth keeping in mind: rules of this kind change quietly. Vietnam’s pilot scheme is the clearest example, and Japan’s framework is still taking shape. A quick look at the current position before you fly costs nothing and saves an awkward conversation at the door.
