gearbox

I know a few business owners in Samui and they are looking forward to the Chinese tourists to return. The best customers, almost never complain, and spend well. They don't come here for the beaches, they are here to eat and shop. I've personally met quite a few of them before the covid times, glass wearing, polite, educated, many working in the high tech industries. Never seen any of them drunk, intoxicated, deliberately trying to cause trouble. No comparison with the tattoed shirtless helmetless scumbags.

AFAIK AirAsia sells the check-in baggage per kilograms, not per piece, except when flying from/to US. The only limit is individual piece can't be more than 32kg. Recently they introduced extra add-on cabin baggage option as well, bringing the max cabin baggage to 14 kg. Jetstar Australia has pretty much the same options. The charges are per sector, so if you are flying domestic and have more than one sector, it is way cheaper to send it with Kerry, as other posters mentioned.

AFAIK AirAsia sells the check-in baggage per kilograms, not per piece, except when flying from/to US. The only limit is individual piece can't be more than 32kg. Recently they introduced extra add-on cabin baggage option as well, bringing the max cabin baggage to 14 kg. Jetstar Australia has pretty much the same options. The charges are per sector, so if you are flying domestic and have more than one sector, it is way cheaper to send it with Kerry, as other posters mentioned.

How is Thailand aiding Putin? The Russians spend, not make money here. In fact Putin should prevent them coming here if he needs more war money.

Are you claiming that the immigration has no record when you cross the border? They keep a number of data items for each person crossing the border, name, nationality, passport number, flight number, visa type etc.

Yep, the trend started long time ago during the Vietnam war, when the mass murderers discovered Pattaya.

I spent nearly 3 hours on the phone from Thailand without any luck. Any time I called again I talked to a different person and had to start the explanations from scratch. As said wait unless it is urgent.

Ardern's resignation won't change the things much. Few years from now the New Zealanders will still trade 10 lambs for 1 Samsung phone.

I have an Ubank account (both personal and SMSF), had a lot of issues regarding KYC, which I managed to resolve while in Sydney a few months ago after filing an official complaint with AFCA. They are moving to a new backend system and everything is a complete mess. They told me my accounts will be closed and migrated to the "new" Ubank, at that point I'm supposed to get an email notification. This should have happened already, I guess their migration has issues and can't meet the deadlines. My advice is to do nothing and wait the dust to settle down. If you have issues accessing your money and they are not cooperating, file a complaint with AFCA, you'll be assigned a case officer from Ubank to deal with your issues, at least you'll have a single contact, not getting a new monkey every time you dial in.

Don't know about the physical stores in Phuket but you may get better prices from the Bangkok shops, they ship for around 500-600 baht. Probike is one of them, you can chat with them on LINE. I bought 2 Trek Marlin 7 here in Thailand, very reasonable and popular mountain bikes, you can buy some spares for them like disc brake pads from AliExpress.

Indeed, the Russians have the same visa run options as everyone else, if not better....AFAIK they are visa exempt in Vietnam as well. They were the biggest foreigner community in Samui pre-covid, I have no idea what visas they stay on, but is not retirement as most look less than 50 years old.

Simple logic suggests that if 80-90% are infected now, they won't get covid again in "a few weeks". The current covid wave in China probably won't last more than the end of this month.

Anutin got it wrong again, should have looked at his ASEAN partners and not changing the rules and imposing any restrictions. By the time the Chinese can travel en masse their current covid wave would be long gone, now many of them have expired passports and there is not much flight capacity. The smart money and the markets are betting this year SGD and THB would be the best performing SEA currencies, one of the reasons for the THB being that the Chinese tourists are coming back again. Seems it would be a lot of moaning on this forum later this year.

The Indians announced their PCR screening requirements for Thailand and a few other nations before China announced their reopening. This fake news now is getting rehashed and retold in this thread, soon to become a "truth" as one hundred people repeated it. The Indians now started considering other countries like Vietnam, as they don't need a PCR test there when returning. However Vietnam is also not going to screen the Chinese.

Isn't that the way the public servants work everywhere? The world "Teflon" comes to my mind. Warm the seat, deny any responsibility, look out for junkets, wait for the generous early pension.

When you hear from a Murdoch's outlet about the "international community", it usually means the US and the 4 vassal states from the 5 eyes, and a handful of other countries which got coerced. The screening in UK and EU would be pretty much symbolic anyway, almost nobody goes there in winter.

Good move by Thailand, but the tourism competitors from SE Asia are not doing any screening as well, so it remains to be seen where the Chinese would go first. There were heaps of them in Vietnam back in 2019, probably more than 50% of the tourists in Hoi An were Chinese last time when I was there. https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel/southeast-asia-has-no-plans-to-restrict-chinese-tourists-4555675.html

In the end did you have to rent a place or they accepted a hotel/short stay address?

Thailand treats all the foreigners the same way since the country was reopened in July last year. Putting again restrictions on some country or countries could bring back other restrictions like wearing masks or bars being closed. I think we are past this now. Restrictions being applied in fear that the health care systems would be overrun would be an admission that the wonderful vaccines are useless.

Thailand is not known as a country providing free health care to the foreigners, and a number of posts on this web site confirm that. In fact I can't remember getting anything free here.

Your "facts" are relevant today as much as the Chaweng tide times a few days ago. The topic of this thread is "no special measures for Chinese visitors" as per 01/01/2023.

Your reply was in regards to quality of covid vaccines. My replies were stating my opinion that now taking into account the current covid variants the quality of the covid vaccines is not that relevant as it was an year ago. I'm going to have a typhoid vaccine in the next few days, bus as far the covid is concerned the issue is done and dusted for me, with 3 covid shots and 3 covid cases, all after the third shot. No more boosters. Never had a flu "vaccine", still alive and well.

The study predates Omicron and Omicron was the game changer. We are enjoying our freedoms now not because we had the 10th booster, but because covid did a turn to less lethal variants. We just got lucky this time.

It helps to think rationally. Nobody who is aware that they already have severe covid would fly to a foreign country risking getting hospitalised there. It means these 50% are probably asymptomatic and not aware they have covid. Covid is just turning into a seasonal flu... did we get screened for flu to fly before? I flew to Thailand in late Feb when the PCR screening was still in place - I had to do 3 PCR tests, one prior to departure from Sydney, and 2 in Phuket. Nevertheless I did myself an ATK (or RAT called in Australia) test just before getting to the airport. If the test was positive I just won't fly - it is much better to have covid in Australia supported by the excellent public health care system, than getting detected as positive in Phuket with vague hospitalisation outcome. The Chinese are not that stupid, they won't fly if they have covid symptoms and risk getting hospitalised in an expensive foreign country health care system.

Useless link from an year ago, before omicron becoming the dominant covid variant. The key event for reopening the world was omicron becoming dominant, not the "vaccines" from the big pharma.