gearbox

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.

The Chinese don't need to worry about stringent entry requirements by enemy states like the US and UK. The tourist money is better spent in friendly countries like Malaysia and Thailand.

There was a massive thunderstorm in the Bophut area, I think a power transformer got struck but not sure. We lost power until around 11:30 as far as I can see from the security cameras. No issues in Chaweng, it was still pretty packed around 3:30am. There seem to be a lot of people around, massive traffic jams near the Fisherman's village (ring road) and Chaweng, our neighbour's brother had to depart yesterday to Bangkok, the next few days the direct flights are 100% booked and he wouldn't be able to go back to work.

The usual China bashing. The Indians announced the mandatory PCR tests on December 24th, before the Chinese announced the reopening after 8th January. https://www.travelandleisureindia.in/insight/travel-updates/mandatory-rt-pcr-test-for-international-travellers/ This "news" item is quite old now.

Newer condo, gym, supermarket, good snorkeling from the beach...I haven't found such a place in Thailand, or any of the countries around. One or two of the requirements are always missing. For a starter there is no decent snorkeling beach in Samui at all. The remaining 3 requirements can be satisfied depending what a "supermarket" is. If 7-11 and the likes, they are anywhere around the island. If major chain like Tesco or Big C the only 2 places are Lamai and Chaweng, with Chaweng's supermarkets around 5km from the beach. If staying in Samui Lamai seems to be the place fitting the most, if snorkeling is high on the list I would head to Tong Sala, Koh Phangan, and go from time to time go to the northwest part of the island, the only reasonable snorkeling around is there, excluding Ko Tao.

There is a SanDisk flagship store on Lazada, I bought many cards from there. Directly sold by SanDisk, of course no 256gb cards for 100 baht.

I wouldn't say they wasted all 3 years, they avoided lots of deaths when the deadlier strains were prevalent, but yes, probably the last 6 months - 1 year were wasted.

Yes, millions dying and not reported, but you somehow found the truth, great detective work.

As far as I know most of Africa opened long time ago, and many Africans don't have even a single shot of any type of vaccine. Yet there are no reports of mass deaths and crematoriums working 24x7. I had 3 Pfizer shots and had covid 3 times already, looking forward to the 4th time. So the Chinese will be fine with the much weakened covid variants now.

Some of the PFDs can get off the body pretty easily without a crotch strap...so it depends what it he had. Chance of having a proper sea life jacket at Khao Sok is pretty minimal. If you have a medical emergency (like heart attack) the typical PFD is not going to help you much. IMO people need to wait for the coroner report before commenting, the body was found and an autopsy will be done.

Yeah keep deluding yourself that you are the Big Bwana and the natives are queuing to take a photo with you..

The problem with your generation is that many of you haven't noticed that is not the mid 20th century anymore. We are entering 2023 in less than 2 weeks and nobody wants a photo with a white guy or a black guy just because of their skin colour.

His body was found and is going to be repeated....crocs don't kill people just for fun, bodies are usually eaten.. AFAIK there are no croc farms around the lake area, and most of the land around is national park.

Many hotels require a passport for check-in, there is always a risk that they can spot that the most recent visa expired and report to the police.

Still first grade pupils...need to learn from UK. London is "murderer and thief central", the gathering place of oligarchs, present and ousted dictators and so on. Everyone who managed to steal large amounts of money from their own country is welcomed there to invest in property, football clubs and more.