gearbox

See Agoda, there are tons of them, at least in Phuket.

For visa exemption or TR visa they will probably ask for an outbound ticket. You can buy a throwaway ticket to KL or Singapore, but you may find that one way ticket costs almost the same as a return ticket with many airlines. If you plan to go back you can buy return ticket with a free date change if you can find one, my Etihad ticket allows me to tweak my return date for free once, second change is $80.

If this turns to be true it is good news...still not good enough for a week or two long holiday, but viable option for anyone planning to stay 3-4 weeks and more. Vast improvement from my ASQ 15 days quarantine earlier this year. I hope the CoE will go but I didn't have much issues with it back in January.

It can be travel insurance which covers covid. I'm planning to get ACS Global Traveller with 300k euro medical coverage for 8 months (I'm with a non-O retirement reentry permit), as covid didn't eliminate things like motorbike and car accidents. It doesn't cover asymptomatic covid but I have the Roojai insurance for this.

Does anyone know if the rules are going to change for the existing Phuket Sandbox from 1st of November? I have a ticket to land on 5th of November, and haven't started the paperwork process yet. Is the Thailand Pass replacing the CoE for the sandbox? Still 7 days hotel booking and 2 PCR tests? I'm thinking of moving my date to 12th November....I plan to book a hotel for at least 7 days anyway, as the weather in Samui is bad in November, just can't figure out how to approach this in the next week or two.

Me thinks the days of the Non-O retirement visas without insurance are numbered. It is only a matter of time.

I've done 2 more transfers, both came as FTT in my Bangkok bank ibanking. Looks it is fixed for me now.

After a few email exchanges with the Wise support they tagged my account to use Bangkok bank. I sent 2k AUD yesterday from my Australian bank and they arrived 18 hours later in my Bangkok Bank account marked as "International transfer", so whatever they've done works for me....for now. Just sent another 3k AUD, will see how this would come tomorrow.

For me it is....and Qantas just announced that it will start selling tickets for flights from 1st of November. Great news.

Quarantine to be totally scrapped (no hotel or home) in NSW from 1st of November for fully vaccinated: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/regional-travel-delayed-in-nsw-until-november-20211015-p5907u.html

If you are above 50 and from certain countries you may be able to get 10 years O-X visa which may be cheaper in the long run than the 20 years Elite visa. After the first year you need 1.5 mil in a Thai bank, and that could be in a foreign currency account. Separately medical 40/400 medical insurance is needed, but at least you get something for your money, and you can cancel that arrangement and any time, get your money back from the bank and let the insurance expire without renewing it.

I'm not sure how you can exercise your democracy rights here in Thailand as you are not a Thai citizen, and don't have a say how this country is governed. If by democracy you mean the right to whinge, all is good, look at all of the whingers on TVF, they don't have any obstacles and issues.

Did your doctor tell you you can't take Sinovac and Sinopharm? They are older type vaccines and should be the safest, yet not so effective. The Chinese influence is likely to increase in the next 20 years in Thailand, as the Chinese economy gets bigger and the countries around are more interconnected. You may to bake this into your 20 years time frame, as you seem to have issues with the China and the Chinese. Personally 20 years is too long to do any reasonable planning for Thailand, I would go to the marriage extension path. Things may get worse, or better, you never know.

I still can't figure out why they call them "golden years". Nothing golden about them. Much better to be 20 and broke.

Just got an email regarding my case and they transferred the money to my Bangkok Bank account via their "pay out" partner Kasikorn bank. They advise that I can get a FET statement if I go to the nearest "Kasikorn Bank International Trade Centre", whatever that is, and Kasikorn may charge me an administration fee. Looks like it is time to find another provider.

Got email "Transfer sent" 10am BKK time today, email "Money received" 1AM BKK time today. Transfer from an Australian bank.

Looks like the issue is still there, I did a Wise transfer in the last 24 hours and came with tag "Interbank Transfer via SMART". Previous transfers came with "International transfer". This is my Bangkok bank account. I did an interactive support chat with Wise and they are going to look at the issue. I sent them a link of this thread to see how many people are affected.

With the current level of restrictions the sanboxes can't compete with the Mediterranean destinations. I was in Greece for a few weeks and the only things I had to do is to fill in an online form and show my EU covid certificate. No CoE, multiple PCR tests, etc. With the northern winter approaching the odds are better for Samui and Phuket, but not by much. Still a lot to be done to vaccinate the country to acceptable risk level. Maybe January/February the tourist inflows can improve reasonably.

US and Australia now accept Sinovac for entry. In fact Australia should accept unvaccinated visitors without quarantine too, once we reach 80-85% full vaccination rate...pollies were telling this about an year ago.

Failed about what? The ordinary Thais absolutely don't care which vaccines are approved for UK entry. It is a case about UK shafting its own citizens.

Where your brother gets his figures from? According to NYT tracker UK is 67% fully vaccinated, heaps of countries have better vaccination rates. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html

Thanks for sharing your experience, I'm coming back to Thailand in the Phuket Sandbox early November. I'm planning to spend all 14 days in Phuket as the weather in November is not good in Samui. My gf will come there and will bring me my kayak, it would be far better experience than the ASQ in Bangkok. What visa did you use to come back and did you have to provide 40/400 health insurance for the CoE in addition to the 100K Covid insurance?

Nope, these insure anyone, and World Nomads was doing the same too, but they suspended the cover after the Covid came. If you go to the ACS web site to get a quote, you can choose your country of residence, this is where you are going to get evacuated if need to. If you started your trip already, (like you are already in Thailand), there is a waiting period of 8 days for benefits. They are all max 365 days, you can get a new one after that. However they have a fairly low cut-off age - ACS is 66 years, Safetywing 69. https://safetywing.com/nomad-insurance/faq All these are TRAVEL insurances, if you have cut the ties with your home country and you live in Thailand permanently and is your home this is not going to work. You can't be evacuated from Thailand to Thailand. All travel insurances limit their exposure by evacuating you to your country of residence where their coverage ceases. You need proper medical insurance in this case.