tso310

2 hours ago, ololosha said:

I can't wait till Friday. If it's released on Friday it means I have few hours to rebook tickets/Sha plus and change the QR code for my TP in the embassy (as well as thousands of other people, which is just impossible timewise) to enter Thailand by the 10th...

I would start the process immediately if I were you. 

16 minutes ago, ololosha said:

Do we know if any meeting takes place today?:) 

I'm basically sitting now and thinking whether to rebook tickets and sha plus hotel for 1 night in Bangkok to enter Thailand before 10th or just relax (i doubt i can now) and wait. 

Today (5th) Thai time. I was surprised there was no announcement on the 4th. If a decision is made I would expect it by 15:00 Thai time. Technically rebooking etc can be down in a couple of days. There may be issues of changed details with existing issued Passes. You know what Thai bureaucracy is like. How you rebook your flights is another issue. Do you take a hit and cancel the existing booking and make a new one or rely on the airline to move the day ?

6 hours ago, JackGats said:

Not sure if entry with 7 days quarantine is possible, much less how to get your quarantine booking approved.

Basically the only way to enter Thailand would be through the Phuket sandbox after Jan 10. At the time of writing it is a proposal only put out by Anutin's ministry. Ithink its a certainty that Test and Go will remain suspended until February, at least. The issue is with the 90,000(?) people with approved Thailand Pass QR codes. The government has already said it will honour the approved passes and also publicly said, last week(?), that the rumours about Jan 10 arrivals cut-off were not true. Anutin possibly started these rumours along with his stating he was prepared to become the next PM is Prayuth stood down. I got a feeling that there is not a lot of love between the two and perhaps the compromise would be to allow the issued Pass holders to continue to arrive or a later cut off. I suspect we will find out later today after the CCSA meeting.

With Xmas and New Year holidays disrupting the reporting and collating of stats, it will probably be Thursday or Friday before the actual impact of Omicron can be assessed as far as the UK is concerned. 

1 minute ago, madmitch said:

Anyone know what happened to this? Or has it quietly been shelved?

I thought it was going to be transparent to the traveller. I can still remember going to the booth at Don Muang in the 80s to pay this fee. One could always ask a tourist, if you can find one. Probably costs more to administer than revenue received this holiday season.

and it follows that Thai will be the most profitable airline in the world.

1 hour ago, ThailandRyan said:

Yet the Test N Go approval still has not changed for those approved.  Must not be in a hurry.

Its interesting that its nearly 16:00 and no word has come out. I suspect Test and Go will remain suspended however the main argument may be over those pre-approved to enter Thailand after 10 Jan and particularly the number of Thai citizens concerned. The mechanics of flights, PCR tests, hotel booking and allowing the validity of bringing Thailand Passes forward in time is not easy. 

So as I read it, my wife who is arriving from LHR on dear old Thai on Jan 12 and has already got her Thailand Pass, will just require a second PCR date after the one she has on arrival. I also assume that when they work things the details she will require an stay at her hotel for extra money. The rumour is 5-7 days.

Trying to entice Son Heung-Min to Buriram FC for next season ? 

On a UK private facebook group I'm on for travel to Thailand, 90% people who ask querires are on O or O-A visa and for travel from the end of November onwards. I also wonder as the Thailand Pass was not active until the 1 Nov how many of these arrivals were on already obtained COEs. I would would have thought the first real Thailand Pass wouldn't have arrived until this week.

Just a reminder that Chinese vaccines are not recognised. A course means 2 shots of those mentioned below (including a mix) except for the Janssen which is a single dose vaccine.

Approved vaccines

You must have had a complete course of one of the following vaccines at least 14 days before you arrive in England:

• Oxford/AstraZeneca
• Pfizer BioNTech
• Moderna
• Janssen

The day you have your final dose does not count as one of the 14 days.

Formulations of these vaccines, such as AstraZeneca Covishield, AstraZeneca Vaxzevria and Moderna Takeda, also qualify as approved vaccines.

1 hour ago, Kalasin Jo said:

Why is UK on the list? Daily infection rates in England still between 35,000 & 40,000 according to The Guardian.  France, where I currently am living, reported 1,120 new cases yesterday and continuing downward trend. In France mask wearing, sanitising and a Covid vaccination certificate still required to enter all public indoor spaces. England such precautions have been abandoned.

Correct but when you look at the infection figures its primarily secondary school children and adults in the 30-49 age range, parents ? Deaths are being attributed to mainly non-vaccinated although they are, I think compared to France, still too high. A covid death in the UK is counted if a person had been tested positive in the previous 28 days and not if the main cause was due to covid. So an asymptomatic test positive person will end up being called a covid death. In the UK town (130,000 pop) we have returned to, the last covid death was back in March. Masks are worn by many people but I suspect we are not the norm. 

You'll have no argument from me that France dealt with covid far better than the UK. Just look at this mornings UK press articles on a parliamentary report on how Johnson's government dealt with it last March.

14 hours ago, placeholder said:

What comments like yours don't take account of is frequency and severity. It's best to look at meteorological evidence since infrastructure also plays a big role in flooding. paving landscape over will also tend to increase the likelihood of floods.

I don't disagree with you but back then the lack of drainage was cited. Look at the history of Bangkok or should I say the "Venice of the east". Monsoons were very more regular back then and floods were treated with a "mai pen rai". Yes drainage was finally built and look at the 2011 Bangkok floods caused by the drainage channels being blocked up with rubbish. Roads are still built without any reference to drainage. Even aircraft suffered, remember the Qantas B747 hydroplaning at Don Muang in 1999. Forward planning and then the  maintenance of any infrastructure has rarely been part Thai psyche. 

The first itme I travelled to Bangkok I had seen pictures of severe flooding and people getting snake bites. The news report said it was an annual occurrence. Luckily for me when I got there the waters had rescinded. That was 1983. 

22 minutes ago, djayz said:

Maybe buying new aircraft wasn't/isn't the problem. 

The A380s were ordered for the LHR and FRA routes. Thai was making a killing on them. In between ordering and delivery we saw the rise of the ME3. The problem was Thai didn't know how to respond to them. Also service had gone down. Emirates simply took over Europe to SE Asia with a cheaper and far better product which was exactly how they were promoting themselves. The A345s were pure vanity and with Malaysian they thought they could compete with Singapore on the non-stop to the US. The problem was SIngapore has/had plenty of business traffic to the US. Thai, and Malaysian, didn't and never had. I believe Singapore did manage to break even until the fuel prices rose to became seriously uneconomic for the A. Even Singapore had to eventually give them up.

A major reason is the efficacy of the Chinese vaccines against Delta and, as far as I can see, no formal study into mixing other vaccines with them. At least the UK did formal trials using Pfizer, Moderna and AZ. I have not seen any reports of mixing vaccine trials in Thailand so I might be wrong.

This could make Don Muang and Swampy more pleasant places if enough Chinese use it.

Does this mean that previously banned topics can now be discussed or are more topic restrictions going to be put in place ? 

There has been a lot of land for sale because of the jobs situation. With village land you're best off at enquiring in the area you want to live in. You should know by now to be absent from any such meetings and make sure your wife does not mentioned she is married to a farang. Buying rice paddy is cheap and is probably easily available but don't forget the cost of the back fill. We bought 3 rai of paddy and back filled. Sold half of it for what we had paid. No profit but no loss.

7 hours ago, Ventenio said:

Never.  0%.  My body is fine, I'm not putting some strange chemicals in it.....chemicals that might kill me.  paralyze me.  destroy my body, which is perfectly fine right now.  

 

if i don't take it, i have 100% chance of having no side effects.  

 

decades from now you will see I'm the genius.  now, i understand why you believe it must be taken......sorry, i'm not a sheep.

 

14 May 2021    Let the record show, I'm a genius.  lol

Aah you don't drink Leo ! 

My wife and I are back in the UK. I have had the AZ twice, no side effects. My wife had Pfizer twice, no side effects. Some of the stories she's been told by her friends in Buriram Provice, hello Khun Anutin, are just plain stupid. Btw the Bhumjaithai Party is based in Buriram and founded by the Chidchob family.

Anyhow, apparently she will die in 2 to 3 years time because she's had the Pfizer. Well I suppose it makes a change from the AZ killing everyone. 

2 hours ago, mickymouse1 said:

 

Mexican choc for a meal?????????

 

Aka mole sauce. I've had this, only at proper Mexican restaurants, with turkey, chicken, stewed dishes and enchiladas. Never seen it with fish. Actually pretty nice.

On 4/19/2021 at 7:46 AM, Sunderland said:

It will be interesting from many angles to find out the number of excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2017, 2018 and 2019.

As tragic as any death is, how many of the 100+ deaths 'with COVID' in the last 16 months might have occurred with a heavy dose of the flu? Given that most had underlying conditions, it's not unusual for some people to die in a normal year. 

If I remember rightly, more than 300 people died from/with flu in Thailand in 2018. The number last year was surely significantly less as flu all but disappeared.

This had been done last year with figures for March/April. There's a post in the news section somewhere. I think it came from a Thai newspaper. Can't remember the figures but there was about 1000 or so excess deaths for each month. Shortly after the Government dept that posts the death figures stopped releasing them and has not. Somebody mentioned the website recently in a post somewhere on TV.