cape

A bit more thought, effort and money and this disaster could have been avoided.

Are there any ASQ hotels in Chiang Mai yet? Can a tourist enter Thailand at a Chiang Mai gate (ie not Bangkok, not Pucket)?

1. Lateral flow is sufficient for fully vaccinated visitors. Why? Testing is not really needed once the population is vaccinated, but until then a pre-flight LFT is sufficient. 2. No quarantine for fully vaccinated. Why? Because any positives are eliminated at pre-flight test. 3. No covid insurance. Why? They are never hospitalised for covid (if comorbidities, it can be a different story). 4. Many changes can be made to simplify the permission to stay. 5. A credible plan to restore and enhance the tourist sector, "build back better" applies to infrastructure and staff.

Even before, a Sandbox is is an environment where children play, also where cats do their .. ! But it is exactly and precisely as described in your well-written comment. Exactly. There is no need to quarantine visitors as fully vaccinated. An antigen pré flight test, maybe. Insurance for covid? A total scam and responsible for seriously damaging the Thai economy. I would guess the tourist industry will be permanently damaged and we should get used to the idea that a full recovery will mean a 10% contribution to GDP and not the pre pandemic 25%. What next for the millions of low-skilled jobs lost?

The silly f***ers. Is there nothing they can get right? Killing their own people with stupidity.

Thanks for the usual warm welcome Doc. I will take my millions to another s e asian country - Laos looks nice

How to contact our ambassador ?

Who are the fools who failed to secure the Immigration database?

These days, very few people visit Thailand because they want to, it's mainly workers and others who visit because they have to. These repeated and very expensive PCR tests are quite unnecessary to the fully vaccinated, as is the covid insurance and quarantine. It is regarded as a scam income stream (a dribble really) for the big insurance companies and a lifeline for the hotel trade. According to many, Thailand has destroyed its reputation and poverished its people with its incomprehensible handling of the pandemic. It has killed the goose that lays the golden egg and there will never be a tourist industry like before. Thailand has been late to the vaccination game. It needs to really try and complete this by year-end and meanwhile prepare a new future for a quarter of its economy.

The virus is already in and it's the worst variant - delta spreads fast. The visitors with covid likely caught it in Phuket. There is still only one answer : Get the people vaccinated. Is that so difficult? No, but it does mean spending a bit of money. All Thailand succeeds in doing with these silly scams is to further damage its reputation.

I have a case against a Thai citizen but the four lawyers i have tried take my money but protect the Thai. I won in court but no execution possible

Get the people vaccinated and restore rebuild the tourist infrastructure. Dream about crowds of billionaire visitors, but be happy with ordinary folk. Even backpackers are a plus because although they may not be big spenders, they will give a good account of amazing Thailand, provided the insurance/quarantine/testing requirements can be muted.

I would expect residence for that kind of money and after five years citizenship.

That insurance requirement is the main financial drag on tourism by the sector that interests them : the wealthy elderly. The wealthy elderly have gone elsewhere - Spain, South America. So the question TAT must answer is : how to pull them back?

It's data not dates that counts. The island needs to be 90% vaccinated. 200 cases a day, 3% are severe and 0.4% fatal. How long till hospitals are full? We don't know. Is the island vaccinated? We don't know. When will the quarantine and health insurance requirements be knocked on the head? We don't know. FINAL STEP: When can I walk in, show my passport and vaccine passport and walk on? We don't know. When we get to that last step, shops and restaurants will re-open, Thailand will be open. Then the tourists will come back.

Chiang Mai is supposedly opening from 1st October. China Airways has flight codes that enter Thailand at Chiang Mai. Will these flights resume?

Until the population is vaccinated, the country is effectively closed to tourism. Longer stay, diplomats, workers, yes. But tens of millions of tourists? No. Priority is to get the people vaccinated. That will allow restrictions to be listed. Thailand will be back on amber lists. The unemployment and resentment is very high. Put the people to work building a tourist infrastructure to outshine neighbouring competition. Too much passivity amongst these people Nothing will turn up on its own.

No surprise to readers of these columns. What will help advance are a few compromises: 1. Get the population vaccinated. 2. Only admit fully vaccinated, keep requirement for a LFT (not PCR). 3. Drop the quarantine. 4. Drop the insurance. 5. Restore and reopen the tourist infrastructure. 6. Accept that farang are needed, stop blaming them!: the epidemic is because the govt failed to patrol the borders with Burma (Bangladesh, India) - an impossible task, granted; and failed to keep night clubs and gambling dens closed and failed to shut down internal flights. Once this is agreed, progress can begin.

Tourism is a fifth of the economy. Was. The economy is in desperate straits. Pretty soon, a humanitarian crisis. So the govt lifts restrictions, even indeed red areas. If you are vaccinated, you can move around quite freely. Sinovac is the vaccine, against the delta variant. But the govt keeps up the restrictions on tourists. Most will be doubly vaccinated and in good health, with welfare state protection or similar back home. They are asked to pay hundreds of dollars for insurance of an unknown quality with noguarantee of effective treatments, sit idly in govt approved quarantine hotels for two weeks, face a degraded tourist environment with little mass entertainment as no mass tourism, risk getting infections from local people, on return home more quarantine as Thailand is high-risk country. Yes, check those entering are covid free and vaccinated for their own protection. No, drop all the Thai-company insurance requirements and quarantine hotels. Be grateful to have a few foreign people with money still interested in your once-popular tourist offering.

The TAT sits in its bunker and makes its marketing projections and plans. They won't happen because the pressure is to be always positive and optimistic, not realistic. But the deeper problem is there is no coordination. They sit alone in their bunker making their nowhere plans. What could happen is: - Make an inventory of the things tourists come here to see and do and send to the Ministry of Public Building and Works. - The Ministry assesses the condition of the country's tourist infrastructure and what work is needed to create first class world appeal. - This rehab plan is sent to the Ministry of Social Affairs to work with the Ministry of Finance to mobilise all those people unemployed in the tourist industry, to get to work and renew the tourist infrastructure. - The TAT needs to put pressure on the Ministry of Health to get those people in the top 12 tourist destinations vaccinated. This is urgent, firstly for the people themselves. - The TAT also needs to pressure their bosses at the Ministry of Transport and Tourism to properly organise low cost quality flights and accomodation. - And finally, the government must accept that with or without covid, the current bureaucratic demands on visitors will always ensure that there is no viable tourist industry anymore in this country. Whatever other countries do or don't do, Thailand must cut all the bureaucratic requirements: expensive insurance, long stay quarantine in dirty expensive government hotels, complex expensive visa requirements and so on ... all must go. The culture of the people is wearing thin with outsiders - not happy kind, but increasingly seen as greedy clawing. This needs to be reversed and ex-pats encouraged to return too, so that tourists and foreign residents feel safe and that they are genuinely getting value for money. In summary, we need a joined up approach to mass tourism and if it is high quality tourism attracting wealthy tourists, then a considerable effort must be made to upgrade the infrastructure on offer. Fear is that this is way beyond the abilities and resources of the country and so it will lose its tourist industry and 1/5th to 1/4 of its GDP. Civil unrest will follow on a hitherto unimagined scale.

The TAT sits in its bunker

Message to the Thai govt : change or be changed.

14th