Woke to Sounds

Is it really only 13 hours? That seems ambitious to me. Hanoi to Vancouver via Tokyo is 14 hours.

What a terribly callous thing to say, especially about the guy's mother. Consider yourself lucky if you never know grief.

Wonderfully diverse geography, rich culture and history. No beef with the average Joe. Chinese characters (the written script) are a work of art and it's a wonderful language. Chinese tea is the best. The public infrastructure in China puts the West to shame! Con: many of the big Western internet companies are banned, so it's a pain to use Google, FB, etc - always logging in / out of VPNs. Yes I have lived there.

I'm afraid this was never about good sense and reason. A deadly virus of questionable orgin wreaked havoc round the world. The grief and loss at all levels is astounding and so very sad. I know of someone who passed from the virus and someone else who passed from the jab. Where were flight bans when we needed them? Why were small businesses gutted? Gov'ts pounced on it as leverage to hasten their social engineering agendas - particularly in the West. Most folk will never smell the coffee.

Why not instead open the floodgates to immigration like Canada is doing? 500,000 a year at last count. At least Thailand has affordable housing and much better weather.

Fourteen days? Buddy, I wish. I'm now at business day 27 .... and still waiting. Fourteen business days would be quick service. Three things are clear to me now: 1) I will never again apply for a Thai tourist visa; 2) Canadian tourists are not any priority whatsoever; and 3) I have banished any thoughts of ever retiring in the country. If a simple tourist visa application has been this much hassle (yes, stupid questions online too) I can only imagine the nightmare of bureaucracy and paperwork and nonsense involved to try to retire there. No thank you. I'll spend my future money elsewhere.

So 23 days after submitting my pprwork for the SETV, the Thai embassy in Ottawa Canada today emailed me asking for further info. They need "a copy of the Thai ID of the owner" of the guesthouse where I'm staying upon first landing in Thailand. Looks like the confirmation email from the guesthouse (that I submitted to the embassy confirming a multi-nights stay) wasn't good enough. So, I emailed the guesthouse asking for this Thai ID, which to me seems intrusive and rather silly, all things considered. Anyone know if this is a common embassy request? Waiting to hear back from the guesthouse......

Stayed at Jimbaran Beach area, south of the airport, in 2016. Top shelf hotel. It was nice. Then I went to the beach at Jimbaran Bay. Couldnt enjoy the waves because the water was like a plastic soup, so much plastic pollution. My legs kept getting tied up by plastic bags and tarpaulins. The development in the area was insanely over the top. Too much traffic, nowhere to walk safely. Imagine the area south of Jimbaran is well and truly overdeveloped by now. No desire to go back, but perhaps other parts of the island are more sedate... and cleaner?

@Trip Hop No worries. Mine's not yet sorted. Applied online from Canada, it gets processed in Ottawa. The Thai consulate site in Ottawa says "up to 25 days to process." Other nationalities seem to get theirs sorted in less than a week. I guess Canadians are at the bottom of the pile as far as foreign tourists go....

SETV, correct? May I ask where you applied from? Sent mine from Canada 29 Oct and still waiting. Day 12 now. Ridiculous.

The book Wild Swans by Jung Chang. Great read and tells you everything you need to know about the CCP. Of course she is persona non grata in CN and the book is banned. Says it all.

Thanks for the info. I submitted my application for a SETV October 29th, also from Canada, and Ottawa is processing it. Site said 25 business days. Fingers crossed they ain't too backlogged.. My flight leaves Canada January 9th.

Quality tourists?

UPDATE: To my surprise I didn't need to upload a bank statement 😜 Wonder if the application process for Canadians was modified when the site went offline for maintenance yesterday? They asked me for only flight tickets and proof of accommodation. Had to send to Ottawa embassy, unfortunately. Was hoping for Vancouver because I heard faster processing times. As it stands, 25 business days to process according to embassy site. Wonder if they'll bust my b@lls over accommodation. I sent only my first 11 nights (nothing else booked yet because, duh..... traveling!) Will update.

Seems to me in lockstep w those certain govts fawning over the ideologies of the Schwabinator, the whole "you'll own diddly, eat bugs and smile" crowd. They can't force you to stop traveling but they can price you out of it. Or shame you out of it.

Don't forget the so called mentally ill. I've often wondered if Kanada - like Aus and NZ - are test labs for, you know, the "whole build back better" and "you will own squat, eat bugs and smile" agendas. At the very least, all that money and manpower into a euthansia programme smells like population control to me. I read Brave New World in high school. Didnt expect to be living it.

MAID = Medical Assistance in Dying. Shortages of GPs, long wait times for specialist treatment BUT plenty of money for euthanasia! Expanding like McD's. Woe Kanada.

Paradoxical isn't it. Cry over lack of tourists but then make the evisa process unnecessarily intrusive and cumbersome. If I wasn't going for personal / family reasons I'd give it a pass altogether. The SETV application asks for only the most recent month's bank statement, at least in my case.

@Des1 May I ask if you flew Air Canada? I heard rumours of AC hassling passengers at the gate if no RETURN ticket is booked back to Canada - even if you have a tourist visa and an onward ticket out of Thailand to a neighbouring country!

Thanks to everyone for their input. I talked w my bank today. October monthly statement available in a few days, so I'll submit that.

I hear it's been a nightmare for many of those applying from the UK. Hopefully the one for Canadians will be less onerous.

Yes you do. I did that too at the Vancouver consulate - 15 years ago. It was easy peasy. The clerks were friendly and welcoming. Now everything has gone online via the eVisa. Personally would rather deal with people and the postal system but it is what it is.

Hi folks. About to apply for my SETV from Canada. Can I submit a bank statement from ANY month in 2023 or will the system accept only the current one at time of applying? (In my case, October 2023.) I checked out Bob Sultan's excellent YT video from last year but it wasn't clear to me how recent the bank statement needs to be. Not wanting to start my application till I've gathered all info. Thanks

But if you say any of what you wrote in Canada you are pounced on, declared "racist" and immediately canceled.

@Liverpool Lou Yes finally reached them by phone today. Thank you sir! Glad to hear they survived the pandemic.