khunjeff

This is a key question, and one that they haven't addressed at all, even in passing. They keep yakking about the 9 trillion direct international flights that will magically start flying into HH airport, but never clarify whether the one million incoming foreign tourists will have to fly directly to HH (which would be absurd), or whether they can be picked up at Suvarnabhumi by a hotel car and brought to their SHA+ lodgings by road.

One of the main reasons for collecting biometric information is to make sure that the person in front of the desk is the same as the person in the computer record. They took your prints last year, and they take them again this year and the machine compares them and confirms that it's still the same guy. That's actually exactly how the system is supposed to work. Why they scanned your fingers on two different machines is a separate question. If you applied for a reentry permit in addition to the extension, they probably would have fingerprinted you separately for that (that's what's done at CW anyway). If you only did the extension application and nothing else, I have no idea.

What do you mean by "accept"? Do you mean as proof of being fully vaccinated for the purpose of getting a COE for the Phuket Sandbox, or as general proof of vaccination - for instance, to enter a restaurant or shopping mall here (if they ever really implement that requirement)? For the Sandbox, Thai embassies and consulates seem to be accepting whatever is normally issued by the country in which they're located. The US, for example, issues Covid vaccination records on a paper card with absolutely no security features at all, but that is definitely "accepted" for entering the Sandbox. For general purposes (restaurants, etc) in Thailand, there has been zero discussion by the Thai government about what foreign documents might be useable - all they talk about is Mor Prom for those who were locally vaccinated. They'll clearly have to figure something out for foreign vaccine records if they're at all serious about opening to large scale tourism, but so far there's been nothing. (The various hi-so and celebrity folks who were vaccinated abroad will presumably also insist on having a way of entering restaurants...)

"Chiang Mai, Chon Buri (Pattaya), Prachuap Khiri Khan (Hua Hin) and Phetchaburi are set to reopen on October 1st, pending CCSA’s approval." So that's 12 days away, and the CCSA hasn't even considered it yet? And therefore no one knows what the rules will be, such as how people would get to Chiang Mai in the absence of international flights. Exactly when do they think would be a good time to start thinking about this?

That threshold was established with the idea that the only possible way numbers could go up on the island would be if tourists brought in the virus. As it turned out, though, the sharp increase in infections had nothing whatsoever to do with the incoming Sandboxers, and stemmed pretty much entirely from locals infecting locals. As such, it quite properly ended up being ignored. I agree with you to the extent that the Sandbox fell far short of the overly optimistic projections that had been made, and that implementing it meant stopping most domestic tourism to Phuket. My guess is that the program ended up creating a net loss over what they would have had without it. To the extent that it served as an experiment in seeing how to "reopen" the country, however, I think it had moderate success (albeit at the expense of the people on the island).

Oh, so these bills are against torture and enforced disappearance - I had naturally assumed the opposite...

Given who is involved, I'm thinking that Buriram is the actual focus of this scheme and that Udon was just tossed in to make that less obvious.

So they're transferring the management of public properties from a government department to a for-profit publicly listed company first, and then figuring out how the government will be compensated. Seems backwards to me, but what do I know?

All of these recent pieces talk ominously about heeding the lessons of the Phuket Sandbox, without ever really explaining exactly what those lessons are. The implication seems to be that the Sandbox was some kind of superspreader event in which foreigners brought illness and death to a vulnerable Thai population, even though the statistics tend to indicate that foreigners were more likely to be infected by Thais than the other way around.

Easy, just start with one day and keep going...

"The truck, a converted pickup truck with a ‘cold box’ fitted on the back..." Not clear whether the "cold box" was "refrigerated" or just "insulated", but presumably it was one of those enclosures with thick silver walls that are fitted onto trucks delivering chilled or frozen goods.

I don't understand this at all. It made sense when the Red Cross wanted to import and distribute vaccines on its own because it felt the government wasn't doing a good job, but now the government is paying for the Red Cross to bring in vaccines and distribute them free? How is that different from the government just buying and administering the same doses for its own vaccination program? I think her family is confused, since no Moderna doses have arrived in Thailand yet.

Central Embassy has Godfather Wines on the 4th floor. They specialize in high-end wine and spirits, so I would guess they have what you're looking for. "GODFATHER | Premium Wine Selection" https://www.godfather-icellar.com

That's correct - the incoming money from Wise isn't seen as a foreign transfer (which is also why some people have issues when they WANT it to be classified as a foreign transfer). That's one factor, but a pretty minor one for large transfers (since the fee on the receiving end caps out at 500 baht). It's more a matter of the different business models.

Fees from the sending and receiving banks have nothing to do with each other - each charges whatever they want (or don't charge anything). As far as I know, all Thai banks charge for incoming foreign transfers, with a minimum fee of 200 baht and a maximum of 500.

That's what I have read. I'm still trying to find out if true. But it's looking like if the vacs are administered anywhere but Europe then you still got to quarantine if country is red listed or isolate if coming from a green or amber I have no idea what the logic is, and I'm not aware of any country other than the UK that doesn't recognize vaccinations using approved vaccines just because they were administered in the "wrong" country. It's quite peculiar to me. That being said, it's definitely true: "You must have been fully vaccinated under one of the following programmes: UK vaccination programme, approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) UK vaccine programme overseas, approved by the MHRA an approved vaccination programme in Europe or the USA – not all are recognised in England" "Quarantine and testing if you've been in an amber list country - GOV.UK" https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-quarantine-when-you-arrive-in-england

In other words, exactly the same conditions and prices as the Phuket Sandbox - not sure how this represents an improvement, unless the idea is just to prevent other provinces from dreaming up increasingly restrictive and expensive requirements as they "open".

Not all of the conditions are onerous, but it's a fair bet that the various committees will figure out a way to make them onerous, just as they did with the failed OX visa. $80k income? Oh, you'll have to prove that by providing a certificate from your embassy. $1M in assets? Oh, you'll have to transfer that to a Thai bank, we don't understand your foreign documents. Or whatever - the only sure thing is that it will not be as straightforward as it sounds in the press releases.

It isn't a question of getting "a U.K approved vaccine", but of being vaccinated under an "approved programme": "You must have been fully vaccinated under one of the following programmes: - UK vaccination programme, approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) - UK vaccine programme overseas, approved by the MHRA - an approved vaccination programme in Europe or the USA – not all are recognised in England" If you are traveling from an amber country but were inoculated in Thailand, you currently aren't considered "fully vaccinated", even if you received a double dose of Pfizer or of Europe-produced AZ, and you are required to isolate at home for ten days. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-quarantine-when-you-arrive-in-england

"The number of unsold flats stood at 289,742 units nationwide at the end of June this year, a 1.2 per cent decline from December, according to Colliers. On average, prices retreated 2.4 per cent from a year ago." The fact that prices have allegedly fallen only 2.4% with almost 300k units unsold tells you immediately that the pricing information is grossly non-transparent at best, or completely manipulated at worst. With that big of a glut, real market prices should have dropped like a stone.

If she weren't Thai, the Ministry would probably have been outraged that she was blaspheming sacred Thai cultural objects in a pop music video.

Haven't they announced the all-out push to vaccinate vulnerable groups - including pregnant women - multiple times already? And the numbers and descriptions are strange. They say that "Between August 29th and September 9th, only 68,435 pregnant women had been inoculated" (emphasis added), but that now they "will vaccinate as many as 100,000 pregnant women against COVID-19 between today (Monday September 13th) and October 13th". So going from an average of 5700 per day to an average of 3,333 per day is somehow an intensification of the program?

They can already seize your bank accounts for tax debts and delinquent filing without taking you to court - it's a purely administrative procedure. And they've been required for many years to deny passports to people with outstanding child support delinquencies, upon notification by state agencies, without going to court. So this isn't a new concept. I certainly agree that US tax rules designed to snare international money launderers and tax evaders often end up wreaking havoc on hapless Americans abroad without much money, but that's a separate issue.

At the beginning of the Phuket Sandbox, the governor there was very straightforward in telling the press that since the purpose of the program was to prop up the tourist industry, everyone would have to stay in a hotel for two weeks even if they had their own house or apartment. It's rather appalling, but at least he was up front about it.

Searching for "mor prom" in English will also find it (it came up as the first result for me), and it looks like the attached photo: