richardhead

I Love Koh Samui. I live in Both Koh Samui and Bangkok and travel between the two areas several times a month. While the direct flight from BKK to USM (SAMUI) is more expensive than flying to Phuket (because Bangkok Air OWNS the airport and it is their monopoly), its a wonderful place to live for retirement. Being Thailand’s 2nd biggest island, it has lots of infrastructure. It’s alway easy to spot the tourists around town. While they’re like ant invading a new space, they are a required evil in order to bring new money into a badly depressed area. The Thai show owners, hotels, restaurants and everyone else need a new infusion of income. Complaining about costs is NOT what’s stopping tourist from visiting. It’s the obstacles that the Gov’t has in place just to get into the country. DUMP EVERYTHING, EVERY RESTRICTION, EVERY INSURANCE REQUIREMENT, THAI PASS, DOCUMENTATION, ETC. 2 lines. Vaccinated and UNVaccinated, and go back to the PRE-COVID days when the complaints were the long lines at immigration !!! The major problem is that TAT has absolutely NO IDEA on how to accomplish anything that they put forth in the grand plans. It’s like asking a group of children how they would rebuilt Thailand’s Socioeconomic society? They would say “USE ICE CREAM! WE LOVE ICE CREAM”! Problem solved, right?

I recently was at the airport on a Saturday evening waiting for my friend to arrive. What I witness was a Cluster <deleted>. There were 5 counters each with a billboard where 250 hotels had their logo taped to a billboard. Passengers were never notified as to which counter their hotel was located so every passenger exiting customers, with their baggage, was stuck inside of a small areas searching to check in for the ride to their hotel. And what made matters worse, once you found your hotel, you were told to wait behind the billboards so they could collect the other passengers traveling to the same hotel. The ordeal took over 2 hours (and TAT wonders why tourists aren’t coming to Thailand)! An analogy would be having no display as to what counter you check in for your flight, but having to go thru all counters before you find the right one AND then waiting at that area until all passengers had checked into flight, before you could leave the area. Hello, Thailand! Is there Anyone home with a brain? This is what happens when you teach children at an early age NOT to ask questions in school, just do as you’re instructed. Notice that in the attached photo, the Arrival board is turned OFF (because there aren’t any flights arriving). This was only 1 flight arriving on a Saturday night. The photo was taken in the first 30 minutes once passengers entered into this area.