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Until a COE is no longer a requirement, or special insurance, or a stay in an approved hotel for 6 days, I'll be putting off my return to Thailand for my usual 2 to 6 month stay. Yes, it's good that Thailand has reduced the number of days in quarantine, but it's just not enough to tempt me back into making that longhaul flight to the land of smiles.

On 10/19/2020 at 5:31 PM, trappedinasia said:

Is she using an agent to get a long term visa, or just to get the Nov 30th stamp?

She's using an agent. I've posted the name on the other topic link that you provided.

5 hours ago, trappedinasia said:

The only thing new I've seen since I posted that is that they're now telling people to come back on Oct 29th. I guess they realized that having weeks of applicants come back on the same day could be a bit much... But two days seems like far too little, as well, and I have no idea why they're adding this extra step at all. 

Thanks @trappedinasia. My girlfriend has decided to use an agency and send her passport to the Bangkok immigration office. She was told this morning by Jomtien immigration that they wouldn't be able to do it there. Something about not being able to access her records on the computer due to her previous stamp being issued originally at Bangkok. Sounds like a total cop out to me, but she's not waiting until October 29 to see if they change their stance.

For those wondering which agency my girlfriend is using in Pattaya to send her passport via, it's called Cha Passport & Visa. I hope this info is helpful to those that are struggling to come up with a solution to their stamp extension dilemma. This isn't a recommendation, nor is it a promotion. I simply asked my girlfriend which agency she was using to sort out her extension stamp problem by and this was her response.

My Laos girlfriend who is living in Jomtien has just informed me that she went to their immigration building today and was told that she had to go back to Bangkok where she got her previous stamp from. Something to do with their computers couldn't process it. I admit the info is a little vague but that's what she just told me. She said she's sending it via an agency to guarantee the new passport stamp.

So far, I'm hearing from a few people in Pattaya that they're having difficulty in obtaining another stamp extension to their existing one that expires at the end of this month for free. Can anyone validate this, or are other people going to Jomtien Immigration and getting their free visa extension stamp (having paid previously before Sept 26) without any problems? 

And yet the Deputy Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), Chattan Kunjara Na Ayudhya, told The Daily Telegraph that he predicts that the country’s borders would not reopen to tourists until 2021. He added: “The Christmas period, usually the high season, is in jeopardy and I’m looking horribly even to Chinese New Year in February." Further adding: "It is not a rosy picture."

Sadly, tourism is unlikely to reopen for Thailand until sometime next year. Without a crystal ball it's impossible to say exactly when, but let's assume we're talking another year from now. That's going to drive the LOS fanatics up the wall if they have to wait well into next year before they can go on a holiday there.

Let's not forget that currently, only certain categories of foreign nationals can enter Thailand. If you're eligible to enter, you will be subject to 14 days in quarantine at your own expense. The same applies if you're returning from Thailand to the UK with requirement to self-isolate for 14 days. That's a total of 4 weeks self-isolation just for going to Thailand and coming back!! Call it an entire month, might as well. I'm sorry, but under those restrictions very few apart from the total diehards are going to want to travel to Thailand.

7 hours ago, geriatrickid said:

not bizarre.  Some  of the seafood related GI infections are lethal, especially shellfish.  There most likely was extensive dehydration and  extensive lab work to identify what it was. B 40K isn't that expensive.

 

 

You are correct. There can be lethal infections from bad shellfish. According to the report, the bill in question was spread over more than one family member. The first bill was for 20,000. Again, it's unclear why the other family members were charged an additional 20,000.

I think the reason why this particular case has aroused so much interest is that many of us have had something similar after eating dodgy seafood or drinking contaminated water, but haven't immediately rushed to the hospital for tests or treatment, hoping that we could get the restaurant to cover the medical costs afterwards. The vast majority of us simply pop down to the local pharmacy and get something to ease the problem, and self-care for a few days.

Treatment of food poisoning depends on the cause; most people self-care in a few days, but some cases may benefit from specific antibiotic or antiparasite treatments once the cause is identified.

The story is quite vague. I'm still unsure as to why the other family members decided to have the same battery of tests, especially when the first family member had already had them. Surely the results would be exactly the same? Why not wait for the first test results to come back and simply get the same medication as prescribed? Meanwhile, just self-care. If the first person's tests come back as something really serious, then you know you've got a problem and also need specific antibiotic or antiparasite treatments as well. I guess what I'm implying is that the family became hysterical rather than approaching it from a wait-and-see approach.

I've used private hospitals in LOS on a number of occasions and before they give you any treatment or drugs of any kind, they always take you to see their finance department to see how much you're willing to pay and how you're going to pay. It's at this stage that you get to haggle over the bill. Before this process there's always a consultancy appointment by a specialist, which tends to be a standard fee, depending on whether you're a farrang or a Thai national the price can vary. 

I think the majority of us that have had a severe case of diarrhoea in Asia have never resorted to going to hospital for treatment, despite the pain or discomfort we've had. My own worse case was on a trip to Myanmar, which was either due to the fish I'd eaten or contaminated water. Fortunately, the hotel staff there were willing to go to a pharmacy and buy the Imodium for me, which I needed badly as I had a flight back to BKK the very next day. The golden rule is to drink plenty of bottled water so as not to become dehydrated. Regardless, the diarrhoea passed within a few days (I can't remember exactly how many) and I was back to normal.

22 hours ago, RichCor said:

Some people have two SIMs (usually one on a different carrier) when they have signal location issues, or are trying to avoid having their 'clients' pay an out-of-provider surcharge for calling them.

Yes, that could be a reason, but I was wondering why our OP needed two. To be honest, I don't know why I even bothered replying, especially as this sort of question could easily be answered in a second just by popping into a phone shop or a 7-Eleven.

Considering that VIETNAM has just recently sparked panic as it announced it could be about to face a potentially more contagious strain of coronavirus in the country after new cases in city Da Nang, I'm going to make a prediction and say that the Thai government are going to quickly walk-back from their optimistic September re-opening statement and postpone it until the end of the year. It's only a prediction, mind, but it's looking increasingly likely. Especially with the WHO now claiming that the virus is "accelerating" and warning that the pandemic is not going to go away anytime soon. Buckle up, it's going to be a long ride.

So long as the both SIMs are registered, it doesn't matter if you have 2 or more. There's no stipulation on how many times you can register a different SIM using the same passport, so long as its registered and a photograph is taken of your passport, and then uploaded to the NBTC servers from inside the shop using their smartphone app. The question is: why would you want to have more than one SIM? Are they for different phones or for other reasons?

Well, firstly migrant workers are essential to the Thai economy. As for film crews, that ain't going to happen. As another poster, a film exec, pointed out on another thread: foreign film companies aren't going to pay for their entire crew to be put into quarantine for 14-days whilst also being expected to pay their salaries for sitting around doing absolutely nothing. It's merely wishful thinking on the government's part. 

I'm afraid, like everybody else wanting to travel abroad, you're just going to have to wait patiently for this madness to end. 

The latest news is that Emirates has just announced their flight plans for this and the following year from the UK, and they claim that they'll be back "to the new normal" by October 1st. That doesn't mean there won't be a reduced service as they're planning on cutting five flights to four from London to Bangkok. Though it certainly looks like a positive step in the right direction. Is it too soon to celebrate? Maybe. But at least it offers a glimmer of hope for those wanting to getaway in late Autumn or the Winter.

On 6/22/2020 at 4:21 PM, Krataiboy said:

Tegnell has freely admitted too little was done to protect Sweden's care home residents, who constitute (if I recall rightly) nearly half of all the country's COVID fatalities.

 

The UK's record in this regard is arguably even worse, since the government created second waves of the epidemic in residential and nursing homes via a deliberate policy of returning elderly residents from hospital while still infected.

 

British care homes routinely, presumably under pressure from the government, persuaded their residents to sign "Do not resuscitate" forms, with a predictable outcome in terms of enhancing the "Covid-related" mortality figures.

And this is how fake news is spread. On 17 March, it was NHS England and NHS Improvement that wrote to trusts telling them to “expand critical care capacity to the maximum” by freeing up beds. This was to ensure that the NHS had the capacity it needed to treat Covid-19 patients in the coming weeks and months. NHS Providers, which is the association of trusts and foundation trusts in England, said: “NHS England and Improvement made this decision having just witnessed the health and care system in Northern Italy being overwhelmed by Covid-19 demand.” Two days later, the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England and Improvement published the discharge requirements in detail. 

So to claim that it was the British government that tossed them out on their ear to infect nursing homes is factually incorrect. It was NHS England and NHS Providers and a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in Department for Health that made that decision for England. As for Scotland and Wales, who had a far worse and shocking toll of deaths in care homes, they have their very own NHS Wales and NHS Scotland governed separately from England. So Scotland and Wales made their own health decisions independently. 

If there's any criticism to be had, then it should be laid squarely at the behemoth feet of the NHS. The testing was another centralized debacle at the hands of the Department for Health, only alleviated when the government finally stepped in, took it away and began farming it out to the private sector. Germany had no such problem as their healthcare system is totally private and financed by insurance contributions. There's no public middlemen or women to slow it down, waste money and cause red tape stoppage like in the NHS. 

I also don't think this is the right time to start measuring which countries have performed better or worse. The pandemic isn't over yet. Yes, it's mutating, but as China is currently finding out, it's still probably got a lot further to go before we eventually see the back of it. If their claims are correct, then they now have a more contagious and deadly strain. Or it could just be a symptom of having locked down too much and now those that didn't catch it before are now more susceptible the second time round. Don't ask me, I don't know as I wouldn't trust anything coming out of China with regards to facts and figures. 

The latest news coming out of China right now, Beijing specifically, is that the virus has allegedly mutated to become far more infectious and more deadly than the previous strain. It's hard to know if China is lying or just trying to spread more disinformation. So either this virus has still got many more months to run, or China is suffering due to their own draconian lockdown measures coming back to infect those that it missed the first time round. 

The next Director-General of the World Health Organization should be from Taiwan. I'm totally serious. Sure, Taiwan are currently denied membership from this corrupt organization due to geo-political pressure from China, but their exclusion has actually benefited them. Already weary of information coming out from Beijing, the island started screening travellers from Wuhan as early as December 31st, especially after they were notified of a SARS-type virus being transmitted in the capital city of the Hubei province a few days earlier. They even tried to alert the WHO but were ignored. That’s three weeks before the Chinese regime told the public there was human-to-human transmission on January 20th. Contrary to what Taiwan were being told, they put in place measures that were different to what the WHO were saying.  

Currently, Taiwan only has 6 deaths and 427 confirmed cases as of 23 April. Most importantly, unlike countries following the rigorous test-test-test guidance, Taiwan has only carried out a rather small amount of testing. The precise figure is 2.44 per thousand people; 58,003 in total (as of 22 April 2020). Countries need to learn from Taiwan, not from China or any other country come to that. It's obvious to anyone that the CCP now controls the WHO. The previous Director-General to Tedros was another CCP-approved stooge by the name of Dr Margaret Chan. For those unfamiliar with her work, Chan is best known as the woman who cried wolf during a flu pandemic and who failed to contain the deadliest outbreak of Ebola. Joanne Liu, president of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, blasted WHO and Dr Margaret Chan for letting Ebola get out of hand. This just goes to show the WHO has previous form over this sort of thing and the current crisis isn't anything new. In fact, it seems an abject failure to recognise an outbreak is a prerequisite for becoming the next Director-General of the World Health Organization. Just as Tedros ignored cholera epidemics in Ethiopia in three separate outbreaks in 2006, 2009 and 2011, so did Dr Margaret Chan as the first female director of the Hong Kong department of health in 2003 when she overlooked an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) from mainland China, killing 800 people worldwide. The following year, lawmakers in Hong Kong slammed Chan for not pressing the Chinese government sufficiently hard to share reliable information and for not acting swiftly enough to contain the outbreak. Leaving behind a controversial legacy, she joined the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in 2018 and finally nailed her colours to the mast. Of course, Dr Tedros was appointed afterwards due to heavy lobbying from China and I'm sure underhand tactics. And here we are...

All this brings me back to Taiwan. Unfairly maligned by Tedros and the CCP, and denied membership in the WHO, Taiwan and its people have had to adapt to life and the continued threat of deadly virus outbreaks from the Chinese mainland without the help of any worldwide donations or medical assistance to back them up. The rest of the world could learn valuable lessons from Taiwan and how they've been able to first spot a potential outbreak and then how to contain it without any real harm to their economy. However, if you just want the CCP to keep hiding behind the WHO to shield their own culpability with future outbreaks and have no desire to change the current status quo, then keep making big donations. The only way to put pressure on the WHO and get reform is to deny them the one thing they truly desire... money... and lots of it!!

2 hours ago, vanbrit548 said:

Thank you for the update. Very Much appreciated. My partner did the same and got his letter also after a long wait. so next hurdle to  jump is Jomtien immigration!

That's good to hear. Yes, tomorrow is the next hurdle at Jomtien immigration. I think it was wise of both your partner and mine not to wait for the Thai government to make their lamentable automatic visa renewal announcement. The Thai government has been procrastinating for far too long on this urgent matter. 

On 4/5/2020 at 4:56 AM, vanbrit548 said:

did you resolve this? My partner got 7 days to leave by April 10th! no idea what to do ????

UPDATE My girlfriend made her journey from Pattaya to the Laos Embassy in BKK to get her certificate and was successful in obtaining one. However, the queues outside were horrendous and it took something close to 4 hours to get to the front of the queue. This was despite her leaving Pattaya in a taxi at 5am to get there early. So be warned, even setting off early won't necessarily give you that much of an advantage. Clearly, you need to set-off as early as possible but don't think by doing so you'll beat the long queues. 

Here's a couple of photos taken today (7th April) outside the Laos Embassy to give you an idea of the long waiting process. Tomorrow she has to go to Jomtien Immigration early and queue up all over again.

5 hours ago, vanbrit548 said:

did you resolve this? My partner got 7 days to leave by April 10th! no idea what to do ????

No, I'm afraid not. It hasn't been resolved as the Thai government have been saying they'd extend length of stay automatically but have yet to announce any official guidelines on the matter.

Currently, she is in the process of arranging a trip to BKK with friends to acquire a letter from the Laos Embassy so she can then go to her regional immigration office to get a further 30-day extension. Her position is that her current 30-day stamp expires on April 8th so she cannot afford to wait any longer, especially with the possibility of a daily 500 baht fine accumulating. I believe her faith in the Thai government doing the right thing is slowly evaporating, much like the farrang tourists in the same position as her.

I'll let you know how she gets on when she gets it together.