John Drake

Get rid of the Thai Pass: the quarantine, the insurance, and the expensive tests. It's been said on this forum probably thousands of times before: the single most enticing thing about coming to Thailand in the past was the immediacy of everything. Get on a plane and go, be visa exempt, and be able to extend with ease. As long as the country rejects that old model and resembles a military camp, the longer it will be before people return in any significant numbers.

Pretty soon, the only way to get here will be by tramp steamer.

And the high end, high quality tourists just can't wait!

Had it been an American woman in the same circumstances, among the first questions would be was she authorized to work as a model? That is, did she have a work permit, if she entered the US in order to study English? Second, who paid for her medical care. I'm sure she likely had sufficient health insurance while "studying English." But worth checking. Just to keep things fair.

It's necessary to understand this because the very first post that replied to this topic was intentionally misleading. The 55 percent of "whites" is almost a meaningless number. What is equally disturbing is that the "hate crime" stats do not identify country of citizenship. How many of these "whites" in America committing hate crimes are not only foreign nationals but illegal aliens?

Yes! This is just the sort of news to drive that high spending, high quality tourism they want during "high season."

Just look at the FBI Top Ten Most Wanted to see how they manipulate racial statistics. https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten You sometimes need to click into the criminal to find it, but here are some specifics from that page: https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/rafael-caro-quintero Seen as "white (hispanic)" https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/yulan-adonay-archaga-carias/@@download.pdf "white (hispanic)" https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/arnoldo-jimenez "white (hispanic)" https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/jose-rodolfo-villarreal-hernandez/@@download.pdf "white (hispanic)" https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/octaviano-juarez-corro/@@download.pdf "white (hispanic)" https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/alexis-flores/@@download.pdf "white (hispanic)" https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/alejandro-castillo/@@download.pdf "white (hispanic)" 7 of the 10 are "white" (hispanic) And 5 out of that 7 aren't even Americans; they're foreign nationals, 3 Mexicans and 2 Hondurans. If you ever wanted a textbook example of how statistics lie, this is it.

And what group magically disappeared from your offenders percentage? Why, it's in the link, although stated indirectly as is the want of government statisticians. From your FBI link: Almost all the "Hispanic or Latino" offenders were folded into the "white" category. Now you know.

Didn't have the right health insurance, so the secretary of state had his ThaiPass rejected.

I'm low spending and low quality. I fit in just fine.

Adventure tour!

She got that right.

How is it a scam? Because the insurance required by Thailand Pass to deal with exactly this situation has apparently not paid off. Somebody is still left holding the bag.

This shows you that it's a scam.

Then what is the point of mandating insurance?

Time to call in Jimmy Swaggart.

Please, no, no, no. That remedy is certain to go to the one percent of the one percent already getting everything. Cash out a couple of trillion and give it out to people with no to lower income. At least a one time payment of 30-40,000 baht. Nothing for government workers or anyone making over 25,000 baht per month.

Why is Aseannow putting up articles that are behind a paywall??? Not going to pay US$10 to read this article.

Most of these "lost" 1 million would be the only sons of families under China's one child policy. You think that wouldn't cause upset? Any war China would fight right now would mean how many sons from hundreds of millions of families would no longer have an heir? Nothing is more likely to cause internal social upheaval than China losing an only child in a war.

Should be a "fat tax" for every overweight golfer using a cart. Get their fat butts to at least walk the course.

About once per month I check in on the Aseannow Visa forum to see if anybody is howling mad because of some new rule. If all the topics look like they're short and 2-3 pages, I figure everything is fine for another month.

I don't see anything in this story that makes me jealous of people with a Thai elite visa.

Trivial.

No, they're yours. You keep'em. Don't try and fob them off on Thailand.

What I think you see on this forum whenever China is mentioned is a Pavlovian revenge fantasy. Some Westerners cannot come to grips with the fact that they are no longer Bwana, that they don't have automatic deference paid to them simply because of the country of their origin. So when they see an article like this, it gets their hopes up. My own experience with Chinese people, mainly teachers and academics at Chinese universities, is they are loyal to their country. To use a word that will really cause consternation on these boards: they are patriotic. Otherwise, they have same hopes and wishes for their families and career as people elsewhere in the world. The ones in their late 40s and early 50s will tell you that China has traveled an enormous distance during their lifetime, economically and socially. I'm no expert at all, but if I had a prediction to make about all this Evergrande/Chinese debt it's that they will maintain internal debt payments and stiff the foreign debt holders. China, as we've seen with Covid, is able to maintain internal self sufficiency. I wouldn't be surprised to see this play out just like Covid, with the Chinese the last ones standing.