Caldera

I think it will be a failure with regards to their own expectations. The pool of people who are willing to jump through all kinds of hoops is quite limited, as the sandbox experiments have shown. Also, I'd imagine that anyone who is considering a holiday in Thailand right now must be quite fed up with Covid regulations back home at this point, which might or might not have ended already. They won't want to travel to a country that doesn't allow alcohol sales in restaurants and no entertainment whatsoever. For returning Thais and expats, on the other hand, it's a welcome change.

I can only assume that's a sick joke. Most Thais don't have access to decent healthcare. What's available at the top isn't really a good indicator for the quality of a health care system as a whole.

Because, funnily enough, their list of countries includes those I need to send money to.

The best option might be a "stopover" in the UK. ????

It's still too convoluted for your typical tourist, which I'd guess will be reflected in the number of actual arrivals. As it was labeled a "bold" move, they should have done away with the PCR test upon arrival and SHA+ hotel booking requirement that comes with it.

Out of curiosity, does Ubon Ratchathani still have salty tap water? I went there a few years ago and it was absolutely disgusting. Can't say I've ever had the same elsewhere in Thailand, magnitudes worse than in Bangkok when they warned that the tap water has high salinity (temporarily).

My go-to Thai beer is Singha, so that's what I've selected, but it's far from being my favorite beer overall. It's drinkable and readily available.

And how about aerosols? This is an exercise in futility.

Strange, all the wealthy Thais I know have had "bolt-holes" in Hua Hin for decades, yet they make it sound like this is news or Covid related. Replace "Covid" by "flooding" and this article could have been written in 2011 - there have always been reasons why getting out of Bangkok for a while looked like a good idea.

Conned. If you say so.

I can understand their reluctance to reopen. I think actual arrival numbers will stay far below expectations, at least initially, for a variety of reasons.

Some will come, but many won't, until traveling to Thailand will be as easy and as much fun again as traveling elsewhere. It doesn't take an oracle to predict this.

I didn't realize that calling someone of Chinese heritage Chinese is considered defamatory. President Xi should have him know that he's supposed to feel flattered.

Isn't that what the APIS (Advanced Passenger Information System) is, for which we've been charged an extra fee as part of the ticket price for several years? Hardly news!

Wrong question, those two countries aren't really in the same category as Thailand.

You can't really reopen to foreign tourists but leave the pubs closed. How would you even explain that, it's just insane?

I'm not sure why it needs to take years. Tourism in Europe was positively booming this summer, almost back to pre-Covid levels in many popular places. Thailand could be the same, if they rescind ALL of their insane Covid entry requirements. THAT would be "bold", not what they've planned so far!

I've never believed in taking medicine when I'm not sick. Longterm preventive pill popping just isn't my thing, and of course there's always a risk that might not be fully understood until much later.

If I had to leave Thailand, I probably couldn't be bothered with dealing with immigration matters in yet another country yet again. For that reason alone, I'd probably move to an EU country. Spain, Portugal and Greece would be on top of my list of countries to check out further.

The COE will quickly become unmanageable anyway, there are already significant delays being reported from a number of countries.

How many tourists are they hoping to attract again? None of this nonsense in many other countries that are wide open!

Not enough profit to pay off the police though.

They can say this all day long, but there's a finite number of high rollers and they have many options. Sure, some of them might visit Thailand, but Thailand cannot attract significantly more of them by focusing on them - if that would work, they would have sold the envisioned 1 million Elite visas under Thaksin already. If anything, the current lot is even more hapless.

For what it's worth, I've been charged Thai VAT by two foreign companies already this month.

So in average, that's just above 40 square meters per unit. Hardly the high rollers they seek to attract in large numbers. Before the pandemic, they could attract a few ten thousands of low to mid range real estate buyers per year. No way they'll attract 1 million with the much higher requirements they have in mind.