JackGats

Wow! I would stay 3 to 6 months in TH. Anyway, if a quarantine is required your holiday reduces at best to one week, at worst to zero. I miss Ko Chang though. P.S. I assume you have already paid for your stay in Ko Chang.

You mean you want to enter Thailand for a mere two-week holiday?

That's a possibility. But is entering a country that is to remain closed and in lockdown for the next 3 months a good idea? I risk losing my visa extension though (deadline May 2nd). But this "Thailand or nothing" is beginning to tire me down. I see that I may need to start pumping money out of TH through my Thai debit credit card, with a view to disengage myself for good. I don't want to do a 16-day quarantine again.

I'm in the same boat. If no news later today (in the next few hours) nothing for it but to rebook my flight to end of March and buy myself a flight to Brazil. I also need to juggle my flights with car rentals here in Europe. Can't afford to get dragged along much longer.

Not sure if entry with 7 days quarantine is possible, much less how to get your quarantine booking approved.

If it were up to me I'd keep things simple and unbureaucratic. Just officially announce that holders of TPs need to show a quarantine booking after landing (on top of their 1-night booking). No no need to cancel then, only top-up. However, I have a strong feeling things will turn out infinitely more intractable.

If only they could say "book a 7-day quarantine on top of your TP" and you're done. But that would be far too easy wouldn't it? What will most probably happen is that approved TPs will be void and there will be a new hit and miss system where you must start everything from scratch (book, rebook, re-re-book, everything paid upfront without any guarantee).

Alas, such a mess may be behind the recently announced backtracking on honouring already issued Thailand Passes after January 10th. Note that even a full quarantine for all arrivals I will soon make little difference any more. You emerge from quarantine as a covid negative, only to get infected two days later in town.

My understanding is that a Thailand Pass is valid on the date and time of the original booking + or - 72 hours. I was to arrive on January 14th. Rebooking my flight and Hotel to arrive before the 10th is pointless (the airline would not let me board and if it did I'd be in trouble in Bangkok).

Last year my agent sent me on a bike-taxi to Immigration for my picture to be taken. Someone from inside took my picture from a window while I was standing on a trash heap outside at the rear of the building. At the same time the taxi boy handed over a heap of passports (through the small window).

This is not at all what I saw in Pattaya last year. All farangs around 2nd road and Soi Bukhao duly masked.

Will it? I read about a suspension of everything apart from the Pukhet Sandbox, and even that only maybe. Plus, how do you go now from a Thailand Pass QR to a full ASQ quarantine?

Is the 72 hours flexibility with respect to departure or arrival?

Exactly. Alas polititians want to look good to their constituency. "Preventing foreigners from bringing in Omicron" looks good, even if medically nonsensical.

Everything booked to arrive on January 14th. A disgrace if I have to cancel everything. I tell myself consequences will have to follow regarding my country of retirement. Cannot go on like this. This charade can still go on and on for years. I need to reside in a country I can enter by default, not a coutry I am prohibited from entering by default. If I did not have substantial money in Thailand I would be out already.

What about tax exemption on foreign pensions and foreign capital gains in Mexico? Any retirement visa with a tax package? These are the questions I start the day with when I'm prospecting about new countries to settle in.

Says one Senator Marco Rubio (whoever he is, didn't bother to check): "Record numbers testing positive for a sore throat isn't a crisis. And people in the hospital for car accidents testing positive isn't a surge. ... The real crisis is the irrational hysteria which has people with no symptoms waiting hours for a test or missing work for 10 days"

TUI is a tour operator I think, not a travel agency.

First thing set up a brokering account. Your Thai bank can give you pointers. My bank account is with Bangkok Bank in Pattaya so I opened a Bualuang account. I'm satisfied with them. I can shift cash between my broker's and my bank account as I want and I get a better interest on cash on my broker's account than I would on a fixed savings acount in the bank. Buying and selling stock in TH is easy. The fees are very low. If limit orders do not get filled you hardly lose any money. There are some high-dividend stocks especially in the financial and leasing sector.

From what I've read antibody dependent enhancement is massive and dramatic whenever it occurs. It would make people very sick, not just infected. I think that was the case with the much-awaited dengue vaccine.

Swimming pool closures have always been whimsical since the start of the pandemics. They're a good way for a hotel or condo to save money of course.

First thing to do: stop sending asymptomatic cases into hospitals.

I'd like the Thais to take their cue from this: https://news.yahoo.com/cdc-cuts-covid-19-isolation-222409101.html

From the news right now it would seem Omicron preferentially goes after children and teenagers. Traveling with children considerably raises the odds.

"A three-dose course of the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines is said to be 10 times more effective than a three-dose course of AstraZeneca." "Is said to be", exactly. Says the media (and everybody else): Chinese and Russian vaccines = worthless European vaccine (Astra Zeneca) = average US vaccines (Pfizer & Moderna) = very good The Pfizer vaccine is so good that Israel will soon have administered 4 of it already.