SpanishExpat

Funny to see again how Thai officials look for crazy excuses in order to save their faces. Lucky them that there's that festival at the right time:)

This is all about something deeper, political. Chinese can de facto NOT travel outside of China now, so I guess the Chinese government intervened in some way. If that happened to those few very privileged business people, one just can guess how super far China is from allowing "Normal" people to travel abroad. My guess is that the status quo for the Chinese won`t be lifted before the Chinese NY 2021.

Illegal or not....without those filipino teachers, TH would be <deleted> up! That counts as well for the westerners who used to work for a few months on tourism visas in schools. What does TH expect? No quality teacher with studies and a degree will apply for one of those miserable jobs in the public schools, where they pay 15-30K Baht. They are looking for the good paid jobs in the private schools.

actually you don't need to be a millionaire to fly in by PJ. Rent a PJ from Dubai to Bangkok with 10-12 other travelers and it would be around 4000 USD /person. Still a lot of money and it's surely not worth for me, but it depends all on the circumstances.

What a bunch of clowns!!! 120 from Scandinavia. Will be either some A320/ B 737 with one stop or a bigger plane with outrageous ticket prices. 
 

I expected the 2nd option from the beginning, so should be around 3x the price of a normal economy ticket (don’t forget to include the empty leg)

In regard to the Chinese. My Chinese friends confirmed me that it’s IMPOSSIBLE right now to leave China, unless you are married to a foreign natioonal. So those 2 first flights will be filled with privileged people or it’s just a special agreement between China & Thailand.

22 minutes ago, alianware said:

Does it mean they decide which airline to fly with ?? So we can only choose the product from their list ??

That‘s how I understood it. If not, you could easily choose Qatar Airways/Emirates flights, if you know the flight date from the embassy. That’s how it worked for the people with marriage visa and they paid/pay the regular price like in the booking engines.
However, that has nothing to do with a charter flight. That’s one of the main reasons I would wait now for details and not rush with the application. 
 

The funny thing is that there ARE daily commercial flights to BKK with full crews on it, but they can’t sell the tickets, as Thailand just allows repatriation flights/ the few scheduled flights arranged with the embassies/private jets.
Just Qatar Airways itself is flying 2x per day to BKK.

They should have developed a special booking engine for the ASQ Hotels, let everyone book their own flights + the usual negative Test proof etc when going to the embassy. Much easier, faster and cheaper process.

Wait for the flight costs and you will be shocked for sure ????charter flights with social distancing....50-60k Baht from Europe sadly wouldn’t shock me.  That plus 3 months pre paid health insurance of most probable a Thai insurance company along with crazy rates. GL and I hope I will be proved wrong.

This visa is only appealing for people stuck outside the country while paying double rent at the moment. I totally get that every additional month double-payments are frustrating. They will sadly be the Guinea pigs and milked to the Max!
 

Lol **** them with their 10k baht fee! GL to them, but I knew that! That plus no details about the extra cost, makes it a huge NO GO for me.

Moreover I wouldn’t be surprised if they charge a special STV price for the ASQ Hotels or even worse just include the upper scale ones for STV applicants. 
 

It’s not about being able to afford that or not,  but the fact that it’s the typical “let’s milk them to the maximum” Thai-scam. Wish no one would even consider to apply for that scam, so that they would lose their face and reconsider it. Sadly there will be enough desperate guys, who would even walk handcuffed and with a “I am a dirty Covid farang “Tshirt trough Bangkok, in order to be allowed back!

Yuthasak Suphasorn....that`s just sad that this TAT moron apparently still hasn't heard after so many months that Aussies CANNOT travel out of their country. What is that guy paid for ? 

In Europe such a statement would be enough to doubt his expertise. Well..in Europe Yuthasak Suphasorn wouldn`t have made it to that position for sure. He rather would still be the coffee/copy slave.

"Experts" like him + the Thai mentality to not admit faults/ wrong decisions, have cost and will cost the country trillions of Baht!

That’s one of the reasons why Thailand will never be a 1st world country, along with ones like Japan or South Korea! I remember the governments funny vision pre-covid to become a high income country within the next 10 yrs!???? The Thai “chivid sanook” mindset may be chilling (and I enjoy it, as I am not dependent on their economy), but it’s disastrous for their competitiveness.

Having left Thailand last month, I would be one of the first ones to reenter under that plan. 
 

It all depends on the details! If they force me to take a Thai Airways charter flight....I pass! 

If they force me to deal with a ridiculous amount of paper work/wait list at the embassies...I pass! 

If I feel scammed at the quarantine hotel (and that would mean more than 3000 Baht/Night in a 4star Hotel)...I pass!

So it’s up to them..choose wisely or let the greed win. Any scenario won’t save the tourism sector in 2020, but the „greed scenario“ would be changed after 4-6 weeks, as most would pass/wait.

10 hours ago, JHicks said:

 I guess the number of people leaving Thailand and getting tested is in the thousands, so you would expect one or two false positives here and there. Until they find the source of the DJ's infection it's pretty much moot anyway.

I just can speak for mainland Europe. No one is forced to get tested, as Thailand belongs to the risk-free countries. That’s the explanation why there are no news. If there was a mandatory test, I am quite sure there would be a few positive results in Europe.

Anyway...Thailand is super safe! They are surely not-Covid free, but don’t have hundrets of undetected cases with heavy symptoms.

2 hours ago, Brunolem said:

Many Thais having lost their jobs have come back to our village where they have family.

 

I can tell you that none of them is depressed or suicidal. 

 

One of them is working for us, part time, and is in no hurry to go back to his previous job in Bangkok. 

 

We were talking to another one yesterday evening and he said that he was thinking to go back looking for a job... after new year. 

 

It is amazing how many of the Isaan villagers who have left for a job in the big city still have an aptitude to fall back on their feet by returning to a hunter gatherer way of life... which is exactly what they do in our village (fishing + a few leaves and herbs + rice obviously). 

It’s always the upper & the middle class who run a countries economy. Poor isaan people with their “mai bpen rai”attitude...I pity them, but they will be the ones who survive the longest. They won’t starve as farmers. 

However, wait until the masses in the middle class get problems, loose their jobs, can’t pay their monthly rates for their condos/houses/cars anymore. That’s when the desaster starts. Well it already started, as many middle-class income employees are not getting the bonuses. 
 

In Terms of “survive” Thailand could do that eternally on the pre-Covid level of Laos/Cambodia. It’s always the question how one defines the term “survive”.

Open up the country you moron! Stop with everyday more and more complex proposals and just reopen it! I still can’t get how a big percentage of Thai ppl is surviving. I am talking specifically about the islands where they depend 100% on tourism and just can’t go back to farming like in Isaan.

Don’t know what they are waiting for! The virus situation will be the same in 4-6months and even if they have a vaccine, it will take ages until everyone got it. 
 

My simple suggestion would be:

-Covid Test 14days before you travel 

-2nd test Max 72hrs before you fly

- people can just board showing both test results + Covid health insurance.

-3rd Test directly after landing and staying quarantined 24-48hr until they  got the result. 
 

YES..it would involve 3tests, but the risk would be extremely minimal. I am just bored of all those turnarounds of the PM and his government. They just should not waste their thoughts, as 99% of real, genuine tourists simply won’t visit TH, if they are required more than a test + insurance!

For me it’s all about reasonable pricing in regard for this idea. But knowing TH for quite long, I know there will be some scams involved. Thai Airways will be able to charge what they want, the offered hotels will be positioned in the upper/luxury segment and the Covid Tests will be overpriced like they have been all the time for farangs. 
 

If they were smart, they would offer that package, the planned 9months Visa at the lowest possible price. People intending to stay in TH for such a long period, will spend it anyway afterwards. 
 

As we are talking about one-way tickets, everything over 20k from Europe would be too much (and It was always below 20k pre Covid with Thai). Adding to that, there should be reasonable hotel prices for those 14 days of not more than 3k Baht/per Night..including the covid Tests.

The visa itself shouldn’t be more than 6k Baht (similar to the METV).

Altogether 68k Baht..that’s a reasonable price. 
 

However I doubt it will be offered for way more than 100k.

They need at least 30-40% of the former tourism numbers to break-even/survive. Everything including quarantine won’t  attract more them 5%. And most of those won’t be genuine tourists, rather retired people. 
 

They still didn’t get it. It’s the tourists who chose the destination, not the other way around! Thailand is not that unique so that tourists accept massive hurdles to travel there. 
 

It’s anyway too late now, as the Thai mindset in regard to the virus is just weird! 

Funny guy...2nd wave in Vietnam with those few cases!!:) 

And yeah...the cases went up again in China, Japan, Hongkong, Australia. But the big difference is that all those countries ACCEPTED that and got used to live along with the virus. Moreover they are not as heavily dependent on tourism as Thailand is.

That guy with his stylish hair cut sits in his ivory tower and surely won`t get an financial problems, even if Thailand would stay locked until 2022. Meanwhile, the majority of Thai people got salary cuts or lost their jobs at all.

Proud to be number 1 country in the world to contain the virus. Proud to have 0 local cases for over 2 months. Good for them, but let`s see what economic price Thailand will have to pay for that strategy!

It`s still 200 Baht for foreigners. Been there 2 weeks ago. Still, now they collect the money directly at the pier and not like they used to do at the national park gate. Before, if you booked a hotel around the pier (<deleted>ty area anyway), there was no national park fee.

Even though is fully booked during the weekends(2 weeks ago they told me that they just are allowed to sell 50% of the rooms due to social distancing), the island is DEAD during the week. I`ve seen instagram videos on Mondays or Tuesdays, where they had 2 tables occupied at the Ploy Talay Restaurant (the most famous one at the main beach) in the evenings.

In the past Samet got more and more popular with the Chinese, who prefer to stay around BKK and not fly to Phuket.

We stayed at one of the better resorts on the island and on both weekend days they ran out of Bacon/milk and cereals around 9 am. I think that says everything about the actual situations.

of course he is an angel, isn`t he?:) Seriously...EVERY TIME time i`ve been out at Thonglor and met hi-so friends or friends of friends cocaine is an issue the later the evening gets. I don`t consume it, but it`s always available...so all that bs about that guy has 0 credibility.