Raphael54

Throughout the pandemic so far, KLM has been flying daily.  Cargo has kept this going but now passengers too.  When I flew from AMS on 14 November the economy class was 98% full.  I am confident they will keep flying, no reason to stop.

Bangkok Hospital, Petchburi Road.
Buy a coupon for THB 1,650 on SHopee and book an appointment.
Check first if you meet the requirements. On the Shopee website they give you the details.

In Europe, Moderna is used as booster for 2 x AstraZeneca as well as 2x Pfizer.
You can get it NOW at the Bangkok Hospital by buying a coupon for it on Shopee (THB 1,650).

Yes, accepted.  I did it.

Yesterday 1 November 2021, from 11:00 AM (Bkk time) I spent about 3 hours to apply for the Thailand pass.  These 3 hours included the searching, booking and paying for an SHA+ hotel (NOTE it must be SHA+, NOT SHA).  Most of the time I spent to re-scan all my PDF scans (from a previous registration for CoE) to convert them into the JPG format because the Thai Pass website doesn't allow uploading PDFs.  I also needed to scan the hotel reservation into JPG because it was also in PDF format.

I did not have any errors on the website, everything worked smoothly on my google chrome browser.

And, Amazing Thailand, at 19:55 Bkk time I received my approved Thai Pass by email.  SIX hours only!!

This morning I applied for the Thai Pass (TP).  It took me nearly 3 hours.  Upon completion I realized that it is not at all friendlier (for the applicants) than the previous process, the Certificate of Entry (CoE). 

Why?

1. The CoE was a 2-step process.  You needed to book and pay for your airfare and hotel only AFTER preliminary approval of visa, vaccination certificates, etc.  However, to apply for the TP, you must FIRST book your flight and book AND PAY for your hotel.  After paying for airfare and hotel your TP application may be rejected and it is up to the applicant to get her/his money back from airline and hotel.  Good luck with that.

2. Secondly, the TP website states as regards the Vaccination Certificate:
"Please upload the certificate of both your 1st and 2nd dose of vaccination (only the 1st dose is required in case of Janssen vaccine). The certificate of vaccination should include your personal information for identification such as your full name, date of birth, nationality, passport number and vaccination details."  As an EU citizen I am concerned because the EU vaccination certificate does NOT contain the passport number (for privacy reasons).  The previous CoE website did not require the passport number to be included in the vaccination certificate and I actually got pre-approved without a passport number in my certificate.

3. The CoE website accepted all sorts of scans, including PDF scans.  The TP website is less friendly as it allows only JPG scans to be uploaded (there is no error message if you try to upload a PDF, but this was my conclusion after trying several times).  So before you start your session on the TP website I can recommend that whatever PDF documents you have (such as your hotel booking confirmation and payment proof) you scan first into JPG format.

For me now it remains to be seen (for up to 7 working days) if my TP application will be rejected or approved.  

As I said, the TP process is not friendlier for the applicants.  It is probably friendlier for the approvers because for them it is only 1 step instead of 2 steps.

Interesting.  One wonders why there sits an importer between the Moderna company and the Government Pharmaceutical Organization.  On Wikipedia I read "The GPO gives Thailand significant leverage in its price negotiations with foreign drug suppliers."  But they cannot import the Moderna vaccin themselves directly?

Important news: "The online system can also reduce travel time and expenses."

Wauw, great, thanks, I had never thought of that!

This is not news at all. 
Private sector can always and at any time request Thai FDA to review and approve medicines, vaccins or anything that goes through the mouth.

The only newsworthy sentence is that FDA has hired some consultants to speed up its usually snail-paced processes.

This is not a serious effort. Look at the paperwork needed to join the scheme:

 

Documents for submitting an application to sell electricity

"The spacecraft will travel at 11 kilometres per hour to the moon, before slowing to enter lunar orbit at 2kph." 

They better start working on this project. At the rate of 11 km per hour,  the journey itself would take 4 years if using the very shortest route.

The new parlement house which was started in 2013 and supposed to be completed in 900 days - later 1,000 days - is now (Dec 2020) still ready.  

Clearly it would be more appropriate for ThaiVisa to classify this sort of news in the Entertainment section. hahaha.

And therefore, again, I had to LOL and remember this song: 

How come? Always when I see a Thai government officer jumping in front of a camera, I remember this great song:

It would have been nice if Wichan Ingsrisawang had been not a fisheries officer but an officer from the Ministry of Health.

There is no future for rubber farming in Thailand, short term or long term.

Neighboring countries have planted hundred of thousands of hectares with rubber trees for which there isn't even enough labor to tap them in the future but which will help to drive down prices further.  This is the short term problem.

The long term problem is that European countries are piloting the production of rubber from alternative crops (Russian dandelion and  Parthenium argentatum Gray) which can be harvested by machine.  The main waiting is for improved varieties which produce higher yields.  This takes time but these alternative crops are likely to become competitive with the labour intensive rubber tree.

Rubber wood is valueable.  It is a lovely light-colored wood, and pretty hard too.  So, what is the waiting for?  Cut the trees, gradually, sell the wood and change to a more promising crop.

Unfortunately, this pearl at the center of Thailands transport system is not connected with BTS,  MRT, nor with Purple Line. 

Was he in quarantine for 2 weeks before being allowed to play?

20 THB /m2/month.  A great riverside condo in Nonthaburi and including membership fee of great sports club (also open to the public) and 50 meters pool.

"The Crime Suppression Division (CSD) and Department of Mental Health (DMH) have jointly set up a special team....." 

Doesn't the CSD have enough on their plate??

Yes, it is becoming less attractive to be a farang in Thailand with the various racist and discriminatory nonsense going on.

Thank god the first local Covid-19 case of 3 September was a Thai person.  If it had been a farang then farangs would have had to repatriate right away, otherwise deported.

My medium-term plan is to return to my home country in Europe.

8 hours ago, gravity101 said:

Someone needs to explain the latest tm28 and tm30 requirments to me. I thought this had been largely put out to bed. Not sure why his wife would be fined either.

Indeed. I too was under the impression that TM28 was abolished.

There go our local travel plans down the drain, again.

Nobody in government has the balls to take any decision that creates even the minimum of risks. 

Interesting isn't it, in a government with so many ex-generals? 

8 hours ago, Pilotman said:

Think on this, over 40 million Thais live in rural locations that never see a tourist and don't need them for their local economy.  Don't get tourism out of proportion.  It is less than 18% of GDP and not absolutely vital to Thailand. Watch this space. It may all virtually end and I dont think that many Thais will cry any tears if it does. At the very least, it may be confined to a few restricted areas only, such as Phuket and Pattaya. 

Complete nonsense indeed. 

The rural economy is heavily supported by the non-rural (city) economy with large cash transfers.  The tourism sector has many linkages into the rest of the economy with lots of multiplier effects.  The rural economy will suffer badly without tourism.  And, by the way, tourism is way bigger than agriculture. In GDP terms agriculture is only about 8 percent compared to tourism's 18 (??) percent. In employment terms agriculture is bigger than tourism but a lot is seasonal and part-time employment and being supplemented by non-agricultural sources of income, including tourism.  In foreign exchange terms tourism brings in about one-fifth of all foreign exchange.  In the short-term this is not an issue but longer term it could become.