KiiGiam

I am very confused about what a "COVID extension" is.  I was recently diagnosed with COVID-19 on my would be exit SARS-CoV-2 test.  As per my Thailand Pass, my visa was expiring on the next day because that was my planned travel date.

My hotel kicked me out to a piece of <deleted> Thai "hospitel" as soon as a bed opened on Day 3 of my isolation.  It was a miserable experience.  My original hotel told me that 1) I could no longer use an agency (or a friend) to extend my visa because rules had changed requiring showing up face to face. 2) That I would "probably" have to pay 500 baht a day for each day of my overstay.

At the airport they said, yep, 5,000 THB please.  I said, isn't there some exception?  I can show you the paperwork that I was diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection the day before my visa expired.  They said very clearly that the COVID visa exension ended 31 December 2021... please pay.

Can someone explain what this extension actually was for and how people are still getting extended?  Was it meant for people who were infected and had to overstay their visa or is it just a random extension because there is COVID?  Did it end on 31 December or not?  I am completely miffed.   Thanks. 

My thoughts.  We all could have one session with government officials and lay out a very easy plan to dramatically improve things.  They know it and we know it, but it is like the elections.  We have spent years working to make a system that can be called a democracy but with a guaranteed outcome.   In the case of tourists, the government wants as few foreigners as possible from whom they can extract the maximum amount of wealth.   They need to stop tinkering with the system and accept reality.

* Recognize that the only sustainable source of revenue from foreigners is from average blokes who either marry or send money monthly to bargirls and noodle shop workers.  That is the backbone of the country's GDP.  

* Make the place welcoming for foreigners anywhere above the "rift-raft" level.  Actually welcoming.  At the very least, permanent retirement visas (and other long term visas) with no reporting requirements and low cost and to generallly be treated as a valuable commodity and welcome guest and not as a criminal.  As messed up as the Phlippines is, it is essentially painless to retire there and all of those pensioner's funds are dumped into the economy every month.

I am coming this weekend for 45 days and though I am fully vaccinated and will hopefully have a negative COVID-19 test before I fly and on Day 5 of quarantine, they switched my quarantine to 14 days -- a move neither backed by science nor common sense, even knowing that almost no cases come from foreign travelers and what cases there are get captured during the hotel stay.  How frustrated do you think I am?

Tourists come and go.  The longterm money is not from the billionaires who will come once in a life time for one week and not spread their money around, nor from Chinese tourists who funnel all of their money to Chinese owned businesses in Thailand.  It comes from making life enjoyable and easy for people who truly love Thailand to come and stay longterm. Fixing this issue is not that hard.  The rate limiting step here is the age old xenophobia that all nations share to some degree, but with which Thailand suffers in abundance.  Unlike Japan however, they -need- farang so why not make them feel welcome?   

May I please use this opportunity to vent?     I am planning an upcoming trip to Thailand, which I begun planning for 1 month in advance as recommended by the Thai government.  I received my 11 night Certificate of Entry several WEEKS ago, but I won't land until the 8th of May.  I was hoping to have my quarantine cut to 8 nights (7 days but I arrive late) because I purposely planned the trip so that I would be 2 weeks out from being fully vaccinated upon arrival.

But F'ing NO!....  The embassy just sent me an updated COE that says (different from the rules announced of course) that ALL ARRIVALS AFTER 1 MAY, REQUIRE A 14 DAY QUARANTINE REGARDLESS OF VACCINATION STATUS.   So even if I were able to get around the provision at immigration that I received my COE several weeks ago, I am still not arriving until the 8th (2 days past the key date).   

Bottom line is that if I arrived today having just received my 2nd vaccine several days ago, I would only have to say 11 nights or possible 8 nights if I got lucky (because I would have been in quarantine when I hit the two week mark post 2nd vaccination), but instead.....  I am literally going to be F'ing punished for waiting and planning my trip safely and properly.

I might last mention that I do SARS-CoV-2 vaccine research for a living and anything longer than 10 days is a joke.... and if you have a negative PCR 72 hours before travel (or as the embassy says, "reported" within 72 hours before travel (so it remains vague how long out the test can be taken) AND a negative PCR on day 5 of your stay....  a WEEK is MORE than sufficient.   AND if one has been vaccinated AND met all of those requirements.....   Then 5 days or no quarantine should be enough.   But instead.... 14 freaking days.   Just great!

It seems the consensus here is that the virus is very real and yet we cannot silence dissent.  I agree on both counts.  

One would hope that losing a close family member from SARS-CoV-2 might open some eyes, but in America we have seen people still denying it while they themselves breathe their last because of the virus.  And I don't want to make any smug remark about "som nam naa!" because their actions impact us all.

The comments today have been extra creative and amusing.   I will not start off my day in a sarcastic yet good humored mood. ????Thanks everyone. 

Admittedly I am new to using this way to comment.  I have two questions if someone can indulge me.

1) How do you reply to someone else's post or clip from someone else's post when writing your own? 

2) Yes, like many others here, I would like to know what the advantage is of an elite visa over a regularly yearly extension?  I just don't see it either.  Thanks. 

Maybe I am among the wrong group, but why all the haste even on this page to slam Pattaya's reputation?  The place is a bit much for me, but it is my personal decision whether I go there or not.  What -makes- Pattaya Pattaya -is- the sex.   Why shy away from this?  All I see in these kinds of plans are an effort by carpetbaggers from China to swoop in and buy up Koh Samui, Pattaya and Patong and turn everything into the same type of boring cities found in the rest of the world.  This is my prediction... if the takeover of walking street is successful, people will vote with their feet and their dollars and they will follow the fun wherever it can gain a foothold and Walking Street will become no more than the boring part of town where girls go with their customers for some shopping or an expensive meal.

I'm sorry...  did someone say Ketamine is not popular in Thailand?  Pardon me if I don't waste your time with the laughing emojis.

I think the one thing we can all agree on is that it is very frustrating to watch this video.  It seems completely clear until it is not.  I don't mean tampered with.... just that it is so hard to tell what we are seeing.  It looks like one bike and one rider and then suddenly, it appears that one thing or person is left being and one bike +- a person? proceed to hit the divider.  Having watched it 10 times now, I can't be sure what I am looking at. 

There is so much here that one can comment on and I would prefer to be talking about the bars,  but it is important to point out a few things here.  1) There is thus far, only ONE "strain" of this virus.  There are several isolates, but only one strain.  2) Mutation means a change in base pairs.  That change may not even change the reading codon, let alone the eventual proteins that are made from this.   All viruses mutate and actually SAR CoV-2 mutates more slowly than other RNA viruses because it contains a self-correcting mechanism in replication that most of the other RNA viruses lack.  3) Most mutations do not result in any change the ability of the virus to infect cells nor in its virulence (how severe it is).  4)  All that investigators have shown (and barely!) is that some cells that are different from cells in the body and in a different environment are more easily infected by the isolate with this mutation.  5) Being able to infect a cell like that does not mean it is better at infecting cells in the human body and it does not mean that the virus is more "transmissible."   This virus is ALREADY very transmissible.  6) Even if it is even more transmissible, it doesn't mean that it is more severe nor dangerous.   7) There is no proof that this isolate is more common now because it outcompetes another isolate for transmission.  It can be that someone with this isolate became the "founder" of spread (so it is called the founder effect) and -that- is why it has become more common in some areas.     **Sorry to go on like this, but this report is completely a mess.