NanaSomchai

35 minutes ago, RichardColeman said:

Yeah, but Xi might !

Not as long as Prayut has his head far deep up Xi's rearhole.

Good news is my kids are safe in their issan village watching their lives go by.

Instead of being subject to grooming gangs roaming freely across the UK and the rest of Europe.

Here we go! Let's mess with the constitution yet once again to make sure we remain in office during the upcoming "elections".

22 minutes ago, bkk6060 said:

Sure yes, why not open it all up despite people are getting sick, hospitalized and still dying. 

 

Money and the economy are more important, right?

 

Let's go!

People from both sides of the spectrum (that means us the farangs and them, the Thais) have had enough with this COVID-19 nonsense, every involved sides have had enough of the restrictions, the lockdowns, the nonsense, the lives destroyed, and so on, open the damn thing already and let's goooooooooooooo!

1 hour ago, superal said:

When air flights were much cheaper , as were decent hotels , food , drink , ladies of the night and lets not forget all of the copies / fakes e.g. watches and brand named shirts etc that were a major attraction for tourists to the markets .

Like it or not, but I like to call a spade, a spade.

Thailand's economy was built on the back of their "ladies of the night", and that's literally and figuratively speaking.

The puritans at the wheel are trying to forgo with it, trying to erase and "polish" their image, some historians might even be inclined to think they are trying so hard to do away with it, they might be attempted to rewrite history.

Thailand is not Singapore, it is not the crown jewel of South East Asia, never has been, never will be, no matter how much they try, Thailand will never be the Monaco or the Switzerland of SEA, no matter how hard they try.

1 hour ago, superal said:

Gone are the days when you could book a flight and fly in the next week .

Gone they sure are. Next week?

Hell, I was able to book flights for the next day if not for the same day, my local travel agency used to open it's doors at 10AM, walk in, pay your air fare in cash, fly out to Thailand on the same day, later in the evening or the next morning on a LHR to CDG with BA, commute on the TG931 (THA931) land the next day again at BKK at 06:00AM, ride the first 9AM bus to Pattaya, arrive at 11AM and eff*ng lunch at Hooters on Beach Road with a view on Pattaya's beach/bay, check in at any random hotel for 300 THB shortly after 12:00, sleep the whole afternoon to cure jetlag, wake up at 5:00PM, full of energy, showered, dressed, perfume on, hit Walking Street, Club Insomnia, 808 Night Club, Rock Street, iBar, Raas, Skyfall Agogo, the sky was the limit!

This is all gone.

1 hour ago, superal said:

The catch 22 is that the majority of tourists come for the night life and ladies but if the bars are closed there will be few tourists but if the bars open will the ladies attend for a few months until the tourists decide to return ?

The truth and nothing but the truth.

Thailand has nothing to offer other than the night life and ladies of the night that other nations Worldwide cannot offer and often better quality and cheaper.

1 hour ago, superal said:

Thailand of cheap tourists and place them in Phuket only where the over worked bar girls will prevail and std will be rife , not for me .

They are trying to turn Phuket into an Amsterdam red light district or Berlin's red light disrtrict.

1 hour ago, superal said:

I hear that Vietnam will be the new Thailand . 

Could be, let's see what happens next. Wait and see.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

In downtown Bangkok’s Patpong area, most evenings are quiet.

DEAD.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

With the tourism industry decimated by two years of Covid-19, most of the street’s businesses are locked, with “Closed” signs in the windows.

DEAD.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

At the area’s night bazaar — for decades the place to buy Red Bull T-shirts, Thai boxing pants and fake Rolex watches — the vendors are gone.

DEAD.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

Thailand wants to get them back.

DEAD.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

Like many countries that are now treating Covid-19 as endemic, Thailand is eager to jump-start its tourism industry.

DEAD.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

many of the small businesses that played major roles in Thailand’s tourism ecosystem closed during the lockdowns and haven’t reopened. 

And DEAD.

Thank you China!

1 hour ago, cheapcanuck said:

Nana plaza (Sukumvit 4) is dead...

Dead as a dodo indeed.

30 minutes ago, John Drake said:

Can't we just go back to the way things were, say, ten years ago, in 2012?

2010 was peak for me.

- Best exchange rate: 48.0046 THB per EUR on 11 Jan 2010.

- Average exchange rate in 2010: 42.0936 THB per EUR.

(And back then bar fines were sub 300 THB, short time was 500 THB, long time was 1000 THB, no pressure to buy them lady drinks). 

5 hours ago, Hanuman2547 said:

What a load of rubbish.  Yes, it can be cancelled.  You didn't even have it just a little while ago.  You just need to dismantle the system.  Why the need to track the movements of every tourist entering Thailand?  Is this North Korea or the former East Germany?  You already have hotels required to report all foreigners staying at their hotel to immigration.  What's next, ankle bracelets with GPS monitoring?  I see an increase in tourists bypassing Thailand and going to Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos.  

One man's misfortune is another man's opportunity.

I sincerely hope Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines are seizing this unique in a lifetime opportunity.

9 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

Now they admit they need to be able to keep better track of tourists. The pass allows them to do that somewhat. After all, so many tourists are criminals, junkies, thieves and trouble makers. Not to mention we are unclean and unpure. Of course, we are foreigners. We are of a far lower status than the lofty men in charge here.

This this this this and this again and again and again and some more.

How can I upvote you more than once Mike? Just tell me, how?

It's over. Thailand is dead.

If you are an expat/monger/retiree/tourist/traveler from the North American continent, your best destinations now are among Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil and Panama.

If you are from Northern Europe (or the UK, Brexit, remember?), your best destinations now are among Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta and that region of warmer/southern Europe.

The World has changed, Thailand is gone, move on with it.

1 hour ago, John Drake said:

Thailand Pass is simply a new name for a visa with more stringent requirements, especially insurance. Obviously, this is impractical for the numbers of people they expect from India, Malaysia, and China, so the government is developing "travel bubbles" with those countries that I would suspect will exempt them Thailand Pass

Correct, these nations will be exempt from Thailand Pass through different channels.

1 hour ago, John Drake said:

Wonder if Russia will get a travel bubble too?

I would say that is very likely, remember less than a week ago Russia and Thailand have signed treaties that allow them to facilitate extraditions of criminals from both sides of the fence.

Coupled with the Saudis expressing their interests in importing Thai workers into their taskforce and re-establishing democratic ties that have been severed for almost thirty years.

I'd say the writing is on the wall for the current Thai administration: Bye, bye farangs (read: whities, or Europeans or North Americans), we don't need you no more, our new partners are our ASEAN neighbors, the Chinese next door overlords, the Indians, the South Koreans, the Japanese, India, the Malays and now the Saudis.

Out with the old, in with the new.

Sadly for us, we are the old.

39 minutes ago, baboon said:

From the horse's mouth - 'We are a totalitarian state and so what?' Jesus Christ, what an admission....

Straight from the horse's mouth indeed.

We are not welcomed here anymore.

Get out you dirty farangs! Make room for our Chinese overlords, our Indian neighbors, our Japanese Hi-So's and our South Korean high spenders!

51 minutes ago, webfact said:

“The Thailand Pass system cannot be cancelled because it holds data and important information on tourists which can be used to trace them when they travel in Thailand,” Mr Pipat said.

There we go.

They are finally admitting this has nothing to do with health or safety concerns at all, it is all about controlling and tracing the masses or hordes which would be entering the Kingdom each and every year.

And this time, for all you deniers out there, you heard it from the horse's mouth, the Tourism and Sports Minister himself.

My advice: if you haven't already, sell everything, recoup your assets (or your losses) and get ready to pull out of Thailand at any time.

Welcome Thailand Police State 2.0 sponsored by the CCP aka Chailand!

2 hours ago, MSMU1993 said:

Thailand Pass is probably here to stay - just like those registrations systems used in Australia

Yes and yes.

That is as long as those at the top won't be "removed" from power and remain in office.

Also as long as the ongoing mindset will be essentially that allowing us to enter Thailand is actually doing us a favor.

If you want to grasp and understand more the Thai mindset I suggest you watch the movie "The Cave" (the documentary version from National Geographic) where at one point the English and American scuba divers were explicitly no longer allowed to dive in by the authorities, let alone enter the caves any longer.

The foreign rescue team members even were openly threatened with possible potential legal action should the kids trapped in the cave not make it out alive while on their watch.

I'm sorry to say this and even for myself it is an incredibly hard to swallow pill after 10+ years spent in Thailand, but it is what it is; to the Thais we will always be inferior to them, we simply are not Thai, we lack what they would call the "Thainess", we are not blessed, we are not believers, we share very little common values with them (if any at all), we will always be "the farang".

And as soon as things turn sour, fingers will always be pointed at us, in our direction we will even be called "dirty farangs" by their ministers, there will always be double pricing, no equality of any kind, the "farang must pay" mindset will always be prevalent, trust me when I say this:

Now that they have the Thailand Pass (and the TM30 before and the 90 days report where we MUST REPORT like if we were fugitives), the Thais have shown their true colors, to them we are defiling their holy land the very minute we land in the Kingdom of Siam. They only tolerate us because of the monetary incentive we bring to their society, once you run dry, they're no longer interested in you.

They really are convinced that allowing us to roam freely in the Kingdom (so we can part away with our riches) is doing us a favor.

Thailand Pass is their fashioned way to do us that favor with strings attached (monitoring and tracing us 24/7).

Thailand is dead.

44 minutes ago, tlcwaterfall said:

They want to track all the foreigners but they are simply not smart enough to do it. Give them a few more decades and they may have progressed beyond Windows XP as well.

Track us, chase us, fleece us, scam us,. that's all they know.

31 minutes ago, webfact said:

“The Thailand Pass system cannot be lifted because it’s a data center for important information on tourists which can be used to trace them when they travel in Thailand,” Tourism and Sports Minister Pipat Ratchakitprakarn was quoted by Krungthep Turakij on Monday.

There we go.

They are finally admitting this has nothing to do with health or safety concerns at all, it is all about controlling and tracing the masses or hordes that are entering the Kingdom each and every year.

And this time, for all you deniers out there, you heard it from the horse's mouth, the Tourism and Sports Minister himself.

My advice: if you haven't already, sell everything, recoup your assets (or your losses) and get ready to pull out of Thailand at any time.

Welcome Thailand Police State 2.0 sponsored by the CCP aka Chailand!

2 hours ago, Bkk Brian said:

Hardly surprising, its been known for years that Prayut wants a Chinese style governance. This from back in 2016

 

PRAYUTH: READ CHINESE GOVERNANCE BOOK BECAUSE IT SUITS THAILAND

 

BANGKOK — To get a glimpse of the future of governance of Thailand under junta-leader-cum-prime-minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, see what Prayuth recommends his cabinet to read.

At yesterday’s cabinet meeting, Prayuth recommended that ministers, who include many generals, read Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s book “The Governance of China”.

Prayuth was quoted as saying that the book should be read because it is suited to the governing situation of Thailand as the kingdom is also undergoing reform.

https://www.khaosodenglish.com/politics/2016/04/13/1460541191/

 

There was a thread on it here:

https://aseannow.com/topic/910111-prayut-read-chinese-governance-book-because-it-suits-thailand/

 

 

Scary indeed, very scary.

Welcome to Chailand!