Guderian

Talk about wishful thinking! There, there, Pipat, Santa will bring you a nice rich foreign tourist for Christmas, I'm sure of it.

The seawater's certainly cleaner than it was pre-Covid, but it'll never match the islands. When the swimming pools were closed I was swimming in the sea at Jomtien Beach most days and you could make out the sand ripples in the sea bed in six feet of water, though only when it was calm and the waves weren't disturbing the sediment. One thing I had never realised before was that the sea becomes infested with jellyfish during the rainy season. I got stung a number of times in the area I liked to swim (the giant, buoyed-off area between Wat Bun and Chaiyapruek), and gave up there. I found that Dongtan Beach had less of a problem, though the jellyfish are still there. I'm not sure when they clear off again, presumably when the wet weather ends and the cools eason starts, but the Pattaya jellyfish season is certainly not something you see mentioned in the TAT brochures, and there are no warning signs that I've seen.

I ordered my Butterball Christmas turkey from a small shop in Pattaya that specialises in farang foods way back in mid-September already. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the global supply chain problems don't gobble it up, lol!

I'm sure I recall them saying the same thing about the first case of the Delta variant, what seems like a lifetime ago.

This government is the country's own worst enemy, why would anyone spend good money trying to wade through such a poorly-designed morass of petty rules and regulations, just to come to a place where everything's still closed?

They'd probably find that Thailand was also near or at the top of the list if they did a similar survey looking at the number of people who had searched for, say, "country with the most stupid Immigration rules", or "country with the most scams aimed at foreigners". :rolleyes:

No money, no honey... ...does anyone remember those long-gone days of endless fun in Pattaya, lol?

It's a good job most tourists come to Thailand for the temples, the food and the smiling people, or this plan would be a failure before it even starts.

Maybe they could use this sudden bout of common sense and openness to also admit that most Thai pavements/sidewalks are not fit for pedestrians. (That's in the few cases where they actually bothered to build a pavement/sidewalk in the first place, of course, lol.)

Did I miss it, I didn't see anything about having to install a tracking/medical app on your phone and keep it switched on at all times? It's not like the Big Brothers running the country to miss an opportunity like this to keep a close eye on the dirty farang criminals!

This place is nothing to do with me, but I think a good idea and good service deserves some free publicity, and some people may be interested in using it. It was the GF's birthday on Monday so a few days before I went to the shop to see what's what. Quite impressive if you like balloons, the owner speaks good English and has a catalogue of ready-made designs but you can customise things as much or as little as you like. She'll deliver (not sure if there's a charge for that), but I was happy to pick them up myself. It was all ready at 10:00 on Monday morning and the GF was delighted. Not cheap, but they're quite pricy back in the UK as I know from experience, my bunch was one of the most basic and it set me back 720 Baht. They lasted well, though, only started deflating a bit yesterday. If you have a special occasion coming up and want to do something different, this shop is worth a look, a good product and great service. Location is on the Suk-bound (north) side of Thepprasit, just after the entrance to the boxing stadium. If you don't know where that is, just park on the north side of Thepprasit more or less opposite where the big Keha condos end and the night market starts.

Prayut wil be under a lot of pressure from all the hotels that have made a tidy living from ASQ bookings. I suspect that much moolah will pass between hands underneath the table before this is sorted.

Yeah, I've had them too, and one from Kasikorn asking me to validate my account details. Since I've never banked with them, that one was easy to spot. The message header may say something like "Thailand Post" or whatever, but when you check the actual address it came from it will be something like [email protected], or [email protected], so it's easy to tell that it's a fake.

Thailand just needs to make the right noises and the occasional, largely symbolic, gesture. Then sit back, business as normal, until the rich nations have sorted out things like cheap air pumps for air conditioning, hydrogen-fuelled jet engines, and how to build cheap electric cars that normal people might actually want to pay money for. Oh, and how to stop the family waterbuffalo from farting, too, though that one may take a while, lol!

As always with medical insurance, it's the oldest who'll be hit the hardest. Once you're in your 80's, all this stuff they're demanding will cost you the same as a small car.

It helps to explain why the rate of new infections in Phuket is running at around four times the national average. Nothing to do with tourism, just that the government gave everyone an ineffective vaccine.

Well, they could be more open and honest about that statement for starters. Spell out that the first day will involve some sort of isolation or quarantine until you receive the all-clear from your PCR test on arrival. They could also spell out in detail what exactly will happen to people who get a positive test result on arrival. How long will they have to quarantine for, and where, and who will pay?

I've never used PIH myself, but they didn't distinguish themselves earlier in the year in their rush to take (non-refundable) deposits from people to pre-order the Moderna vacccine. OTOH, Memorial was doing much the same thing, while BHP just issued news releases in such a way as to minimise the chances of a foreigner being able to register for the limited supply of Moderna they expected at that time. Since that ended up meaning it was mainly their Thai customers who have been disappointed that they still haven't received any Moderna, maybe we should actually be grateful to BHP? I've forgiven BHP sufficiently to be booked in to have a BCC removed in 10 days time, anyway.

There have been many stories over the years about the Gogo Bars on Walking Street closing down and relocating inland to LK Metro and Soi Buakhao, but that's the only 'gone' that I'd say might happen. I'd guess that many of the smaller bars that were struggling to make a living before Covid will never reopen, but that will just make the big, successful Gogos even more profitable and attractive as investments. And I'm sure that the eejits running the city have an idea what the economic impact of closing down the Gogo's completely might be. All those budget hotels and cheap bar beers and restaurants frequented by the sex tourists when they're not in the Gogo's would go permanently broke, as would the infrastructure to feed and accommodate all the working girls. Basically, without a huge rebuilding and remodelling programme costing a vast amount of money, much of the area of Pattaya near the beach would stay looking like it is today, boarded up and dead. So I'd say that the Gogo Bar scene will change, maybe even evolve for the better, but the politicians know which side their khanom pang is buttered on and won't be closing it down anytime soon.

Thailand - the hub of dodgy and misleading polls, lol.

They should save money on their advertising campaign and only target teetotallers, hermits and sociophobes. :rolleyes: Maybe a few new campaign slogans are in order: Thailand: come for the sun, die of the tedium. or Thailand: the hub of beaches and boredom.

In the absence of any deadly new variants, the tourists aren't the problem. The trouble will start when they begin seriously lifting restrictions on social activities, like allowing bars to open again, which is pretty much a must if they want to attract a lot of people to spend a lot of money. Loss of inhibitions from drinking, together with shouting and singing in close proximity to others, possibly in an enclosed indoor space, and you have the perfect environment for the virus to spread. Now all those young(ish), fully vaccinated partygoers and staff may not be at much risk, but the vaccines don't stop them from transmitting the virus to unvacinated friends and family, resulting in rising cases of serious illness and, sooner or later, deaths from Covid. Prayut and Anutin are acting like executioners towards their own most vulnerable citizens, when it should be their top priority to protect them, but I guess there's no serious money to be made in that malarky so why bother, lol.

Enjoy these low numbers, once the schools go back and they relax the social restrictions on bars and other venues to attract foreign tourists, we'll soon be at 30,000 to 40,000 new cases a day, though their refusal to do any serious testing will mask at least some of it. It's coming and it's unavoidable for anyone living here, so make sure you have had both jabs. The really sad thing is that, with only a third of the population fully-protected after over four months of the national vaccine rollout, all of those new cases are going to come with a lot of excess deaths as well. The GF's uncle is in his 70's and unable to walk, yet he's refusing to get vaccinated, even though we've offered to try and get a mobile vaccination unit to come to his house. What can you do?

They're trying to follow much richer countries with far higher vaccination covereage in opening up (e.g. Denmark. where 88% of people over the age of 18 and an astonishing 97% of the over-60's have received both shots). It's premature, many doctors don't even think the UK (with two-thirds of the population fully-vaccinated, compared with just one-third in Thailand)) should be fully reopening yet. Of course, everyone wants life to return to normal and to be able to go out for a beer, and for people working in the foreign tourism sector to get their jobs and livelihoods back, but they're going too far too fast. They simply don't have the breadth and depth of vaccine coverage, and this is likely to end in tears, I'm afraid.

So I decided to go for a pleasant, quiet late Sunday afternoon stroll along Jomtine Beach, as I have done for months. I have only ever seen the area there busier during extended holiday weekends or special events during normal times, it was packed. I don't think it was a holiday weekend or anything special was going on, but vast numbers of people from somewhere had descended on Jomtien Beach Road to while away Sunday afternoon. With crowds like this, who needs foreign tourists? OK, I know, the hotels and restaurants and bars (if they ever reopen) need them, but it was a change to see a breath of life in the place after it being so quiet for so long. Was Pattaya Beach the same, or does it still resenble a morgue?