Guderian

I'm going with the International Certificate of Vaccination (the famous yellow book), which is very widely used and recognised all around the world. The latest version has a page specifically for Covid-19 vaccines. I've been told that the hospital will enter the relevant data in it after I receive my second shot, as well as giving me the Thai proof of vaccination. I got my new yellow book from Amazon.co.uk, it cost less than a fiver, and had it sent to me here.

This was a summary of the situation regarding vaccination of foreigners around 20th July, so four weeks ago, and it's interesting to see the changes. Without going into a lot of tedious detail, it seems that around 70% of doses were given to migrant workers, almost all young and at no real risk from Covid. I guess they’re workers caught in factory or dormitory clusters who have been given priority for receiving vaccines over the elderly foreigners and those with chronic medical conditions. Resuming the production of widgets and doodads is evidently more important than protecting the lives of retired expats. Around 20% of the vaccines were second doses, and the rest were divvied up between the less-numerous foreign worker populations (like the Filipinos) and the foreign expats living here. The British and Americans, for example, received around 5,800 doses between them, or around 3% of the total given in the four-week period. So don’t worry, Thailand cares about you, just not enough, it seems, to give you any genuine priority to receive a potentially life-saving vaccine.

Try phoning some of the bakers around town, specifically The Continental on Thappraya road and the Bakhaus on Jomtien Second Road. There used to be a cake shop on Thepprasit, just around the corner from Thappraya, but I expect the Covid disaster has closed it. Even if the shops you call can't make them, perhaps they can suggest someone who can.

It's amusing how the article makes this sound as if it's a tremendous technical achievement, instead of being a case of clutching at straws as a result of a deeply-flawed (and that's putting it as nicely as I can!) vaccine procurement process.

The authorities have brought this on themselves due to the inept way they've handled the registration process. Many, if not most people have registered with more than one hospital for a vaccine, for obvious reasons. A mate of mine in Khorat, in his 70's and with type 2 diabetes, has been getting desperate for anything, and finally got a dose of AZ at Bumrungrad. Now he's being inundated with appointments from the five other places that he'd registered. I just hope that everybody is cancelling the other registrations they made once they've had the first dose, that might help to bring a little bit of sanity back into the system, as the second dose has to be in the same place where you got your first dose, as I understand it.

Poor journalism and fact-checking, but that's hardly news. Yes, J&J has been approved, otherwise how could the French have given it to all their citizens living here? https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/country/thailand/

It was sent using Royal Mail's tracking system, with some prescription tablets in the jiffy bag as well the postage cost was just over a tenner. It arrived in exactly one week, which is the norm these days. Check the Amazon website, the vendor might be willing to send it directly to you here. If not, just get it delivered to someone you know in the UK and ask them to send it on to you. Given the ridiculous nonsense there seems to be in getting one of these here in Thailand, I think it's well worth doing.

I heard that quite a few years ago now somebody, maybe City Hall or their TAT subsidiary, had sent a questionnaire to a lot of Chinese tourists asking them how they thought the beach front area could be improved. Apparently, the replies showed that the Chinese regard palm trees as highly attractive, and didn't want to see all those nasty big old shady trees with large leaves that looked just like the two trees still left standing in their home cities. And the rest, as they say, is history.

And if Bhutan says no, then I guess they'll just have to call up the boss in Beijing and beg him to send some more Sinovac. Who would have thought that Thailand would end up so friendless in the world, but with a government like this one it's not really surprising.

I thought that getting the yellow vaccination certificate book was a good idea. Nobody seems to know exactly what different countries will require in terms of proof, but at least the yellow book is already well-known and widely accepted. The latest version also has a page specifically for Covid-19 vaccinations. I got this one from Amazon.co.uk for less than a fiver, and my brother sent it to me along with the usual monthly parcel of NHS prescription medicines. It may work out and it may not, but it’s not expensive and at least it’s something recognisable that’s vaccine certificate-related.

Calling foreigners the scum of the earth? Hold the front page, Khun Anutin is on his way with a few choice things to say about them!

We've already got Dutch courage and now we have Chinese generosity! They're vaccinating their own people at a rate of 12 million doses a day, so 3 million is just a drop in the proverbial. And Sinovac? You couldn't even give it away in most Western countries, yet Thailand is like a puppy dog falling over itself with joy for a scrap tossed to it by its master.

Better to be honest about it: The current restrictions in place include interprovincial travel restrictions and a night time curfew, neither of which is being enforced by the police.

Well, unless you've been asleep the whole time, you should know by now that alcohol kills the virus very effectively, lol!

I gather that the Big Cheeses are meeting again tomorrow to discuss what to do next. The piece I read said the idea is that certain restrictions may be loosened to allow a few people to get back to work, like allowing some shops in malls to reopen. With Delta rampaging through the population, though, that doesn't sound sensible to me, and I have a suspicion that instead of loosening things we might see further tightening tomorrow. The one big thing they did in April/May last year that they haven't done this time around was to ban the sale of alcohol for a month or more. Are there any feelings/views/informed sources out there suggesting what will happen next, will they loosen or tighten our Covid bonds?

It's fine for a dirty weekend, but it's not a place to live as there's nothing else there. If you can afford it, Olongapo would be a good place to live, though very American. The location is lovely, Barrio Baretto provides enough nightlife to entertain you without having to go to Angeles, it has its own power generation station, and - very importantly - it's sheltered from typhoons coming off the Pacific by the mountains behind it. If that doesn't float your boat, maybe try Davao City in the south of Mindanao, but if you've been to General Santos then you probably know Davao already. Sabang and Puerto Galera on Mindoro are also nice places to live, and just an hour by boat to get back to Luzon if you want to go shopping or whatever.

We're still working our way through the Delta variant, have they taken into account the effects of the Epsilon and Lambda variants in these forecasts? Maybe in 2032, TAT, but definitely not next year, poor lambs.

I agree with you, that's why it surprised me to find I prefer the Australian SPC beans, when I grew up in the UK where Beanz Meanz Heinz, lol.

Well of course they haven't, as the police are evidently refusing to enforce them. I've yet to see a single report of road blocks and checkpoints enforcing the interprovincial travel ban between deep red zones and, at least in Pattaya, many people are simply ignoring the curfew, the cops don't seem to care. I assume if a lowly farang like myself is aware of this, then the authorities making these ridiculous statements are aware of the situation too, and the focus should be on getting police compliance with the government's orders, not on dreaming up some fantasy other-world of yet more restrictions. The big question, though, is why the cops are ignoring Prayut, is this a sign that his days are numbered?

With the rate at which he's been ordering them shut over the last month, I'm surprised there are any left open!

Now I'm confused. The headline number splits the daily total into 22,407 new community infections, plus 375 new cases in prison, giving a grand total of 22,782. That's consistent with the graphic below. However, that graphic also says there were 3,673 cases found by rapid ATK, which I guess is the rapid antigen test you can do at home, So why aren't those 3,673 new cases added to the total found by the PCR tests, to give an overall grand total of 26,455 new cases?

I was looking for a can of SPC baked beans in friendship a week or two ago, but they were out of them. Plenty of Brooks, but I'm not overly fond of them, and they also had cans of Watties baked beans from NZ so I bought then instead. I haven't tried them yet, how do you think they compare with the Aussie SPC version? This is one reason I enjoy living in Pattaya, you get a chance to try products from all around the world, whereas if I was back in Britain I'd never stray beyond a can of Heinz baked beans. I prefer the SPC beans to the British Heinz version, which surpised me greatly.

No, that's not the reason, as checking the traffic via Google Maps 30 minutes later shows holdups in different places, so traffic is there and it is moving. See my previous post, it seems the curfew is not being policed, unless perhaps you are very unlucky or run into the back of a truck and die.

I got the answer from the news on 103FM this afternoon. Apparently, in areas of the Dark Side, most people are simply ignoring the curfew and doing as they please, it's not being policed. Safe to say it's much the same across the whole city.

So he was out when he shouldn't have been, but RIP anyway. How strictly are they policing the curfew? I ask because on several nights, well after the 9:00 PM start, I've had a look at Google Maps and it seems to show traffic jams or holdups in South Pattaya. Is this real, and if so who exactly are all these people stuck in traffic jams after the curfew has started, or is it just some googly artefact of there being no traffic around? This is one example, why is there a traffic jam at the South Pattaya Road/second Road intersection?