SymS

I thought that "70% vaccinated" mantra died a while ago. It looks like vaccination don't do much with regards to cases, but they do appear to help quite a lot with lowering the risk of death. So of course, bringing more foreigners will increase the risk of getting more infections and possibly introduce another variant in the future, but this must be balanced with the financial needs of the people.

Maybe start to have a proper permanent residency program. Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan come to mind.

Good luck with reopening Chiang Mai. There's just been a cluster with over one hundred cases in the largest market here (Gad meuang mai). Most food sellers around Chiang Mai will go early morning to buy fresh food there, before selling in other parts of the city. The market is now closed, so we'll see how it goes for the next two weeks.

The sad truth is nobody has any idea why COVID cases go up or down. It just come in waves, even in countries with a high percentage of vaccinated people.

Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, or Indonesia.

I've never been asked for a criminal record. Done yearly extensions using marriage, then work for over ten years.

That could mean asking everybody doing a yearly extension a certified of copy of their criminal record, translated into Thai, and certified by the MFA. It would probably quite effective, but I'm not sure we'd want to go that road.

Good to know. I can now ask for a discount if I only speak Thai at the hospital!

I wonder how much of that is due to people throwing packages, plastic bags and face masks all over the place and blocking water drains. A few weeks ago, I stayed in a house, and decided the clean the "klong", which was dry at the time, as I was fed up with the dirt, and the concrete pipe that was suppose to drain the water was completely blocked by garbage. After cleaning, face masks, plastic plastic, bottle quickly restarted to accumulate dropped by the side of the road...

I also believe the Thai economy can save itself from Prayuth.

"limited to where they can buy". I don't understand the rational behind this, as most selected locations will be undesirable to many. Just impose other limits like preventing foreign companies from purchasing residential real-estate (except condos up to 50% like now), set minimum and maximum size of land, minimum pricing, or maybe a 25% or whatever stamp duty when real-estate is sold to a foreigner, this should stop speculation, and people would only be a house where they indeed intends to live.

TAT new slogan: "Thailand: no kids allowed, enjoy your holidays in peace!"

I don't think most people understand how Sars-Cov-2 is transmitted... I can see most people religiously wear their mask while riding a motorbike, only to take it down to talk to people...

Quality tourists want nothing to do with 1. quarantines, 2. garbage on the beach and along the road, 3. rip-offs.

and If I remember correctly it's also possible to buy a land and house.

Vaccination is voluntary, getting is a visa is voluntary, but they can always make vaccination compulsory to get a visa or extension of stay. Yellow fever vaccination is already mandatory when coming from some African and South American countries.

I'm not saying who is at fault here, since I don't know, but should six wheel trucks be allowed to U-Turn? It's already dangerous enough with a car as it is.

I'm not sure there's such feature. I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 (Linux) on a laptop with an external display. I don't usually use icons on the desktop, I should probably clean that mess up ????

Here's mine ????

Yes.

The tourism sector is severely impacted, but I don't think the economy as a whole is that bad. I've never seen so much building activity in my area, but if Trading Economics data is correct, exports are doing fine. The GDP is not that great, but it's not a catastrophe either.

I was on an extension of stay (based on marriage) with a non-O visa before, and wanted to switch the reason to "working", as we were about to divorce the next year. In theory it's possible, but eventually I had to leave the country to do a non-B. The problem was one document from the BOI had expired, and they were not not willing to update it until next year, or provide another document to avoid this. So it's possible, but since multiple agencies are involved (labor ministry ,immigration, and maybe others) this may not always work out.