Special Tourist Visa: Good news for Scandinavians and Aussies/New Zealanders

[Disparate Dan]

12 minutes ago, Misterwhisper said:

Mr. Yuthasak... why no mention of all those "other" prerequisites?

You omitted another prerequisite mentioned in all the reports last week: charter flights only. The 300 tourists per week would all have to come from one city, or it wouldn't make aviation sense.

Fact is, TAT and the other tourist organisations can say what they like. RTP and Immigration department will do what they want, and there doesn't appear to be any rush to help TAT from them.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Disparate Dan

[geriatrickid]

9 minutes ago, Nout said:

Just read a British newspaper any time in the last few months and misinformation, scaremongering and confusing, contradictory hysteria are the dominant stories

Please provide a specific example from a reputable news source, aka MSM. The tabloids which announce that Elvis is alive or that Aliens live among us are not  reputable.  

[2 is 1]

5 minutes ago, ICELANDMAN said:

Why the funny news comes so late this morning ?

Today is monday , TAT not working in Saturday-Sunday! Braindead workers need escort to office and that take time!

[hexa]

Its funny how people spam no usa,eu etc person will come with those rules. its only 1200 persons per month. 

im from eu, under 30 and im thinking about it. tho it seems its country restrictions so unfortunetely my country not on list right now. 2 weeks quarantine? done that 2 times already (okay its self isolate but havent gone  out those 2 weeks anyways when i did it). 

Not hard to just work those 2 weeks more and be more producive.

 

while its not good solution by thailand, its better than nothing. bad start is still better than standing still.

Edited September 21, 2020 by hexa

[geriatrickid]

1 minute ago, Disparate Dan said:

You omitted another prerequisite mentioned in all the reports last week: charter flights only. The 300 tourists per week would all have to come from one city, or it wouldn't make aviation sense.

Quite posisble. TG had direct flights from CPH, OSL and ARN  They filled  a B787 or B777 back in the good old days.  If they do it once a week, easy.

[Grumpy John]

1 hour ago, redwood1 said:

I thought the Australians and New Zealanders were locked up on their prison colonies......I have not heard of any dates where as the prisoners might be released to travel......

You can check-in but not check-out!  My son lives in Victoria and says there is a Wuhan China virus coverage map on the 6 o'clock news.   And most of the map is green (no virus) with a few isolated spots of red.  Everyone is asking why the he11 they are in lock down when so little is effected.  It just plain crazy! 

[Lupusthai]

17 minutes ago, Logosone said:

Amazing how the countries with the strictest lockdowns and mandatory masks have the highest case numbers, whereas Sweden, with no masks and no mandatory lockdown, does not.

I didn't mean to blame on the Swedish approach! ( btw: I appreciate it very much! But maybe it's better working in countries with low population density...Scandinavia 16-22 people/km², central Europe 100-400 people/km²)

[Matzzon]

So, Sweden will be welcome. How? They still have the same amount of cases every single day as in beginning of July.

13 of july: 170 cases

17 of Sept: 224 cases

Yep, it´s truly getting better and probably very safe as well. ???? 

 

[dbrenn]

1 hour ago, xylophone said:

Yes indeed........although there may be a few who need to get back here for family and business reasons, but apart from that, the days of having to "jump through hoops" to appease ill-thought-through TAT and Immigration regulations have pi$$ed too many off, so not likely to be a rush.

 

Besides that, in Oz and NZ "come the end of the year" it will be summer time so better to stay where they are.

Don't underestimate Thailand's allure to many.

[Wongkitlo]

44 minutes ago, Logosone said:

Only 1.2 per cent of Sweden's 120,000 tests last week came back positive, data from their national health agency shows, according to The Guardian, that's why.

 

Their 14-day accumulative total of new cases is 22.2 for every 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 279 in Spain, 158.5 in France, 118 in the Czech Republic, 77 in Belgium and 59 in the UK.

 

All those countries imposed lockdowns in the grips of the pandemic in March but Sweden opted for a lighter approach which now appears to be paying off. 

 

It is even outperforming its Scandinavian neighbours, Norway and Denmark, suggesting the Swedish approach may have helped them in the long term. 

 

Amazing how the countries with the strictest lockdowns and mandatory masks have the highest case numbers, whereas Sweden, with no masks and no mandatory lockdown, does not.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8736063/Sweden-records-lowest-number-covid-cases-March-108-did-not-impose-lockdown.html

I read a recent  survey among Swedish people. They asked where they wanted to go on holidays this winter. For 2019 80% said Thailand. For 2020 only 20 %. I'd guess people are wary of being caught in a 3rd world hospital system, a long way from home.

[Eindhoven]

18 minutes ago, Grumpy John said:

You can check-in but not check-out!  My son lives in Victoria and says there is a Wuhan China virus coverage map on the 6 o'clock news.   And most of the map is green (no virus) with a few isolated spots of red.  Everyone is asking why the he11 they are in lock down when so little is effected.  It just plain crazy! 

 

*affected.

[Wongkitlo]

23 minutes ago, Grumpy John said:

You can check-in but not check-out!  My son lives in Victoria and says there is a Wuhan China virus coverage map on the 6 o'clock news.   And most of the map is green (no virus) with a few isolated spots of red.  Everyone is asking why the he11 they are in lock down when so little is effected.  It just plain crazy! 

A month or so they had close to or over 1000 cases so they are trying to reduce it to 0 I guess. Most of my friends seem happy to wait a few weeks in lockdown to give the highest chance of no recurrence

[Andrew65]

2 hours ago, xylophone said:

Yes indeed........although there may be a few who need to get back here for family and business reasons, but apart from that, the days of having to "jump through hoops" to appease ill-thought-through TAT and Immigration regulations have pi$$ed too many off, so not likely to be a rush.

 

Besides that, in Oz and NZ "come the end of the year" it will be summer time so better to stay where they are.

One of the nice things about being Australian (or American) is that you don't have to leave the country for nice weather.

Also, as you say, this doesn't sound like a very special arrangement.

Once we're into November and the 'high season' and they don't have any tourists they'll hit the panic-button.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Andrew65

[HiSoLowSoNoSo]

I think I stay here in Sweden, they can stick their silly rules and quarantine up where the sun don't shine. Can always find another warm country to spend the winter in if it gets too cold here.

Edited September 21, 2020 by HiSoLowSoNoSo

[Sharp]

52 minutes ago, Nout said:

Just read a British newspaper any time in the last few months and misinformation, scaremongering and confusing, contradictory hysteria are the dominant stories

+1

[simple1]

2 hours ago, Sharp said:

Covid-19 insurance and tracking app people would probably accept but 2 weeks quarantine that's a tricky sell to say the least!!

Plus the needless scaremongering needs to stop from all MSM and alike. 

MSM report government regs, other stuff regards Covid, just ignore. Currently 14 days isolation in a hotel, at your cost, when returning to Oz. At this stage no confirmed date when requirement will be lifted when returning from any country.

[worldfun]

"no Covid-19 infection for 28 days"

No country will be welcome not even Thais themselves then!!!!! Do they ever think???

BTW Sweden have broken the curve of the pandemic while neighboring Denmark is seeing wave 2 surges well above Sweden's numbers although that can partly be explained with the crazy 'over testing' the danes are currently doing but for certain numbers going up in DK vs. down in SE so a random tourist from either is going to be pretty low risk as e.g. compared to hotspots like say Spain or France!!

If Thailand wants to cherry pick low risk tourists there really are none, but clearly Indians & Indonesians aren't going to be invited!

So if TAT actually spent 5min checking WHO or their foreign missions about current covid numbers they could compile their invitation list & move forward...

Edited September 21, 2020 by worldfun

[Toany]

why would someone come from country that is Covod-19 free to a country that has infections?

[TSF]

They're in a dream world. Aussie are locked down. Even if they can get out of the country very very few are remotely interested in risking covid infection by hanging around airports and onboard planes. And 2 weeks quarantine upon arrival in Thailand, plus 2 weeks quarantine upon arrival back in Oz. Wow, what a great holiday that would make.  

[Raphael Hythlodaeus]

I suggest they start a new LOTTERY where we have to guess the number of arrivals under the Special Tourist Visa scheme. Whoever gets closest to the actual number wins a free 2-week trip to . . er . . Australia !! Second prize is a 4-week trip to Australia.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

2 hours ago, fredob43 said:

No one from the UK USA EU India either.

 

Those countries you've listed above don't quite fit with the program's criteria of only being eligible to countries with little or no CV infections.

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 hour ago, Lupusthai said:

I can agree to include Finland, Australia and New Zealand.

But why Sweden and Norway?

(included UK and Germany for comparison)

 

You're talking about folks who still have a hard time distinguishing between Australia and Austria.....  In the case above, they're probably thinking, ya, we mean, all those cold places!

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 hour ago, steven100 said:

i'm open to new ideas

 

I can recall a few young women I've spent time with in Thailand that I wouldn't mind being locked up together with in a nice hotel for a two-week stay (assuming that would be allowed).

 

In fact, now that I think about it and smile, I may well have done that a couple times long before CV ever arrived....  

[alyx]

2 hours ago, Grumpy one said:

2 week quarantine with free daily happy ending massage could be a winner if TAT threw it in as a sweetener  

But that is one hour, two at most ( not talking about the ending...or Am I ? 555). What about the rest of the day? Mind you the first few days the Jet Lag will help. It is actually the only perk to quarantine

[worldfun]

12 minutes ago, Raphael Hythlodaeus said:

I suggest they start a new LOTTERY where we have to guess the number of arrivals under the Special Tourist Visa scheme. Whoever gets closest to the actual number wins a free 2-week trip to . . er . . Australia !! Second prize is a 4-week trip to Australia.

i'm in ????
Let me start by guessing # arrivals with STV on day 1 / OCT 1 = 0 ????

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

37 minutes ago, HiSoLowSoNoSo said:

I think I stay here in Sweden, they can stick their silly rules and quarantine up where the sun don't shine.

 You mean Sweden in its winter time???  

 

Quote

Winter, as you might expect, is dark and cold across most of the country.

https://sweden.se/nature/swedish-climate/

 

[Raphael Hythlodaeus]

11 minutes ago, worldfun said:

i'm in ????

Not allowed -- you haven't paid for the lottery ticket. Forgot to mention this costs 2,000 baht + health checks to prove you are still alive + virus checks + insurance + quarantine (no massages). You can trust me as the banker to look after funds, although my daughter always insists on being the banker for Monopoly so maybe she knows better.

[TommyL727]

This is off topic. I just want to say that we NEVER used masks in Norway. Not in stores, not on public transports, nowhere. If you wanted, you could of course. But very few did. And things are going just fine, 267 dead with a mean age of 82. Not that that is a good thing, but the life expectancy in Norway is...yes you guessed it. 82! So people are actually dying with covid, not from it. Except from some few cases of course, which the media is especially keen on dragging onto the front page for scare mongering. The last flare ups have been because some venues, and very localized. So if you take off those 3 or so flare ups, which is now under control, the graph would be as flatlined as my long dead grandmother, rest her soul. I pity you guys from Australia and other countries where they stripped you of your basic human rights. Its a criminal act, and I hope the responsible for it will pay.

 

On topic: Not one single tourist from atleast here, that I know of, will take 2 weeks quarantine. Expats only.

Edited September 21, 2020 by TommyL727

[HiSoLowSoNoSo]

2 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 You mean Sweden in its winter time???  

 

https://sweden.se/nature/swedish-climate/

 

There are flights to Reunion, Maldives, Tenerife and also to Mexico I can jump on if it gets too cold here, and I don't need to be imprisoned in those places for two weeks and pay silly money to be let in.

[madmitch]

The people involved just make it up as they go along at the moment. Where's the market research? Aussies can't even get out of their country, cases in Scandinavia are currently on the rise; they certainly don't meet the no cases for 28 days criteria. Finally, how many people are interested in travelling long haul?