Phuket Sandbox is not closing and has actually been a success, set to generate billions of baht: govt

[herfiehandbag]

14 hours ago, billd766 said:

We live in rural Kamphaeng Phet and my son had his normal school holiday in April to go back in the first week of May, postponed until mid May, postponed again to 01 June, postponed to mid June, postponed to early July, postponed to 3rd week July, now postponed again until August so far. he has missed 3 months schooling this year so far and 2 months last year.

He has done online lessons with the teacher and today he went in to get some more books from the school.

 

This is only one school znd there are thousands of others like it across rural Thailand.

Online lessons in groups are no substitute for classroom teaching. One of the "tricks of the trade" for a teacher is to be as aware of the level of understanding and concentration for the five tearaways at the back as you are for the three little sweethearts in the front, and teach accordingly. Very difficult to do in a group online. However it sounds as if your boy is studying, so he will be learning. He may even be discovering how to learn by himself, which will be a valuable skill if he goes on to university.

 

One of the problems is that when you open up for an online lesson, the sweethearts are there, complete with bunny ears and puppy dog noses, eager to learn. The tearaways are not there -"no have internet teacher!" So a significant proportion of the children are simply missing all education. If the parents are not interested, or more often the grandparents who probably don't understand the whole business, that is it.

 

I shudder to think what the standard of foot drill will be like when they finally return!

Edited July 15, 2021 by herfiehandbag

[Surelynot]

3 minutes ago, herfiehandbag said:

Online lessons in groups are no substitute for classroom teaching.

Perfectly true......if it were, governments would be sacking teachers left, right and centre..........schools are a staggering expense to every nation.

[Tmoney]

16 hours ago, gazzzz said:

At the risk of repeating myself, my post WAS CORRECT at the time of posting! More cancellations followed - can you not grasp that?

[billd766]

16 hours ago, shdmn said:

For tourists. Certainly not for the doom mongers saying it will never happen, it will never work, it will be the zombie apocalypse and whatever other nonsense they pulled out of their sphinicters. 

It has only been 15 days so far.

 

See what July has been like in the first week of August.

[shdmn]

7 hours ago, billd766 said:

It has only been 15 days so far.

 

See what July has been like in the first week of August.

It's still low season which typically has much lower numbers anyways.  If the numbers are decent now they should be pretty good Nov-Dec-Jan.

[billd766]

15 hours ago, shdmn said:

It's still low season which typically has much lower numbers anyways.  If the numbers are decent now they should be pretty good Nov-Dec-Jan.

But it is still better to wait and see on a monthly basis. It is fine to say what happens in Phuket, stays in Phuket. However in reality what also happens in the rest of the world affects Phuket as well.

 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/red-amber-and-green-list-rules-for-entering-england#red-list

 

The UK has now placed Thailand on the Red list, which means "

If you have been in a country or territory on the red list in the last 10 days you will only be allowed to enter the UK if you are a British or Irish National, or you have residence rights in the UK.

You must follow these rules even if you have been fully vaccinated.

 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/booking-and-staying-in-a-quarantine-hotel-when-you-arrive-in-england

 

Everyone allowed to enter England who has been in a red list country in the 10 days before they arrive must:

quarantine for 10 full days in a managed quarantine hotel (the day you arrive in England counts as day 0)
take a coronavirus (COVID-19) test on or before day 2 and on or after day 8 of quarantining.

 

Providing false or deliberately misleading information when filling out your passenger locator form is an offence punishable by imprisonment.

You could be fined up to £10,000, imprisoned for up to 10 years, or both, if you do not provide accurate details about the countries you have visited in the 10 days before you arrived in the UK.

 

So for your holiday in Phuket, if you are from the UK, not only do you have to spend 14 days in the sandbox or in ASQ if someone in your family or on the same flight shows positive, you also have to spend 10 days quarantine in the UK on your return. Also if you have to spend 14 days in ASQ, you then have to spend another 10 days in ASQ in the UK at your own expense.

 

It will make a trip to Phuket and return very expensive for a family of 4 people.

 

I pulled the information from Google and the UK governments website. 

[Surelynot]

3 minutes ago, billd766 said:

only be allowed to enter the UK if you are a British or Irish National, or you have residence rights in the UK.

So the wife would have to stay here.......!!!!

[WhiteBuffaloATM]

number of interesting comments here conclusively proving the inevitable sandbox failure.everyone knew it would fail but had to attempted (politics & trial lessons). success odds of below 1% must have been known to govt..Dieppe landing two years before DDay comes to mind......

[WhiteBuffaloATM]

off topic but one member referenced no open govt. schools.

surely quite insufficient for moneyed expats to rely on govt schooling which even thais recognize as <deleted> poor.most intl schools better but crazy expensive ( bad value). serious home schooling required at young ageI suggest. we do for my kid.......worthy of a separate OP or transfer to some Schools OP ? apologies Moderators.....

[rott]

On 7/14/2021 at 11:29 AM, DFPhuket said:

Even when Phuket airport was completely closed last year the website showed the same flights and listed all as canceled. 

 

This list is entirely inaccurate. The international flights (Eva, Philippines, Garuda, JAL, KLM, etc.) haven't been flying to Phuket for well over a year. Perhaps they still have their landing slots, but it's nuts that the airport continues to show these as cancelled since they were never scheduled to fly. Qatar flies four days a week. On the other three days the flights show as cancelled. Thai technology...

So have any flights been genuinely cancelled today. 

[rott]

On 7/15/2021 at 5:00 AM, shdmn said:

The perpetually wrong doom mongers who said Phuket would never open,  it would never work, nobody will ever come, it will be a zombie apocalypse, seem awfully quiet in these Phuket threads now.  I wonder why.

Bit early in the game to be speaking of success or failure. 

[DFPhuket]

1 hour ago, rott said:

So have any flights been genuinely cancelled today. 

It doesn't appear that flights scheduled to arrive today were cancelled, but it's hard to make sense of the website. AirAsia announced last weekend that they wouldn't be flying domestically and cancelled all flights. On the Phuket airport website they are listed as cancelled. I guess that is technically correct since they were cancelled a week ago. 

 

Right now there are three or four daily domestic flights from Bangkok - one each for Thai Smile, Bangkok Air (the weren't scheduled to fly yesterday), Nok Air and VietJet Air. In addition, the international flights range from daily (Singapore Air) and less than daily for Qatar, Emirates, Etihad.

 

Below are the flights that actually landed in Phuket yesterday according to FlightRadar24. Etihad flies AUH/HKT/BKK and then BKK/HKT/AUH so it is listed twice. 

 

[shdmn]

4 hours ago, rott said:

Bit early in the game to be speaking of success or failure. 

So you admit you are cheerleading for failure?

[impulse]

On 7/14/2021 at 8:31 PM, thaibeachlovers said:

???????????

How many "genuine tourists" are able to take 2 months holiday? If they were retired people that's fair enough, but if Thailand has to depend on retired people for tourism they ain't going to do well, IMO.

One of Thailand's target demographics is the FIFO worker looking to spend a wad of sweaty tourist money on his 28 days off.  It'll take at least 28 days for them to reach their peak (I'll let you ponder the logic there- probably more like 2-3 months given the difficulty of arranging documents from an offshore platform or work camp in the jungle), but I think we'll see a lot more of them if the initial reports from the Sandbox are favorable.

 

Success/ failure will be apparent when high season hits in a few months.  In the meantime they have time to dial in the processes, dust off some long shuttered venues, and get the pretty girls back from Isaan.

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by impulse

[sambum]

Extrapolated at the same rate it would mean around 36,600 visits before the end of September, notes ASEAN Now. 

 

Yet the spokesman insisted that TAT targets for 100,000 tourists would be met and they would be spending 8.9 billion baht. 

 

So does that mean 36,600 visits before the end of September, or TAT's traditionally conservative forecast of 100,000?  

[rickudon]

On 7/16/2021 at 5:59 AM, billd766 said:

The UK has now placed Thailand on the Red list, which means "

If you have been in a country or territory on the red list in the last 10 days you will only be allowed to enter the UK if you are a British or Irish National, or you have residence rights in the UK.

You must follow these rules even if you have been fully vaccinated.

I checked the link, and googled, no evidence of this. Come on when has the UK ever acted on anything but  2 weeks too late?

 

Scheduled departures - having just flown this week, yes scheduled departures are totally erroneous. For my domestic flight, there where four scheduled flights - as each got close to check-in time, they changed to cancelled. Only my flight, the last, actually flew. Same at Suvarnabhumi - at midday lots of flights scheduled - by 8 p.m. when i checked in about 80% of these flights from earlier in the day showed as cancelled.

 

I guess the hundred thousand Sandbox visitors will be hard to achieve - even if numbers do ramp up, those intending touring other provinces later may be hit by local quarantines - this will suppress the number of interested tourists. As for expenditure, spending per head may be about right - because most will be staying one month or more. Lets just say the Sandbox looks like a qualified success - sort of......

[billd766]

41 minutes ago, rickudon said:

I checked the link, and googled, no evidence of this. Come on when has the UK ever acted on anything but  2 weeks too late?

 

Scheduled departures - having just flown this week, yes scheduled departures are totally erroneous. For my domestic flight, there where four scheduled flights - as each got close to check-in time, they changed to cancelled. Only my flight, the last, actually flew. Same at Suvarnabhumi - at midday lots of flights scheduled - by 8 p.m. when i checked in about 80% of these flights from earlier in the day showed as cancelled.

 

I guess the hundred thousand Sandbox visitors will be hard to achieve - even if numbers do ramp up, those intending touring other provinces later may be hit by local quarantines - this will suppress the number of interested tourists. As for expenditure, spending per head may be about right - because most will be staying one month or more. Lets just say the Sandbox looks like a qualified success - sort of......

My apologies to you for the misleading reference. I was sure that Thailand was on the red list so I failed to search for it. Since then I have done another search, which takes a long time visiting a number of sites and I eventually I found that it was on the amber list.

 

I would have thought that the UK government would have an easy to find red, amber and green lists that people can go straight to, and I eventually found it elsewhere. I have gone back through my browsing history and I still can't find the link.

[rickudon]

No problem, just pointing out a mistake, My son did exactly the same in a message to me 2 days ago. Was one reference to an MP on google calling for Thailand to be red listed, but that was weeks ago. Knowing the UK, red listing willnot happen until August......

[DrPhibes]

On 7/14/2021 at 3:40 PM, ChipButty said:

Only 12 arrive in Samui on the first day

And those were media people invited by TAT as stated in the article I read.

[madmitch]

I was very surprised at the number of people on Karon Beach this evening. They've even opened the beach volleyball courts. The new beachfront terrace bar/restaurant, Tann Terrace, close to Beyond Resort, was remarkably full.

[rott]

On 7/16/2021 at 7:36 PM, shdmn said:

So you admit you are cheerleading for failure?

Please don't talk stupid, I made a plain statement which means exactly what it says.