JackTheBat
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Bet they change their mind 300 more times...
Well, maybe only thirty or forty more times, ha ha!
We must be philosophical about the current situation. EU countries (notably, Denmark), are trying to create a "vaccine passport" as proof of vaccination. As they're a number of contiguous countries, they want to allow free travel for bona fide vaccinated citizens. They unified the currency and did away with passport checks to boost trade and travel. It makes sense that they would allow EU citizens to get a document recognized by EU member-states to travel inter-EU.
And...that's where the sense ends. The EU consists of many countries that have seen COVID wreak destruction, delays in the vaccine supply chain, etc. These governments are not in a good mood about the situation. Now, with summer on the horizon, Greece in particular is clamoring for said "vaccine passport" because they desperately need tourist income from potential holiday visitors from the EU and UK. So, the EU is having issues with this, and given the human toll of COVID in the last year, not surprising.
Bootleg "vaccine" has already been found in South Africa, China, who knows where else. And sitting over here is the gov't of Thailand, which is notorious for making up rules and discarding them, sometimes very quickly. The problem is that there are different departments who claim to be in charge--the CCSA, which should be the ultimate authority, competes with the TAT and the Airport Authority, and high-ranking members often make statements and then must walk them back. It's not logical, and it's frustrating. But if you want to enter Thailand, and you don't want to do it under a pile of durians in the back of a pickup truck crossing the Burmese border (actually not a good idea to go to Burma right now), you're going to land at a Thai airport and deal with Thai Immigration.
The Thai authorities may not be in agreement with one another, but they make the rules, and they use a different form of logic--that's the best way I can attempt to explain whatever the hell they're doing. They're freaked out by COVID--for months, they declared there were ZERO cases in Thailand. I pointed out to anyone who would listen that the borders were porous, and in late December, a cluster was found among migrant Burmese workers at a shrimp market in a province west of Bangkok. It spread in central Thailand to some extent--as COVID infection is asymptomatic (or lightly symptomatic) in many patients, it's not an ideal contagion. The most infamous Thai who popped COVID-pos in 2021 is some guy named DJ Matoom, who promptly went to a party for his entertainment company. Who knows--maybe he had a cough for a couple of days, thought nothing of it. Oh, we have zero cases, we're bulletproof. Guy infected AT LEAST twenty-six people with COVID.
Stuff like this is a serious problem for Thai authorities. Someone lost face with the DJ Matoom fiasco, but who? I don't know. The result was a month-long crackdown which Bangkok survived (mostly) but Pattaya & Phuket kinda...maybe didn't.
I know there's a lot, and what does it have to do with flying in with a wad of banknotes ready to party and blow your wad repeatedly? I'll try to summarize:
• No one knows precisely when quarantine-free entry will be permitted, or what documents are required.
• The Thai gov't likes to have their own special guarantee--for example, a visa issued by one of their embassies or consulates. This indemnifies the Immigration Officer that stamped your passport, they can't lose face for your actions in-country.
• They will want proof-of-vaccination to have some sort of trail acceptable to the Thais that matter. I can't explain this exactly, but it's kind of like this: if they want proof-of-insurance, they may demand it be issued from a THAI COMPANY. The fact that it's worldwide is secondary. Not logical, but maybe reality--what happens is that Thai businesses figure this out and maybe sell an insurance rider or some sort of cover online, then send you a QR code. You show up at the airport with the QR code on your phone and they demand a printed copy, you argue, and they deny you entry--that is only an example I made up just now, but things like this can and do happen.
It's a nation that has done well in the COVID pandemic and they are basically locking up visitors at the moment to ensure that they can contain it. But their economy is slammed without tourist revenue, so they're trying to walk a frankly impossible line with an international community on one hand, and a bureaucratic internal system on the other. It's...complicated.
I apologize for going on like this, but there's an old-school system here for admitting visitors which has grown over the decades to accommodate massive crowds. In the last year of the Before Times, they had ~40m visitors. Entire industries sprung up to cater to specific sectors. All that got shredded a year ago--some thought it would last months and prepared for that. Now we know it will last months longer. Thais are resilient and take care of each other, but they are being tested.
Also remember: the gov't faces criticism for its vaccine program, and there are still Thai citizens stuck overseas awaiting repatriation. There are many thousands of tourists stuck in-country with expired visas. An article published today in the Bangkok Post quoted the deputy PM: "Beijing is considering making Thailand a regional vaccination centre for Chinese citizens living in Asean...He said the country has asked his ministry to help provide vaccines to 200,000 Chinese citizens living in the kingdom." Yeah, so add ~200K PRC citizens here now, status unknown.
This is the calculus of COVID. Be flexible, stay tuned, keep a cool heart.
JtB
PS: another article with tourism numbers:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/2080351/reopening-hinges-on-jab-strategies
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Last edited by JackTheBat at 9-3-2021 21:23 ]
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9-3-2021 21:31 Acceptance +10
Good stuff bro