Many forum members are curious about travel to Thailand. At this time, it involves ASQ (Alternative State Quarantine) for non-Thai nationals. The scheme is ongoing and does allow people of other nationalities to enter Thailand, but involves a quarantine period. There's talk of shortening the quarantine period, but as ever, take such pronouncements unseriously and do your due diligence before planning a trip.

Here's a first-person account from a would-be traveler published Friday, March 26, 2021:
https://thethaiger.com/coronavir ... out-april-1-changes

The potential visitor complains:
"This link is to official policy changes from the Royal Thai consulate. Can you please investigate why the changes are not being implemented into the local quarantine hotels who are still selling 15 day packages when it clearly states as of April 1 that this is the new policy. I am not sure what official word they are waiting for or why it has not been documented to the hotel owners but I am very curious as to why it is listed as official government policy from the Royal Thai consulate?

There seems to be a complete failure of information being filtered down to the standard SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) booklet given to the ASQ hotel managers. I am currently checked into ALQ in Pattaya and my hotel manager refuses to implement any changes to the ALQ until “official word” has been given. I feel the updated policy changes listed from the Royal Thai embassy should be more than sufficient to implement change.

Who is the official source of the info? Is it the Thai health ministry? Or is it provincial managers or officials? Who is the man?"

I understand his frustration. I had to look up ALQ as I hadn't heard that acronym before, and found this:
"Alternative Local State Quarantine (ALQ) is the process of two-week quarantine (it actually takes 16 days / 15 nights) at government-approved hotels in various provinces of Thailand at the traveler’s own expense."

However, some hotels are now taking "10-day" bookings as per something someone announced awhile back. You can check here:
https://asq.in.th/
https://www.agoda.com/quarantineTH
Or whatever site you use to book hotels in Thailand.

So back to our potential visitor, who the Thaiger describes as "A gentleman from Sacramento, California, 43 years old, wanted to come to Thailand for Songkran, and then some further exploration." I'm assuming he booked a standard ASQ package and now wants to shorten his pre-arranged stay. Fair enough, but the hotel refuses to allow changes to the pre-existing booking. I don't know the details of his booking, but challenging the hotel manager with "official" statements is not the strategy I'd employ in this situation. Things are in a state of flux here.

I guess we can make an ASQ-in-Thailand thread? Not sure how the mods feel, but this forum has hosted many intriguing and informative reports from Thailand over the years--it's a popular destination among Hong Kongers. Right now we have COVID restrictions but that is expected to change over the next two-three quarters of 2021.

JtB

Updated information about the latest ALSQ facilities will be definitely helpful to the forum readers. As Thailand is on the track to reopen to foreign tourists, many new plans from different local authorities will be released.

The following link is a more detailed information on the sandbox travel scheme of Koh Samui for July. Bangkok airways would provide flights for foreign tourists from certain countries to Koh Samui and the tourists have to stay in the designated ALSQ facilities for the first two weeks.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thai ... gn-tourists-in-july

My post seems to be within "Check Length" Limits, but it isn't working. Will post as a couple responses.


A bit of a brain-dump here, but I’ll do my best to keep it as complete as I can remember. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here and I’ll do my best to answer. I’ll be flying out of HK within the week, so responses may be a little delayed while I try and find some last minute high quality 60-90 minute WG’s squeeze in a few more visits here in HK before heading out (assuming I can find some)   .

I’ll still check in here though and after that I’ll be in quarantine, so have lots of free time. If this response is overkill, apologies … but I couldn’t find most of this info when I started so hopefully of some help.

Where do I stand? I am just about done with the up-front process. My last steps are to make the full payment on my ASQ hotel and get my COVID test and then I’m on my way. At this point I can speak to most of the process. Things are changing fast, so some of this might be quickly outdated but I suspect it will stay close to this for at least the next month or so.

A couple of quirks I went through that made this harder than it would have been that might come up as timelines evolve.
•        When I was about ½ through the process, the Thai government ANNOUNCED that quarantine would change from 14 to 10 days.
•        While they ANNOUNCED that change, they didn’t actually APPROVE it.
•        Apparently ANNOUNCING is enough for everyone to move forward, but it isn’t really law until they APPROVE it.
•        I was told APPROVING is largely a formality, but they delayed the meeting where they would APPROVE it multiple times, so who knows.
This has caused mass confusion – hotels are confused, airlines are confused, even the local HK Thai Embassy is confused. By extension, I was confused. Hopefully you don’t have to deal with anything like this, as it caused the most work by far.

A trickle-down impact is that none of the official documentation you will find has been updated. Neither have things like the Thai website you need to upload documents.

Thy are scheduled to APPROVE tomorrow (Mar 30), so hopefully things will (temporarily) clear up.

[ Last edited by  jk45_89 at 29-3-2021 20:35 ]

Process Notes…
ASQ/ALQ is one part of the bigger process. It’s the name they have given to quarantine process.
•        ASQ hotels are Bangkok area.
•        ALQ hotels are other parts of the county.
•        As was explained to me, ALQ hotels require direct flights to their city. I inquired on Phuket and the hotel told me I cannot book unless my flight is coming directly to Phuket. These flights are extremely limited, so plan ahead.

COE (Certificate of Entry) is the bigger process, of which ASQ is a part of. It’s a multi-step process –
1.        You upload things like passport, health insurance, estimated dates of entry and similar. Getting them this information shouldn’t require you to buy anything.
2.        Thai Embassy pre-approves
3.        Your actions – you need to purchase and upload documentation on
          a.        Flights (both in and out)
          b.        Hotels (both quarantine and post-quarantine – entire stay must be covered). There is a formal letter the ASQ hotel provides. The post-ASQ can just be a reservation.
          c.        Health Insurance (at least $100k USD coverage including COVID coverage). Again, there is a formal letter your insurance company must provide.
          d.        Bank Statements (I don’t recall the required balance)
4.        Thai Embassy formally approves
5.        You forward ASQ hotel your COE approval.
6.        You need to get a PCR COVID test with-in 72 hours of flight. The 14-day quarantine required Fit to Fly; 10-day only requires PCR.

All uploading of documents is done at https://coethailand.mfa.go.th/. The website is pretty easy to follow, but it doesn’t call out all of the items I mentioned above. I only knew about some of the requirements based on a call I had with Thai Embassy.

End to end, the Embassy says the COE process takes 8 days. However, I don’t they are getting many applications and both my pre-approval and formal approval was done in less than 4 hours. Obviously don’t bank on that, but if you’re in a time crunch it may help you to reach out and see if they have a backlog.

[ Last edited by  jk45_89 at 29-3-2021 20:43 ]

Lessons Learned/Random Notes…
10 vs. 14-day quarantine is completely dependent on your arrival date. If you arrive Mar 31 or before you do 14. If you arrive Apr 1 or after, you do 10.

To count as a day, you have to physically be in Thailand from midnight to midnight. Therefore, the day you land and the day you check-out don’t count towards the quarantine day count. 14-day quarantine is really 15 nights/16 days and 10-day quarantine is really 11 nights/12 days. This was extremely confusing to me and different than how HK counts days.

The main flight from HK to BKK right now is Emirates. It arrives at 11:30 pm. It took a lot of digging, but finally I was able to confirm that even though I'm only there for 30 minutes, that day does count towards the 16. If coming from HK, keep this in mind. My fear is the flight gets delayed. Since there is no clarity on anything else in the process, they'll probably make me stay another day in quarantine.

I’m going on under the tourist Visa exemption. That normally allows 30 days, but they are extending it so that the quarantine doesn’t count against your time. While that is good, I was told they are not doing the 30-day extensions that you can normally get in Thailand that they used to routinely do (as I was told – I’ve never been, so don’t have firsthand knowledge).

To the best of my knowledge, you can only book directly through the hotel or they have set up Agoda. However, Agoda only has 10-20% of the hotels, so you’re limiting yourself if you use that.

Now is the wrong time to book an ASQ hotel – give it a couple weeks if you can.
1.        Some hotels still haven’t updated their promotions from 14 to 10 days, making research hard and very time consuming.
2.        Sites like Agoda have not updated their logic and won’t accept the shorter reservations
3.        Prices have jumped since quarantine was reduced. When I started, many hotels were heavily discounting their original prices because nobody was coming. I think they believe the 10-day quarantine is going to increase business, so they have jacked up rates. For example, I had negotiated a 40% discount on a 14-day quarantine. When the 10-day quarantine was announced, they told me they wouldn’t discount and wanted to charge me more for 10 days than they were going to 14. They wouldn’t budge at all. I suspect in a few weeks they’ll be discounting again, even if not as heavily

With the exception of a handful of the most expensive hotels that must be in high demand, most hotels were discounting or open to offers.

Few of the hotels are chains, so researching is tough. There are ASQ reviews out there, but also a lot of junk. For example, people giving bad reviews because it was their birthday during quarantine and the hotel didn’t give them a cake (wtf if wrong with people). Most non-quarantine reviews aren’t super helpful since you care about different things in quarantine then you normally would. Area of the city, number of restaurants within walking distance, nearby attractions, etc. don’t matter. Tripadvisor has some ASQ reviews for certain properties, but many don’t have any. Especially helpful is a small number of Youtube videos guests have put up (but those are few and far between).

Hotels with balconies are in high demand – if you want one, you probably want to start looking earlier. In unit Washer/Dryer seems to be the next highest in demand item.

You are able schedule 45 minutes per day (after day 5, I think) at the hotel’s recreation area (pool or similar). You can’t actually use the pool, just walk around and get some fresh air. For that reason, hotels with nice recreation areas are in higher demand, while boutique hotels that may have no area are not in as high of demand.

Make sure to request rooms away from highways and construction – easy to forget and especially important when you’re bottled up.

Location doesn’t really matter, so don’t pay jacked up rates for something that doesn’t matter too much. Unless the view out the window is great (and that’s important to you), you may overpay for location.

Only a few hotels have quarantine and non-quaratine rooms, so you’ll need to plan to move to a different hotel/condo/AirBnb, etc.

COVID test – I’m still figuring this out, but cheapest option is public hospitals. They charge 180 HKD, but do a nasal swap test. You can go to private clinics, but they are much more. The cheapest private option I could find was 620, but they went all they way up to 2000. Prenetics seemed the best option - they charge 499 and do it all by mail. Prenetics also started doing at the airport the day of your flight. You need to schedule in advance and must be done no later than 4 hours before departure. The airport option sounds great, but adds more risk than I want. Price for that is still 499.

If you need help from the Thai Embassy, you can call them but the amount of help you get is heavily dependent on the person. I called one day and the individual just repeated over and over to look at their website. Drop off and try back later. I called the next day and got the most helpful person I’ve talked to in a while.

[ Last edited by  jk45_89 at 29-3-2021 20:51 ]

One additional note and one update on current situation

Additional Note
The special tourist visa (stv) that they announced last year but that never really took off is still available.
STV gives you 90 days and can be renewed twice for a 9 month stay.
However, only the Thai embassy in your home country can approve that. They said I also cannot get when I am in Thailand.


Since I'm in HK now but not a HK resident, they couldn't give to me. I am going to try to see if I can get it when there anyways, but am not hopeful. It's a bit confusing to me given the dire need for tourism dollars, but HK was the same way. I wanted to stay but they wouldn't extend. I suspect Thailand will do the same, but fingers crossed.  I also understand erring on the side of caution (although I'll be in the country, so not totally convinced).

Update
it looks like the 10 day has now been formalized. This comes straight from the website I listed above that you have to use to get your Certificate of Entry. It was not there yesterday when I checked, so a recent update. The rest of the website has yet to be updated, but suspect that will be soon.

Thanks to jk45_89 for all the info. The situation is in flux.

Not everything has been given adequate coverage. I believe the STV scheme was scrapped, but as it was promoted for months and was supposed to make everything all better, they don't really want to cop to it. I don't know what the best visa for entering Thailand is at this point, but I'd ask the Thai consulate and the embassy of your home country. Some nationalities have a visa waiver-scheme that's been in effect for decades, and some ASQ entrants plan to enter on that basis. I'm not the best source of info on this.

Hotel sites are selling the 10-day packages so that seems to be formalized. I read of one gent who booked a 14-day package and was able to get it knocked down to 10. But you can't count on that--hotels are hurting badly, and had to implement COVID procedures to qualify for ASQ status.

It looks promising but Thai officialdom sometimes reacts to ongoing events, so keep checking if you're planning a trip here. Meanwhile, we all wish jk45_89 good luck in his quest to actually fly to Thailand, what a concept.

JtB

@obe, visa waiver scheme was extended to 45 days as you indicated. I suspect this will now go down to 41. It's the one bonus for me - I started my application process before the change from 14 to 10 days, but finished it after. They are still giving me the 45 days based on when I started. It's only 4 extra days of non-quarantine, but I'll take all I can get.

Here's today's article from the BKK Post:

PM mulls quarantine 'bypass'

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thai ... s-quarantine-bypass

EXCERPTS:
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has agreed to consider a proposal by the Phuket business community to allow foreign visitors to the island province who have already been vaccinated against Covid-19 bypass regular quarantine.

"Phuket, for instance, has proposed that vaccinated tourists should be exempted from the mandatory quarantine. Well, if possible I'm ready to take care of that," he said.

Gen Prayut said a digital platform needs to be created to register the tourists.

So: the PM who's also a military general wants a digital platform...the Thai gov has a track record in this department. This is a gov't that publishes official notices on Facebook, FFS. If past performance is anything to go by, whatever they devise is not going to function properly.

Case-in-point: when COVID measures were first introduced about a year ago, a contact-tracing method called ThaiChana was introduced. At first it was a website, meaning the person's smartphone had to connect to a website...whcih of course crashed on the regular. To combat this, a separate platform called MorChana was created. Then ThaiChana released an app, which started working well after a few weeks/months, I can't recall. But the MorChana QR code is still posted at the entrance to at least one shopping mall that I know of.

ThaiGov developers may still be using Windows XP and Internet Explorer for all I know. This bureaucracy is entrenched. They already have some sort of digital platform called "Thailand Plus" which is supposed to handle the task of tracking visitors and it gets mentioned now and again.

As ever, we'll see how this plays out when people start arriving at Immigration with proof of vaccination. Expect some...confusion.

JtB

OK, this was just posted to the BKK Post website. Note that April 1 begins in less than six hours Thai time. I'll add analysis at the bottom:
=========++++++========
Shorter Covid-19 quarantine from April 1
PUBLISHED : 31 MAR 2021 AT 17:57
WRITER: ONLINE REPORTERS
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thai ... antine-from-april-1

Quarantine will be reduced to seven days for people coming from overseas who have received two doses of vaccine at least 14 days before arrival, beginning on Thursday, the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration confirmed on Wednesday.

Apisamai Srirangson, assistant spokeswoman, said people who had received only one dose of vaccine, or whose second shot was less than 14 days previously, would serve 10 days in quarantine.

The current 14-day period would remain for people arriving from countries where the Covid-19 virus had mutated.

The counting of quarantine days would start right away for arrivals between mdnight and 6pm on April 1.  For later arrivals, day 1 of quarantine would start the following day.

Foreigners must test negative for Covid-19 before coming to Thailand.

For seven-day quarantine, foreigners would be tested once after arrival, on days 5-6. Thai returnees who were not tested before flying would be required to give a sample on arrival and be tested once more, on days 5-6.

For 10-day quarantine, arrivals would be tested twice, on days 3-5 and days 9-10.

For 14-day quarantine, arrivals would be tested three times - on arrival day, days 6-7 and days 12-13.

For all categories, arrivals would be traced by a tracking system for 14 days.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, as director of CCSA, would approve the new quarantine measures, Dr Apisamai said.
=========++++++========
So Prayut is director of the CCSA, which is supposed to be the ultimate authority on COVID measures here. This scheme slots arriving foreigners into three tiers with different quarantine periods. A "tracking system" (no details) will be implemented. And that's all for now, folks!

JtB

Interesting news for anyone in country or arriving reasonably soon. I haven't personally seen this from other countries. I'd love to avoid a long trek home to get vaccinated. My situation may not qualify and I'm sure I'd be low on the pecking order, but will be looking into it.



Confirmed, expats in Phuket will receive Covid-19 vaccines

Officials confirmed yesterday that expats in Phuket will be included and receive Covid-19 vaccines as part of the Thai government’s vaccination scheme. The Phuket Communicable Disease Committee enacts all Coronavirus policy locally, and an important member, Dr Chalermpong of Vachira Phuket Hospital, announced today that foreigners will also receive the Covid vaccines. A new online form launched today and Phuket’s Vice Governor advised that initial appointments will be made online only and requested people without online access to be patient and not walk into hospitals.

Phuket will receive the Sinovac vaccines this month, and AstraZeneca doses as well, suitable for those over 60 years of age, in June. The first 100,000 doses are earmarked for registered residents and people from other provinces that work in tourism, but the following batch will be open to other industries as well as foreigners. Chalermpong confirmed that eligibility for inoculation will be wide.

“All people on the island who are older than 18 years old but younger than 60 years old are eligible to be vaccinated, including people registered as living in Phuket, those who are from other provinces, and foreigners.”

Only source I could find:

https://thethaiger.com/coronavirus/confirmed-expats-in-phuket-will-receive-covid-19-vaccines

There are forms there but they're all in Thai.

I assume that to be a "Phuket expat" you need a visa that includes your address filed with Immig declaring yourself a resident of Phuket. They definitely want to get jabs in the arms of as many Phuketians as possible as they want to open it to tourism, for reasons already stated.

JtB

Seems we can possibly get a first taste of how these "in flux" rules are going to work out.
   - Arrivals on Mar 31 or before required a Fit to Fly document.
   - Arrivals on Apr 1 and after do not require a Fit to Fly document (only negative RT-PCR COVID test).
However, none of the official documentation has been updated.

I have doubts that documentation will be updated before my flight, so just got off a very frustrating call with airline CS. They have informed me that they will follow the most recent officially published documentation. If Thai government doesn't update, they will still have to follow what was last published.

I'll take print-outs with me, but maybe my time in HK will not be ending as soon as anticipated...

OK, so here's the latest brilliant scheme. This is for Thailand-based people only, not applicable to those traveling to the Kingdom. But this short article reveals a bit about Thai processes...notice the overuse of the conditional "would" which is an Asia-wide writing tic (my analysis at bottom):
+++++++++++++++++++++
Govt to launch 'Health Wallet' app for Covid-19 vaccine registration
PUBLISHED : 2 APR 2021 AT 17:37
WRITER: MONGKOL BANGPRAPA
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thai ... accine-registration

The government will soon launch “Health Wallet", a smartphone app for people to register for Covid-19 vaccination.

Government spokesperson Anucha Burapachaisri said Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha had discussed the preparation of a phone app for people to register to receive Covid-19 vaccines at a meeting with officials from the Public Health, Interior and Finance ministries on Friday morning.

The Health Wallet app would be used for Covid-19 vaccine registration. It would keep all registration data so vaccines could be distributed to people in all provinces.  

The Finance Ministry and Krungthai Bank would supervise the Health Wallet app and work closely with the Public Health Ministry, which will launch the “Mor Prom’’ phone app, which allows people to book their Covid-19 vaccinaion.

Mr Anucha said the prime minister put emphasis on accelerating all processes to have Thais vaccinated against Covid-19,  so the country could fully re-open.

By year's end, at least 60% of the population should be vaccinated, in preparation for the official re-opening of the country in early 2022, the spokesman said.
+++++++++++++++++++++
It seems the Health Wallet' app is to track residents ("Thailand Plus" has been mentioned for visitors) while the “Mor Prom’’ app is to book vax appts as-and-when. One perennial problem: Thai gov't IT tools typically simply do not fucking work. The development team is headed by somebody's cousin or something. "The Finance Ministry and Krungthai Bank would supervise the Health Wallet app"...oh, please. It's a sweetheart deal and when the servers crash, they'll find someone to blame, but it still won't work. Prove me wrong, I'd love it. But this is the pattern.

Residents like me are already expecting to show up in person or hire a fixer. Send signed documents via motorcycle-taxi. Just expect things not to work and plan for that, saves a lot of aggro.

And this coda: "By year's end, at least 60% of the population should be vaccinated, in preparation for the official re-opening of the country in early 2022." So, any day before May 31, then.

JtB

PS: someone posted a notice from the Thai consulate in Dubai with info and at least one URL. I attach it here. This is Dubai, but it makes sense there would be more info as Emirates has been running flights from there semi-regular. And there's usually one COVID-positive passenger per day who's whisked into quarantine.

Not sure if this is the best spot for this, but I'll start here and move to a different thread if appropriate.

Following up on my situation since last I posted in this thread as I've successfully navigated my way into Bangkok. I'm only on Day 4 of quarantine and haven't gotten COVID tested here yet, but barring anything coming up on that, it should be downhill from here. Overall, a pretty straight forward process so far.

HK Portion
- HK airport a ghost town. I know you can see online videos, etc. but until you are actually there you don't fully grasp it. There had to have been more staff then travelers. I took a few pictures, but doubt they are of interest to anyone. If so, I can add them.
- Arriving and departing in HK are quite different experiences. Arriving involves all the testing, etc. with a much more monitored environment and long process. Departing is more open, but most everything is closed so nothing really to do.
- Side note, it's really refreshing to see the politeness that COVID seems to have brought out of people at the airport. I'm sure that when things reopen, the madness and "airport attitudes" will return, but fingers crossed.
- Even with limited options, flight was <15% full. Upgrades were extremely cheap and even with that cheap option to upgrade, there were more attendants then passengers in business class.

BKK Portion
- Plane sat at the arrival gate for a good 45 minutes before doors opened. I couldn't get a good answer on what they were doing, but they just said it was COVID precautions. They left plane entertainment options on, so no big deal.
- Inside the airport was a little odd. On the surface not efficiently designed, but very organized and fast overall.
- After leaving the plane, there was a basic temperature check.
- Following that, there were a series of checkpoints to pass through. These seemingly could have been streamlined quite a bit, but no big deal (for me at least).
- At the first, you sat down and eventually a staff member came over to look at some of your paperwork and fill out a form with information that was already in the forms you had prepared. Again, pretty fast so not an issue.
- What was odd, was that you did this routine three or four times. Finish one short interviews, get shepherded a little further into the airport and do the same thing, with a new question or two sprinkled in.
- I assume they were doing something behind the scenes with the application, but if not it could have been done in far fewer steps.
- Despite the number of stops, it all went really quickly and I think we were out of the airport in less than an hour, so I was quite happy. A few other passengers apparently didn't agree and got upset. Never will understand this given the overall good attitude and helpful nature of the staff (who didn't design these processes anyways).
- After passport is updated and fingerprints taken, you get your own luggage and head to the transportation area.
- Transportation is all arranged for you. They had dedicated airport staff that took your name and escorted you to your vehicle, so no work or searching necessary.
- Driver gives all of your luggage a thorough spray down with disinfectant (outside of luggage only, they didn't open anything) and you're on your way.
- Hotels are required to keep a lot of documentation, so there was a lot of paperwork and signatures needed upon arrival, but that was about it.

Quarantine is slightly different in HK and TH based on going through both
- In HK, a COVID test is required when you arrive. This makes for a long first day sitting at the airport. In TH, no test on arrival.
- In TH, transit to your hotel is part of ASQ. In HK, it is not and you can take taxi, uber, subway. This is really bizarre since it is the one big gab in the HK process where you are potentially with general population.
- In TH, with a couple exceptions, hotels are either 100% ASQ guests or 100% regular guests - no intermingling. In HK, hotels have both types (floors are designated as quarantine/non-quarantine), not hotels.
- In TH, all meals are required to be included in the ASQ package. In HK, this is not the case.
- In TH, there are no monitoring tools you have to use. In HK, you have to wear a bracelet at all times and use an app that has your room dimensions so that they immediately know if you leave your room.
- In both locations you have to take your own temperature 2x a day and provide to hotel.
- In HK, hotel staff was not allowed in your room for any reason. In TH, if your room needs something fixed, you go (by yourself) to a waiting room while a hotel staff in hazmat suit goes in and does whatever they need to do.
- Similarly, in TH you do get your room cleaned a few times (after first negative test result). In HK, nobody is getting in your room.
- In TH, you have to take a full nasal and mouth swab COVID test twice. In HK, you don't.
- In TH, after 1st negative test you are able to leave the room and go to the recreation area for 45 minutes a day. You can't use the equipment, but can get fresh air and move around. In HK, you can't leave your room.

Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised by how well everything went. I had prepared for a long stay in the BKK airport or something to happen that would make for a long night, but it was all really well managed. Maybe when traffic picks up it will get a little worse, but given what were going through here I don't know how anyone can complain.

My only two bits of advice are...
1. Keep the positive attitude. Nothing good comes from the frustration and having the workers on your side helps. This should go without saying, but we've all traveled and know how that goes.
2. Print out at least two copies of everything in color. Probably three just in case. In reality, the only thing they actually kept at the airport was the actual COE, but having everything ready seemed to put the staff at ease (in both HK and TH) that I was ready and wouldn't be the difficult passenger. Plus, if they do happen to keep something you need later, you'll be the one scrambling. The hotel pretty much needs a copy of everything. At either the airport or the hotel, they did check everything at least once. Every item used in the COE process (flights, etc.) was checked at least once at the airport or hotel. I won't list them out since they are pretty well documented (ping if you want), but two of note that ARE checked are post-ASQ place of residence and flight out of TH.