Isn’t your prime minister keeping you all locked up this year even if vaccinated? The stories I’ve read will only allow for “urgent” personal business such as funerals. Fucking boys on foreign shores hardly counts as that.
Printable View
gotta agree with dodger...similarly in the UK its hould be pubs...and in the US the top 3 fastfood outlets preferably tgose with drive thru...
Just for reference:
Thailand has 20.6 new cases per million population per day.
The UK has 37 new cases per million population per day.
India has 211 new cases per million population per day. And has been added onto the UK red list for hotel quarantine on arrival to the UK.
France has 659 new cases per million population per day. Not on UK red list.
Figures taken from world meters & are just a snapshot, with no smoothing.
1 Thailand ought to be a long way from becoming a UK red list country at present. However, case rates are not the main factor. Pakistan was already on the red list, with 24 daily cases per million. The presence of variants and trust in the countries testing and genetic sequencing are factors. I suspect it's the "discovered in India" variant that's mainly responsible for India going on the red list.
2 The Thai daily rate is just over half the UK level. Of course, the UK is on a firm downtrend and the UK cases ought to do a lot less damage from now on, as all the high risk people have been offered at least one dose of the vaccine.
While they had zero local transmissions, keeping Thailand tightly closed to protect their population made sense.
But now the cat is out of the bag (both in Thailand as well as Cambodia where I am now), and if they opened the gates to all and sundry, it wouldn't make much difference virus-wise. A new local case or arrived by plane? What would it matter? But the one arrived by plane would have a wallet full of money to spend!
Compare Brazil last year. Opened to tourism in Aug 2020 and I went in Sep 2020 and had a reasonably good time, I would go again this year!
The questions is just how many would go if Thailand opened her gates? Can people leave their home country for a holiday (currently UK residents cannot), would they have to quarantine upon return, is there any point in going now that most businesses catering to tourist are closed and there might be alcohol sales prohibition, curfew, lockdown soon?
I pondered going from Cambodia to Thailand for Mai/June/July, but currently the situation in Thailand is only little better than in Cambodia, but the barrier to get there is high (no direct flights, COE, quarantine), so I stay here. But if I could enter just like before Covid, I would go in an instant.
Congratulations to our two members who spent the winter in Thailand Covid-free, and to myself for spending three months in Cambodia Covid-fee. Just imagine you went through all the hassle and expense, and two weeks of preparation for the trip and two weeks of quarantine later, there is an outbreak!
Agreed. Now covid is circulating in the community, restrictions on inbound tourists are less important. From a Thai perspective, they only need travel restrictions on countries with nasty virus variants.
However, almost no one would be interested in visiting until lockdown restrictions are relaxed.
I expect things will be dramatically improved by the time I want to visit next winter.
Of course, I've already had one vaccination, so I'm also more open to considering countries with some covid infections.
Just as I was readying for a return. At least latest articles show a decline in infections
Actually Christian that is exactly what happened to goji and myself. We did our 2 weeks inside and exactly on release the second wave struck. Everything closed, no alcohol and restaurants closed at 9 pm. That lasted for a month. Had I known I would certainly have delayed my trip.
In the end it didn’t really matter too much as I then had 3 further months without restriction. Unfortunately the latest wave struck about a fortnight before I was due to leave....so I got out quick! No more lockdowns for me thank you!
In summary, as others have said, yes it’s worth the hassle and incarceration for a three month break BUT only if everything is operating normally.
The only things I would have changed would be ideally getting out to Thailand earlier and coming home later. I think you got it about right with the return time.
We still had the weather, the beach, coffee shops, all the main shops open after about a week or so, massage shops open (unofficially) and a much more interesting Grindr catalogue than at home. Plus sipping beer out of a mug at the non-gay bars that were open.
Bear in mind almost nothing was open back home & it was winter.
Would I do the same thing right now ? No, because British restrictions are being lifted and summer is imminent, so the stay at home option is less grim than in December.
However, in the unlikely event I have the same restricted options in December 2021, I'd repeat the whole process. Although I really would prefer a shorter quarantine period.