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Gabriel S. posted:Wow. Mind you, we had something like 2 months where basically nothing was open and a very long alcohol ban and curfew. We were never under "shelter at home" orders, but there was nowhere to be and everyone was working from home. With closed borders, extensive testing, mask policies, and (mostly...) rigorous state quarantine, the country was able to get the outbreak under control. There's still a substantial number of expats here, both people who are stuck and on visa waivers and long timers. The regular pubs are pretty packed and the beer bars on Sukhumvit are about as busy as they've been. Some of the seedier places have been demolished, which has pushed business towards the remaining ones. I keep meaning to do a drive-by of Cowboy and Nana just to see what they look like, but I honestly haven't been bothered enough to do it yet.
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Aug 19, 2020 04:53
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Well, it was nice while it lasted. https://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/2020/08/19/hospital-finds-virus-case-outside-quarantine-officials/
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Aug 19, 2020 14:05
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How is Laos doing so well? Is it too boring for the virus?
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Aug 20, 2020 06:14
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BabyFur Denny posted:How is Laos doing so well? Is it too boring for the virus? Luck. A few weeks before every US state or country for that matter started their first major outbreaks there was an article somewhere about "what they were doing" or "how lucky they were." Then BAM
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Aug 20, 2020 20:10
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The Thai government is now saying that the two reported positives this week are non-infectious and no one needs to panic. Apparently these were women who had been previously infected before returning to Thailand from abroad. They went through state quarantine back in June and had been living in their home provinces since. This week, they returned to Bangkok to get medical certificates to return abroad and that's when they tested positive. I'm not sure exactly which test they were given, but apparently the test detected viral particles in them, but further tests came up negative. Health officials are saying that the tests detected dead or inactive virus particles from their previous infections but that they're not actively infected at the moment and are not contagious. I'm not a virologist so gently caress if I know. Neither is showing symptoms and businesses they were in contact with are allowed to operate as normal. They're treating this way less seriously than when the infected Egyptian soldier was allowed to wander around Rayong in July. I'm guessing that means that whatever they say the science says is probably accurate (maybe? I hope?).
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Aug 21, 2020 01:28
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I got ideas for two fusion dishes last night. Empanadas with gaprao and Roti with caramel beurre salé
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Sep 7, 2020 10:27
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Covid isolation insanity effects us all in different ways.
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Sep 7, 2020 19:18
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So the housing market is doing interesting things right now in Bangkok at least. Lots of places are offering condos or homes for 25-40% under what they would be listed a year ago. Sometimes they aren't apparently discounted but they are discounted in early negotiation. Wish I could get there and think about snagging something :/ I'd be interest to hear what's happening elsewhere.
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Sep 8, 2020 00:35
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gently caress centipedes. Especially gently caress the ones crawling out of my shower drain. gently caress.
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Sep 13, 2020 06:18
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Any word on Thailand opening to US tourists again? Other than the weird go quarantine in a resort for 2 weeks first dealio?
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Oct 14, 2020 19:40
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Last I heard was that a group of Chinese tourists was going to be allowed to enter Phuket in a week. Ain't no one going to let in Americans.
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Oct 15, 2020 10:22
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Atlas Hugged posted:Last I heard was that a group of Chinese tourists was going to be allowed to enter Phuket in a week. Sure they are, there are Americans in Phuket now from a chartered flight I know of. Not sure of anyone who wants to spend 3 weeks on the island before being allowed to visit Bangkok or elsewhere though.
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Oct 15, 2020 16:13
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Not even Canada is letting Americans in. Folks with US plates on their cars are getting yelled at or find nasty notes left on their hood.
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Oct 15, 2020 19:47
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As it should be.
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Oct 15, 2020 23:10
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Shammypants posted:Sure they are, there are Americans in Phuket now from a chartered flight I know of. Not sure of anyone who wants to spend 3 weeks on the island before being allowed to visit Bangkok or elsewhere though. Ah, I missed the government allowing embassies to issue visas to individuals with chartered flights or private planes in general. Looks like you can come in if you can afford it Waltzing Along.
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Oct 16, 2020 01:48
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Cool, let me fuel up my Lear and I'll be there tomorrow.
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Oct 16, 2020 04:56
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One of my work colleagues has a wife and family in Thailand and he is doing his next work break (we work FIFO into Africa) in Egypt because of how difficult it will be for him to go home.
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Oct 16, 2020 18:44
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Waltzing Along posted:Cool, let me fuel up my Lear and I'll be there tomorrow. Sounds like someone should have had one fewer slice of avocado toast. Electric Wrigglies posted:One of my work colleagues has a wife and family in Thailand and he is doing his next work break (we work FIFO into Africa) in Egypt because of how difficult it will be for him to go home. I've heard similar anecdotes recently. It sucks for everyone involved and I feel really bad for families that have been separated as a result. My wife's brother booked his wedding in Taiwan to match our October break over a year ago and obviously we're not able to attend that. Life is very frustrating right now for international families. Atlas Hugged fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Oct 17, 2020 |
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Oct 17, 2020 00:16
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https://twitter.com/VikSoho/status/1317156576940105728?s=19
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Oct 18, 2020 06:23
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Gonna out myself as ignorant here and admit that I (as an American) didn't know that western nations had visa requirements like that for non-western travelers. I'm sorry!
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Oct 18, 2020 17:18
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For Indonesians to get a tourist visa to Australia it's still crazy requirements like filling out a huge form that asks important, very relevant questions like if you've ever committed genocide, plus the bank statement stuff. Meanwhile any dumb rear end Aussie that can afford a jetstar flight could just rock up in Bali and get in
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Oct 19, 2020 02:59
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There is an absolute world of difference between having a gold ticket passport (Singapore, NZ, etc) and something like Chad or even Indo, Philippines or Senegal. Even once you get the visa, it is not the end - I once sat in Business Class beside an obviously wealthy Senegalese lady that spoke fluent English (in addition to her native Wolof and French) and when we got to Paris, the flight was told to have our documentation ready for inspection at the bottom of the stairs (they parked the jet out on a remote apron) - I (in my rugby shorts and old work shirt) get off the plane, don't get anything of mine checked and go directly onto the bus. She (in very nice clothes and expensive jewelry) gets shepherded into a fenced off section along with the hundreds of other blacks in the drizzling rain while customs sit in little tents to slowly check documents of all people the French customs didn't like the look of (blacks) on first pass. They had little prison trucks behind ready for documentation failures. I do kinda admire the countries that have a reciprocal treatment policies in place - you charge our citizens $250 to enter your country, we will charge your citizens the same. My partner is from a non-golden ticket country and she often pays cents for her visa (if she can get one) where I pay tens to hundreds of dollars. Some downtrodden countries even do Visa on arrival for other normally downtroden states - Armenia is one off the top of my head.
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Oct 19, 2020 14:29
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Isn't the point to attempt to stop people from less desirable places from illegally (hah!) emigrating to a nicer place? So someone in Japan can freely travel to the US because they are fairly equal but someone in Vietnam is going to need to jump through hoops because there is a higher chance they won't willingly leave when their time is up. Also, are the Thai protests likely to get anywhere? It seems the days of monarchy really should come to an end.
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Oct 19, 2020 18:48
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Waltzing Along posted:Isn't the point to attempt to stop people from less desirable places from illegally (hah!) emigrating to a nicer place? So someone in Japan can freely travel to the US because they are fairly equal but someone in Vietnam is going to need to jump through hoops because there is a higher chance they won't willingly leave when their time is up. Oh sure, there are very good explanations for why it is so including what you say about probability of someone following the visa rules. Just that a lot of the world are completely ignorant that these differences exist and their unknown privilege they have. I have travelled and worked a fair bit overseas and my observation is that in addition to the above there is also a correlation between how accepting the culture/how insular it is and how stringent the rules are relative to the problems you outline.
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Oct 19, 2020 23:45
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Waltzing Along posted:Isn't the point to attempt to stop people from less desirable places from illegally (hah!) emigrating to a nicer place? So someone in Japan can freely travel to the US because they are fairly equal but someone in Vietnam is going to need to jump through hoops because there is a higher chance they won't willingly leave when their time is up. In theory, yeah. The idea behind visa-free or visa on arrival programs for most places is that they've decided citizens of countries x,y,z are such a low risk of overstaying or not being able to support themselves that they're freely allowed in on a limited basis. Countries where there's a large wealth disparity aren't given the same assumption, so there's a lot more hoops to jump through for a visa. So yes in your example, a Japanese person holidaying in the US doesn't need a tourist visa (though they still need an ESTA) because they're assumed to have enough money to support their trip and aren't going to overstay or work illegally etc, while a Senegalese person arriving in Paris isn't going to get the same assumptions - they need to prove their funds and intentions. It's partly pragmatic but there's a huge dose of xenophobia behind it as well. I know down here in Oz the #1 source of illegal immigrants for decades has been British and Irish backpackers overstaying their visas, but that nugget is usually glossed over in favour of fear-mongering about the yellow peril or Muslims enacting sharia law or Indians and Filipinos taking er jerbs. But circling back around to the original point, I guess if you've done a reasonable amount of travel you've probably noticed that not all passports are treated equally, and if you've socialised with people from developing countries you might have a vague idea that getting a visa to your own country can be quite difficult. But I don't really blame people for not knowing how hard it can be to enter their own country for others; it's probably not something you've ever looked into because why would you? And given the amount of hay governments (particularly in the Anglosphere) have made out of "strong borders" rhetoric, I wouldn't be surprised to find that most people think it's far easier to enter their country than it actually is.
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Oct 19, 2020 23:47
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webmeister posted:But I don't really blame people for not knowing how hard it can be to enter their own country for others; it's probably not something you've ever looked into because why would you? And given the amount of hay governments (particularly in the Anglosphere) have made out of "strong borders" rhetoric, I wouldn't be surprised to find that most people think it's far easier to enter their country than it actually is. This, plus the differences between different visas types and how the relative difficulty between them can vary greatly between countries even on a very similar level of wealth/isolationism/whatever (like a tourist visa to Finland from non-OECD countries having a wealth requirement of 30€ a day, which is comparatively very low, while many other finite-term visa types have non-monetary requirements that are much stricter than many of our neighbours) can be impressively obtuse. Not to mention how unintuitive guessing at which countries have travel agreements or laxer visa rules for one type of travel/immigration or another with each other can be, even when comparing countries that are very close both politically and economically. I'll be glad if a common travel destination implementing relatively strict visa requirements on Europeans alerts some of the chuddish-due-to-ignorance-rather-than-malice types to how bullshit the "strict borders" rhetoric that webmeister mentioned is, but visa requirements are also very much legal minutiae that most people regardless of nationality have no reason to ever interact with beyond a handful of personally relevant example combinations at most. Waci fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Oct 20, 2020 |
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Oct 20, 2020 00:40
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I heard that the thai tourism industry is starting to pressure the govt to open up. I can see this as it's such a huge part of the economy there. For the thai goons, do you have any info you can share?
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Dec 14, 2020 04:50
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Waltzing Along posted:I heard that the thai tourism industry is starting to pressure the govt to open up. I can see this as it's such a huge part of the economy there. For the thai goons, do you have any info you can share? I'm not a thai goon yet but have everything set up (flights, visa, quarantine hotel) to arrive at the beginning of January and stay long term. Everything I am reading is that they're not doing away with the mandatory quarantine on arrival anytime soon. They have just made visa on arrival available again, but you still have to get a certificate of entry / fit to fly / covid test within 72 hours of departure flight and quarantine in a hotel for 15 nights on arrival. All indications are they won't go back to normal until sometime in the summer/fall when vaccines have been widely administered and proven effective. There is talk that the mandatory quarantine might be reduced to 10 days but nothing official on that yet. The country freaked out a bit recently when some people crossed the Myanmar border illegally and started spreading COVID around in Northern Thailand. A tiny tiny amount of cases compared to most countries but a big deal for them. I don't see them opening the doors to places like the USA / Europe without the mandatory quarantine until people are vaccinated either.
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Dec 14, 2020 05:13
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The quarantines aren't going away but those new two month visas are opening up to all countries which is cool.
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Dec 14, 2020 06:52
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If Thailand got rid the mandatory quarantine and did something like those Instant PCR Tests I'd book a ticket tomorrow. There's no way I'm just sitting in a hotel room for weeks on end.
Gucci Loafers fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Dec 30, 2020 |
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Dec 30, 2020 09:04
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Gabriel S. posted:If Thailand got rid the mandatory quarantine and did something like those Instant PCR Tests I'd book a ticket tomorrow. There's no way I'm just sitting in a hotel room for weeks on end. Absolutely will not happen for a year at least. What is happening is more hotels are getting subsidies to facilitate quarantines so that Thailand and other countries can get increasing levels of tourism, particularly from people working entirely remotely. They also changed the multiyear work and visitor visas so that executive and investor and other visas can be acquired for employees/individuals making half as much money as before.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:26
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Thinking about this further, It's a two-fold way to way to bring back tourism - work remotely from a nice Bangkok Hotel. It's also a way to mitigate spread, you are stuck in your hotel for over week. That doesn't sound like half bad of an idea.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:45
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Gabriel S. posted:Thinking about this further, Is it hotel, or is it room? Quarantine doesn't usually connote wandering around.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:50
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Gabriel S. posted:Thinking about this further, The new visas went into effect recently and a bunch of richy rich types have made videos about their quarantine experiences on Youtube. Some of the nicer places let you use workout facilities after a week and what not, in different isolated areas (so you have your own bench and equipment that only you use). The biggest thing is making sure you get a balcony so you can at least go outside a little bit in a controlled way. Basically you stay in your room the entire time, you don't walk around the halls or anything. Eventually you can be escorted to a small area to exercise or whatever if it's available. You are tested no less than 3 times while in quarantine, and it costs like 1500 bucks for the stay at most of the good places. I'm thinking about doing it since, why not? Not like my work cares where I am. Shammypants fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Dec 30, 2020 |
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Dec 30, 2020 20:52
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Heh. I honestly didn't think of that way... I'd want to know more about the restriction. Are you like completely stuck in your hotel room and not able to leave at all for 15 days entirely? Edit - If Thailand wasn't in the completely wrong Timezone, fly over and join the rest the remote workers. Gucci Loafers fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Dec 30, 2020 |
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Dec 30, 2020 20:56
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Gabriel S. posted:Heh. I honestly didn't think of that way... I'd want to know more about the restriction. Are you like completely stuck in your hotel room and not able to leave at all for 15 days entirely? Mostly yes, they don't gently caress around. If you try to break out early, you will be kicked out of the country or worse. Any time external to your room after a week or 10 days is strictly monitored. Doesn't seem like every hotel let's you have time outside of your room, but most should.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:57
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Gabriel S. posted:Heh. I honestly didn't think of that way... I'd want to know more about the restriction. Are you like completely stuck in your hotel room and not able to leave at all for 15 days entirely? I'd like to go to Thailand for a short trip. Like 10 days. Just to avoid the winter blues and get out of the US for a bit. But it's not worth it to stay in a room in what is probably a pricier hotel and then come home.
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Dec 30, 2020 21:00
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Waltzing Along posted:I'd like to go to Thailand for a short trip. Like 10 days. Just to avoid the winter blues and get out of the US for a bit. But it's not worth it to stay in a room in what is probably a pricier hotel and then come home. I think the true risk is getting through your quarantine just as another outbreak occurs and you're stuck with most interesting things closed. It might be interesting going to a beach while everyone is gone, but my friends take walks on facetime with me and it's sad seeing dozens of little vendor booths empty, no one around. You're going to end up going to like Pattaya just to have some life around.
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Dec 30, 2020 21:06
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Now isn't the right time to visit Thailand anyway. We're going through a second wave and most poo poo is shut down. Some provinces are on complete lockdown with closed borders and others have closed anything resembling an entertainment venue. It's not quite as extreme as last year yet, but the government is very nervous and watching the situation closely.
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Jan 1, 2021 03:27
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Uh oh https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1356017934766895106
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Feb 1, 2021 02:00
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