Transcript of the above video: 

In a prior video I made on this channel regarding so-called ‘free cities’ in Thailand, and I use that term very loosely, but both Pattaya and Bangkok are different Administrative Organizations within the overall sort of political organization of the country. So I kind of liken them to sort of free cities in the old sort of holy Roman imperial period where you had certain cities that they had sort of autonomy and Bangkok again and Pattaya, very much have a great deal of autonomy especially where it comes to like infrastructural administration. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Khao Sod English, that's khaosodenglish.com, the article is titled: PM will consider whether Phuket should become a Special City. Quoting directly: "One of Thailand's most important tourist cities, Phuket generates over 300 billion Baht in tourism revenue and has set itself a target of 400 billion baht for this year. However, it is unable to address numerous issues in the city because of inconsistent regulations." Quoting further: "Phuket Mayor Saroj Angkanapilas told Prachachat Business that Phuket Municipality has sent a letter to Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin requesting to become a Special Administrative Organization or "special city" (what I kind of called in the past colloquially "free city" if you will) "initially only for the Phuket Municipality area, not for the entire province. Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin indicated that he had not received that proposal yet. Once he receives it, he will consider it and take additional steps to gather opinions from all sectors."  

Interesting. Phuket, especially since COVID we have seen, it has always kind of done its own thing down there. They have their own exigent needs and they enforce different kinds of laws - we talked about this with the yellow card/red card associated with foreigners coming into Thailand and driving illegally and things. We weren't really seeing that up here in Bangkok and Pattaya; that was kind of a Phuket thing. Now this discussion of sort of creating a special City designation. 

Honestly, all things considered, it would be logically consistent with what happens up here in Bangkok and Pattaya. It makes some sense to me that perhaps Phuket, at least the more urbanized areas of it, might find some benefit in that type of reorganization. That being said, there could be some downsides to it too and I would imagine this would be something of a lengthy process to see any sort of laws or regulations promulgated to actually make Phuket or specifically the urban areas on the island, into any type of "Special City" status; I would think it would take a while. So again, I don't think this is going to happen overnight but we will keep you updated on this channel as this situation evolves.