Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, and I have kind of put up the thumbnail “curiouser and curiouser”, that line from Alice in Wonderland. I like Alice in Wonderland, especially the Cheshire cat; I just like the Cheshire cat, don't know why, I just do, but basically curiouser and curiouser. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: PM: No-Casino policy to bring Chinese visitors back to Thailand. Quoting directly: "Quote: "The talks went well and were full of mutual understanding. President Xi appeared more at ease when he learned that the current Thai Government has no policy to legalize casinos. This means the Chinese Government will support its citizens in visiting Thailand with confidence," Mr. Anutin said." Well a couple of things going on here. First of all, I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in the Bangkok Post in detail. There is an excerpt in there where they talked about the prior government under Paetongtarn Shinawatra talking about that, and I did a video on this at the time; I put up the meme from Austin Powers about Paetongtarn, where it was like, "you just don't get it, do you?" Because she said, "oh no it wasn't the Chinese were worried about coming to Thailand over casinos, it's our crime," and it's like, but, yeah but that's your Government that you are talking about, so what are you saying here? In any event, I already sort of covered that. 

Yeah in the past and I have discussed that in other videos, often disdainfully this whole position of the Chinese government that Thailand is unsafe. They tried saying that so that they could try to put their police on our streets down here in Thailand. Let's never ever forget that little incident where they tried that one. But this whole notion of "oh, Thailand is unsafe." I'm sorry, we're not a totalitarian nanny state with 24-hour surveillance over everybody at all times, with social credit that allows you to browbeat people into conforming the way that you want them to. We are a free country down here in Thailand, so sue us. That being said, I'm actually overall, for the sake of the Thai tourism sector, in favour of seeing Chinese tourism come back. And frankly as my thoughts on the issue of casinos in Thailand has evolved, I have come to the conclusion overall, it's probably not good for Thailand to have casinos just in a domestic sense. If the result of that, if the upshot of that is more Chinese tourists coming down here now could somehow, that makes Xi Jinping happy okay, so be it. So he's happy and now we are going to see some more tourists from China coming in and that will help the Thai tourism sector. 

There's a line from the movie, not the movie, the series The Sopranos, where Christopher Moltisanti, he was like that sidekick if you will of Tony Soprano is telling Tony "well I'm glad it worked out like this." He's kind of talking out of his depth basically and Tony kind of turns to him and says, "well I'm glad you're glad”; it's just like me, that's kind of how I feel in this whole thing." Basically China is saying, "well now that you're not going to have casinos we can let more, we are glad you are not going to have casinos, is basically what they are saying. It's like, well we are glad you're glad. We did or didn't do it, or whatever policies were passed or promulgated or are maintained in Thailand, are being maintained for the good of Thailand, not because we really care what any foreigners have to say on the topic. It is just, 'were casinos going to be good for Thailand?' I think on balance it was looked at even by the population and folks kind of said, "yeah, the juice isn't worth the squeeze; it's not worth it to the country to bring this in," and we have sort of seeing the culmination of that play out basically over the course of the Year 2025 really. If you go back to the beginning of the year and follow the arc of the narrative associated with legalization of casinos in Thailand, it has basically been throughout 2025 we have sort of seen the ups and downs of that and the result has been "yeah, it's not going to happen." If that is going to lead to more Chinese tourism and that's going to bump up Thailand's tourism sector, great, I'm all for it. Now that said, I'm hoping we stop hearing this in my opinion ridiculous narrative coming out of China, "oh, Thailand's unsafe and we are worried about safety in Thailand". Look, I am not saying it is the safest place in the world; I am not saying nobody that comes to Thailand might have some kind of problem, an accident, or be subject to a mugging or something, but I would say the safety factor, it is far safer in Thailand, especially when it comes to what we would call person felonies or person crimes in an American jurisprudence vernacular. On top of that, yeah, look, I find it funny, anything bad that happens in Thailand - and I think the foreign press across the board is guilty of this - of just making a big deal out of it, and then making it Thailand's fault. Sometimes things just happen. It's not the country where it happens fault that it happened. Should Thailand be blamed because we had an earthquake earlier this year, and now somehow, we need foreign police on our streets because earthquakes happened or something? It's ridiculous in a certain way. That being said, as we have discussed in other videos, Casino legalization is not happening any time soon and it looks like the upshot of that might result in seeing Chinese tourists here in the Kingdom of Thailand.