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As the title of this video suggests, we are asking: "Is getting back to normal here in Thailand, is this really a radical concept?" The reason I started thinking of this was I was reading an article in the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, I urge folks who are watching this video, go check that out. I am just going to quote an excerpt here but there is a lot of good information and data points in there.

The title of the article is: Thailand's Tourist Entry Rules aren't worse than her regional rivals. Quoting directly: "All in all, the generalization that Thailand is more bureaucratic in entry procedures and is less tourist friendly than other regional countries is at best a moot point. But the country which has taken the biggest leap forward in the encouragement of international tourism is Cambodia which has vaccinated 93 percent of its population. For vaccinated travelers, there are no COVID tests of any kind before or after arrival in the Kingdom, whilst visas on arrival without any prior online registration are back. For the time being, that is too radical a solution for the larger regional countries."

My thinking on that is really? Radical? Radical? Two years now we have been shut down; two years completely shut down. Well let’s not say completely but okay the first what, 90 days Thailand was really shut down; the first 60 days it was totally shut down; then it started reopening I believe at the end of April of 2020. Then we went back into lockdown and then we lived in this sort of limbo for a prolonged period of time. Then just when things were starting to look like they were going to reopen, totally shut back down or took a lot of steps back let's say in April of 2021. We have barely limped out of that coming here now to April 2022 and the notion of just getting on with our lives is radical? The notion of just getting back to traveling and doing what we were doing is radical? If that is the case then isn't everything radical? I mean is the notion of getting up in the morning radical? It just seems strange to me, and this is throughout the media. I am not picking on any one person or any one venue or anyone at all really. I see this everywhere. It just sort of percolates up in different places. I have seen it in the Bangkok Post; I see it in ASEAN NOW; I see it all over where people are sort of talking about this stuff like "oh well it will be a really big deal if we just get back to being able to travel internationally." Really? I don't see how that is such a big deal. I think it is getting to be time that we all start seriously getting on with our lives. This was what it was. I have made my opinions on that clear. I don't think that we needed to go nearly to the extremes we went to but okay we did it and now we have got to get on with it. Quite frankly if we don't most of the major economies around the world are moribund. Thailand has got real economic problems if we don't get reopened. So all I will say sort of in conclusion is if this is radical then what is not?