Transcript of the above video:

Now there may be some watching this channel who are probably saying "okay another one of these no quarantine videos. We have heard a lot of speculation about this possibly happening. We thought it was going to happen starting in October. That has not happened; it is not on the cards. You are making another one." I am sure there are people out there that are bit dismissive of this and I totally understand the sentiment, let me clear on that. However, based on the source on this one and the circumstances on the ground, I think there is at least some reason to be cautiously optimistic that this is in fact what is going to ultimately come down in the coming weeks, so November 1 being a reopening date for vaccinated arrivals to be able to not have to undergo a quarantine.

A recent article from Reuters and I actually found this via ASEAN NOW, that is aseannow.com, but I wanted to go ahead and go to the source material because 1) I find Reuters always be pretty credible source of information. That is no knock on ASEAN NOW, obviously we quote them rather frequently but I wanted to go to the source material on this because as I said, we have been hearing so much about this that to get some concrete information is always best. This is from Reuters, reuters.com, the article is titled: Thailand to Reopen to More Vaccinated Tourists from November. Quoting directly: "Bangkok: September 27th (Reuters) Thailand will waive its mandatory quarantine requirement in Bangkok in nine regions from November 1 to vaccinated arrivals Authorities said on Monday as the country tries to boost its immunization rate and revive its battered tourism sector." Quoting further: "The regions include popular tourist areas Chiang Mai, Phang-nga, Krabi, Hua Hin, Pattaya and Cha-am and follow the successful reopening of Phuket and Samui Islands to vaccinated people in a pilot scheme since July. The country is keen to welcome back foreign visitors after nearly 18 months of strict entry policies that contributed to a collapse in tourism, a key sector that drew 40 million visitors in 2019." Yes I think that is a bit of an understatement there with respect to everyone in Thailand being keen to go ahead and get things reopened. 

Long story short, this to me appears as of the time of this video, to be something solid I am hoping and I think where we have Reuters reporting and I urge people to go check out this article, there is a lot of information in there. They point out that numbers of inoculations are rising and the overall situation in Thailand seems to have turned a corner. Hopefully, that means we are now going in to a period where hopefully we are going to start seeing things reopen, the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak.

Now that said, we have had a lot of false starts. I don't know how many times I have talked about “travel bubbles” in the last 18 months and nothing ever came of it. I don't know how many times we have talked about quarantine possibly ending. We have seen quarantine reduced and then re-imposed so it remains to be seen but I think, I truly do believe there is cause to be cautiously optimistic that come November 1 we are going to start seeing at least vaccinated arrivals begin being allowed to enter Thailand without the need to undergo a quarantine.