Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing some recent developments with regard to Vietnamese Immigration policy and we are kind of posing the question should Thailand maybe take a page from Vietnam's book. I thought about making this video after reading a recent article from ASIA NEWS NETWORK, the article is titled: Vietnam announces 90-day Visa 'open door policy’ to attract foreign tourists. Quoting directly: "The Government emphasized that the extension of e-visa validity to 90 days, three times longer than the current 30 days, will be an open door policy in attracting more foreigners to visit Vietnam as well as seek investment and business opportunities, creating a driving force to promote the country's socio-economic development."

A lot is going on here. One of the big things is, and I have read this in other publications, a number of jurisdictions especially surrounding Thailand are kind of vying for sort of the ancillary or if you want to call it sort of refractive possible tourism that could come off of Thailand. Thailand actually, due to a number of different factors, coming off of the Emergency Decree and that being lifted back in October of 2022, the sort of end of the pandemic and a return to some semblance of sort of normality in the aftermath of that, Thailand kind of bounced back from that I think better than many thought was going to happen, myself included. Tourism returned with a vengeance for a lot of different reasons including changes to Thai Law with regard to a number of different things and also as a result of this, I think other places that were also in the region weren't really all that quick off the mark so to speak. 

What I mean to say is one thing Thailand fundamentally did that was different even during the pandemic, is Thailand I think it was the only jurisdiction that did remain open for virtually all of the pandemic. Now you had to go through a bunch of different protocols and jump through a bunch of different hoops but there were countries most notably Vietnam included that you couldn't even get into it all for a fairly prolonged period of time and then the situation in Thailand, again they lifted the Emergency Decree and there was a lot of pent-up demand for tourism in Thailand and boom we saw a bunch of tourism hit Thailand. I think other countries kind of are responding to that or they are looking to maybe pick up some of the tourism. Again tourists come to Thailand and then they want to travel the region and maybe some of the countries around Thailand are kind of looking to kind of exploit that desire. Vietnam has decided to go to this 90-day Visa exemption basically and the question posed by me is 'would it be that bad of an idea for maybe Thailand to go ahead and do that?' I think there is a good argument to be made that 'hey look maybe bump it back up to 90 days'. As we discussed in other videos going back a while, when they reopened back after October of 2022, they actually started allowing for a 45-day Visa, well 45 day Visa exemption upon arrival which could then be extended by another 30 days which provided 75 days of status.

Again I think it's a valid question to say 'hey maybe have a look at this policy that Vietnam is implementing' and it might not be a terrible idea to ask 'hey would that be a good idea for Thailand?' I don't know the answer to that question but I definitely think the question should be posed.