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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the relative weakening of the Thai Baht against the US Dollar and how this is impacting tourists in Thailand but we will probably talk a little bit about expats as well. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Plummeting Baht gives Americans more buying power in Pattaya. Yeah good article here, really a lot of information. I urge those who are watching this, check out that.

Let me kind of preface before I get into the quote. We are kind of talking specifically about Americans at the moment. As we will get into it, the British pound and the Euro are not doing so well against the Baht and compared to the Dollar. The Dollar is definitely quite strong against the Baht as we will get into here in a moment. Quoting directly: "The Bank of Thailand on Friday said it was ready to intervene to counteract sudden, further depreciation of the Baht against the US Dollar, which hit a 16-year low this week. One of Asia's worst-performing currencies this year, the Baht hit 37 to the Dollar on Friday, the weakest since December 2006." Wow! Now interestingly, it seems like the Baht, it's either the strongest in Southeast Asia or the weakest; it never seems to just kind of ride the middle. I always find that kind of interesting. Quoting further: "It has fallen about 10% against the greenback this year. Pattaya Deputy Mayor Thitiphan Phettrakul is ready to take advantage of the weaker Baht which gives tourists from Dollar based economies more spending power." Yeah for sure. This is me talking. Yeah we need to strike while the iron is hot on this one and get as many of them Dollars as we can because frankly, the cure for a week Baht is a week Baht. It will get more demand for Thai goods, more demand for Thai services. Hopefully with everything opening up, we are going into High season a few weeks from now, kind of going to start and we are going to start seeing some real tourism activity I really hope for a lot of reasons I think Thailand's looking really attractive to tourists especially this year and I hope this is a real strong year for them. Quoting further: "It's notable however, that while the Baht has plunged against the Dollar, it has not seen the same appreciation against the British Pound or Euro. On Saturday, the Pound fetched 42 Baht and 37 Euros. That's only a one Baht difference from 10 days ago."

Yeah, well at the end of the day I mean Europe is in a qualitatively different position as well as the UK, from the United States. The United States remains the holder of the world reserve currency status so I am sure that has a major impact on this overall. But the long story short, the Dollar is fairing quite well against the Baht. Hopefully that will be an entrée for a major up surge in American Tourists this coming high season.