Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the “hassle” of Visa Runs. I got to thinking of this making this video after reading a recent article from Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Immigration police detail restrictions on Cambodian Visa runs from Pattaya. Quoting directly, this is a small excerpt. I urge those who are watching this video go read that article in detail, a lot of information in there, good stuff. But this excerpt I thought was interesting. It is taken a little bit out of context but I think I can explain it. "The Thai Government confirmed its willingness for foreigners to stay longer without the hassle of applying for prior visas from Thai Embassies in their home countries before travel."

Basically they had done some back and forth talking to various folks in the industry around Immigration and the consensus is, and I think this is pretty on point and probably will be over the course of this high season, policy makers as well as Immigration enforcement officers and things, the paradigm right now is we want people to come in; we want tourists, we want tourism. The last two and a half years has been awful, we need to get folks back in here. It is only a good thing to get folks back into Thailand especially in a tourism capacity. But it's also interesting that it kind of notes that yeah, it is kind of a hassle to apply for Visas at Embassies and Consulates abroad. If you followed my channel over sort of the, whatever you want to call it, the COVID interregnum if you will, when we went into this when they rolled out Certificates of Entry, oh my lord, that was cumbersome beyond belief. Then we dealt with Thailand Pass which was kind of digitized cumbersomeness and then finally that all started to fall away. Then we had some entry requirements and this and that, there were various travel requirements and then finally now, as of the time of this video, it has largely all just kind of fallen off but there is still kind of this lingering aftertaste in people that “hey I don't really want to do a Visa Run if I can avoid it”. I think Thai policy makers are keen to that, they are aware of that and for that reason they are trying to do things to encourage folks to just come in and we want tourists here in Thailand, come on in, let's get them in here, have a great time and we will try and do everything, work with you as best we can to keep you in status while you are here in the Kingdom of Thailand.