Transcript of the above video:

I have to be honest, I am not really happy about making what are fundamentally fairly negative videos at this point regarding certain policies that have been promulgated here in Thailand, and how they are having an impact on both the tourism sector and the expat world at large here in Thailand. Frankly, I don't want to be making the videos. My hope is in making them, that folks that are in a policy making position kind of see the light and we start seeing things sort of turn around. I have seen that occur in the past, so I don't think that is a completely naïve presumption to make. 

I thought of making this video after reading a comment on our channel, and normally I wouldn't read a comment like this. It's a little bit more cynical than I would like to quote but it brings up some good points and for lack of a better term, some maybe learning curve points worth noting. Quoting directly: "It's going to be Thailand's loss" - and this was in prior videos where we have been talking about things like tax policy having a negative impact on people being here, banking policy, tightening up on Retirement Visa rules, tightening up on banking rules, just generally speaking, in my opinion, bringing in a lot of undue foreign influence into a lot of aspects of Thai policy making most notably from the World Economic Forum and all of this OECD nonsense, but we are seeing it now playing out and I am hoping some of this will get turned around once it is seen, and look this is not going to be good. I really worry about this upcoming high season; it's concerning to me. That said, quoting from the comment here: "It's going to be Thailand's loss whilst they are farking around like a bunch of Muppets", and again I don't like that kind of phraseology; I don't think that is what is going on. Frankly, I think oftentimes policymakers really are trying to operate in good faith. Unfortunately, organizations like the World Economic Forum, we did the videos, the Prime Minister, former or whatever, the suspended Prime Minister had them to the Purple Room and had discussions with these folks. These people's motives are not good, and I don't think that they are good for Thailand. That said, I don't really like the phraseology, quoting further: "making it harder to visit and stay a few months. Competitors like Vietnam and Cambodia are making it easier to visit and stay. Example in my hometown of Melbourne, the Thai Embassy has closed. You now have to send your passport to Canberra to get a Tourist Visa. Non-immigrant Tourist Visa, multi-entry are now 400 dollars which is the price of an airfare. Most people just say "fark it" and take 30 days in Thailand and then go to Cambodia or Vietnam for a few months. Thailand is "reaping what it has sown". People have options and are now using them." Again I would have probably put it differently but they are good points, and I am really worried about Thai policy makers overlooking this especially moving into high season. And look, I don't know what the reasoning is. I have done a video recently where I was debunking the notion that there's some sort of conspiracy against Western expats and I stand by that. I don't think that that is really going on, but I also don't think policy makers are really seeing the bigger picture that implementing this stuff is going to drive away a major subsection of overall of GDP here in Thailand. 

As we noted in prior videos, especially back during COVID, tourism makes up about 18% of GDP and COVID went in and literally decimated that; I did the videos at the time. It went down to like 1.8% of GDP, I mean a literal decimation. And look going into this high season where policies like reversing Cannabis Policy, really without in my opinion proper due legislative process, and doing it in such a way that it happens sort of overnight and folks that put in money, time, effort, investment into those businesses, also that was something that was drawing in a certain segment of tourists. To just reverse that sort of arbitrarily and capriciously, I think that's going to have a negative impact on tourism. 

Meanwhile, all this stuff having to do with everybody worried about how much time they need to spend in Thailand because they are worried about tax policies; folks worried about visas because this online digitized system, frankly it's like neo-Sovietism, I mean it's just in a digital format; it is difficult to use. There have been some good things. Basically expanding the exemption status from 30 to 60 days was a good idea. That said, now they are talking about rolling that back. I mean across the board, it seems like at best, policy is somewhat schizophrenic and when it is not, it's kind of consistently not in favour of bringing in foreigners. And I can understand, there may be certain policies that they don't want undesirable foreigners and things of this nature, but at this point it is scaring folks away, and I'm really hoping we see some things turn around on this in coming days and weeks as policymakers see that hey we're looking down the barrel of a high season here and especially sitting here in a really low, low season, and all of these policies have an impact. This isn't like 20 years ago when things that kind of happen in Thailand, it doesn't really get out to the rest of the world, they don't really know what's going on. There are YouTubers everywhere out here; there are social media influencers everywhere out here. They are talking about every little policy and nitpicking every little thing. That video I had to do a debunking video on about the "conspiracy against Western expats", I mean that got a huge amount of coverage. That was why I did a video on it because I got so many emails saying, “hey you need to talk about this, because people are freaking out.” And look, I can see why.

I don't think there is a concerted effort in policymaking circles here in Thailand to be anti-foreigner per se, but a lot of these different policies in the aggregate are adding up to a situation where it's making Thailand less desirable in the destination for travellers, long and short-term, compared to other destinations in Southeast Asia. My hope is cooler heads prevail in policy making circles and we see some of this stuff turn them around so that going into high season, we can be optimistic rather than where we are at sort of right now sitting here in July wondering are we even going to have a high season.