Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the possibility of Thailand being reopened for tourism in October of 2021.

A recent article from the Bangkok Post print edition, May 8th 2021, the article is titled: Phuket to Re-open as Planned but within this same article it was noted: "In the third phase due to begin on October 1st, the vaccinated tourists in Phuket will then be allowed to travel to Krabi, Phang-nga, Surathani, Chiang Mai, Chonburi, Buriram, Phetchaburi, Prachuab Kirikhan and Bangkok without any new quarantine requirements." 

So interestingly enough, it seems the Phuket might end up becoming the bottleneck through which folks can come in and go to other places in Thailand. Now exactly how this plays out remains to be seen. We have noted in a number of other videos, this is a really fluid situation. My personal opinion, obviously I don't know how this will play out. I think it seems a little bit unwieldy to have Phuket act as this sort of bottleneck for a lot of different reasons. One they have a pretty small airport down there and if there was a great deal of demand to come in without a bunch of quarantine, and I also don't really understand how going through Phuket and then a day later coming into Bangkok without quarantine although presumably if you flew into Bangkok you have to quarantine, what the differential is there? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me but again I am not privy to all the knowledge or all the information on that. 

At the same time, July 1 is quite a ways away. We are sitting here in mid-May and we have still got June to go through and as we saw in April, things can change pretty quickly so it is very difficult to predict October, let me put it that way. I would think it would be an odd thing to have it all have to flow through Phuket. That said, who knows? They may have some plan in mind to have some kind of screening area or something that deals with that or maybe they are going to bifurcate; vaccinated folks come through Phuket or non-vaccinated folks come through elsewhere, I don't know. It remains to be seen. We will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation progresses.