Legal Services & Resources
Up to date legal information pertaining to Thai, American, & International Law.
Contact us: +66 2-266 3698
Travel Bubbles to Thailand Postponed Until August?
Transcript of the above video:
As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing travel bubbles yet again. This seems to be of major concern for folks here at this time and it probably should be as it is going to have an impact on inbound Immigration in the foreseeable future as well as things having to do with things like Visa Runs and Border Runs when this Thai Visa Amnesty comes to an end. So “travel bubble” I think is going to be a major importance.
To sort of define this rather amorphous concept of a "travel bubble", to define it the best I can based on the research I have been doing to this point, and let me be clear there is really no hard-and-fast specific definition for this term, at least as of the time of this video. Basically what it means is it is an expedited for lack of better term “Corridor” between two countries that Thailand will allow travel between. For example and I am just pulling this out of the air, let's say Thailand and New Zealand. They come to some sort of understanding, and they may not even come to an understanding, Thailand may just designate New Zealand as a country that is considered "safe" for a travel bubble and start allowing nationals coming directly from New Zealand to be admitted into Thailand presumably without the need to go through all the quarantine that normal arrivals need to go through. Now there has been a lot of discussion, there has been a lot of speculation and conjecture surrounding the issue of "travel bubbles" but as of the time of this video I thought that this current headline from the Nation, that is nationthailand.com, the article is titled More Easing of Lockdown to be Announced on Monday. I thought that the information in this article was especially noteworthy, published June 26th, 2020. Quoting directly: "The Government is finalizing further relaxations in lockdown measures and will make the announcements on Monday Dr. Taweesilp Wissanuyothin, Spokesman of the Government Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration, or the CCSA, said on Friday June 26th. He said that there are five matters to be finalized on June 29th as people await further relaxations in the 5th phase for pubs, bars, entertainment venues and massage parlors.
Among the likely decisions are: limited entry into the country for foreigners though allowing tourists under travel bubble agreements has been postponed to August.
So it looks like while they are discussing travel bubble proposals, it looks like August is the earliest we are likely to see travel bubbles come online.
So we will keep updating you on this channel as things progress but for now, understand there is a difference between "Travel Bubble Immigration" and "Standard Immigration" and we are going to do other videos concurrently with this one that will be coming out shortly where we get into “Standard Immigration” issues versus “Travel Bubble Immigration” issues as well as the terms and conditions for coming in Thailand in the more standard way which will likely require quarantine although that remains to be absolutely certainly seen. It seems that two tracks are being created: one for standard immigration, one for travel bubble immigration and we will update you on both of those accordingly throughout the videos we make and get published on this channel as the week progresses.