Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the recently proposed 6-Nation sort of pan-ASEAN, but it's not fully ASEAN but it's supposed to be the 6 countries Visa scheme. I have talked about this at length in other videos. Thailand had proposed this. It's basically sort of somewhat akin to the Schengen Visa apparently. You come in, you go through presumably the Thai Immigration system and then based on international agreements, the Visa is good for another 5 countries here in the region. That said it's proposed, it has been talked about for a long time. Whether or not it ultimately is enacted remains to be seen. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Cambodia backtracks on enthusiasm for Six Countries One Destination. Quoting directly: "The Cambodian Tourism Ministry has denied reports that the Phnom Penh Government has signed-up for the Thai-inspired plans for a single Visa policy to enter six countries. Minister Huot Hak says he is waiting for detailed proposals from Bangkok through diplomatic channels. "That hasn't happened yet," said a spokesman." 

Yeah, that's interesting because I did a video recently where it looked like there was positive feedback from Cambodia on this whole plan. Apparently, that looks like it was window-dressing or something, I don't know. That said, quoting further: "The obvious worries are that Cambodia would lose some or all of its US$30 per tourist fee currently required for entry and then Thailand would take the lion's share of any agreement to encourage cross-border travel. Meanwhile, Thourn Sinan, spokesperson of the Pacific Asia Travel Association, said the initiative requires all ASEAN countries to join, not just Thailand's next-door neighbours plus Brunei and Vietnam." Well no it doesn't. If Thailand can work out some bilateral deal with various countries regarding visas, ASEAN is not required to be a part of that. I don't know where they're getting that from. 

That said, I want to quote this again: "The obvious worries are that Cambodia could lose some of all of its US$30 per tourist fee". Yeah, I think that's what it really comes down to here and this is what I have been talking about when we're talking about all of this talk about a sort of a pan-ASEAN Visa. This.is a tall order; this is not going to be done overnight. It's not a matter of we just have to sit down with a few people at some Summit. We're talking about multiple Immigration Bureaucracies. They all have their own priorities; they all have their own advantages to operating their system the way it is now, and wildly changing that could detrimentally impact those folks. Again, most notably the 30 bucks, $30 per person fee for the Tourist Visa now in Cambodia. Does that go away? If it does, are they going to be particularly incentivized to go along with that plan? Then meanwhile Cambodia has never had the tourism numbers for example as Thailand. So to presume that there would be this huge benefit to Cambodia, there could be some ancillary benefit. If folks said "oh hey, we got this Visa. It allows us to go to Thailand and Cambodian and these other countries." Yeah, they might hop up to Angkor Wat when they may otherwise not have done that because they were just looking to travel to Thailand. I can see that play out. Does it offset the $30 per tourist that Cambodian currently gets? I would probably bet not. So under those circumstances, is it particularly prudent to presume that they are going to go along with this? I don't think so. I think this could happen; I want to be clear. I'm not just being needlessly pessimistic. I think this could happen one day but it's not something that is going to happen overnight and people keep talking about it as if it's almost a foregone conclusion and as you can see, I myself made a video where I was actually getting more optimistic about this because it looked like Cambodia was on board. It's looking like perhaps not as on board as it first seemed, and it looks like we're going to see probably a long trek to coming up with some kind of negotiated agreement regarding what some sort of Pan-ASEAN Visa would eventually look like.