Although it was already somewhat sporadically enforced there was nationwide mask mandate in all public places throughout the entire country. I can't say exactly when this began but it has been in effect for a very long time. Well that all officially came to an end on the 15th of June. Thailand never saw much of a mask debate an the population complied almost without issue. Personally, I don't like wearing masks and would do so only when required to do so. In theory one could be fined up to 25,000 Baht for failure to wear a mask but i am yet to hear of this or any other fine ever being imposed on anyone.
The removal of the mask mandate nationwide probably has many reasons behind it and I'm sure a lot of them are political. One of the main reasons though is that this country is very dependent on tourism for income and travelers were and still are avoiding coming to the country because of perceived "hassles" that exist when they arrive.
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Here in Chiang Mai people generally wore masks a lot anyway because the air quality is so bad during certain times of the year. If i had woken up from a coma I probably wouldn't have even noticed that anything had changed since masks were generally worn by a lot of people anyway.
I did find it extremely silly that masks were required when I was visiting places like the beaches down south or in a national park on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. I think there is a such a thing as a law and the reasonable application of said law.
Most of the country celebrated when it was announced that outdoor mask usage is now 100% elective and it still kind of remains unclear as to whether masks are required indoors. The other day I went to a shopping mall to pay my phone bill and it seemed to me that more than half of the people were wearing masks. There wasn't any indication at the entrances whether or not they were required or not.
Foreigners in particular were unhappy about mask requirements when visiting and many potential tourists decided to alter their travel plans to this country but it wasn't just because of the masks. Thailand has seen a great many of its restrictions regarding entry to the country get implemented, inevitably encounter problems, delays and glitches, and then the program gets scrapped altogether.
The "test and go" system they had in place that would put people in what was meant to be a 1-hour waiting period while they get a PCR test almost immediately encountered massive delays and at one point the backlog was up to 12 hours. Obviously, this is going to piss off a bunch of visitors and word quickly spread around the world to avoid vacationing in Thailand until they "get their shit together."
Well they did get it together by eventually doing what I said would happen from the start: They got rid of nearly all of the requirements and just went back to what they had done before. There is one nuisance that still remains in place and it is called the "Thailand Pass" where you have to submit a bunch of documents before arriving and then a QR code would be assigned to you that you have to check in at various places.
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This "tracking" annoyed people not just because of the obvious privacy issues but because the entire system was frequently offline to the point where people just stopped using it. I recall once being at an airport, which is one place that they were definitely going to require the QR scanning and the system crashed and the authorities just started waving everyone through. This last vestige of Covid contact tracing has already been scrapped for Thai nationals and is slated to be completely removed by July 1st.
I think that this a very good move on the part of Thailand and as much as I hate to bash on my host country, they restrictions probably didn't need to be implemented at all in the first place. I think that by attempting to fiddle with things, that the government has done perhaps permanent damage to Thailand's dominance as far as tourism in SE Asia is concerned. I think this is why we are seeing all of the rules and regulations start to disappear all at the same time.
With any luck, and if things go according to schedule (fingers crossed on that) the country should be fully open the way that it was pre-Covid in the next month or so. Lord knows that the people here, especially those who work in tourism, desperately need this to happen.
I'm deeply saddened that I may not be able to return to my birth country. I will never have a pcr test or vax. I was visiting there in 2019 and had to leave in 2020 in spring. In fact it was the very day that they started the main lockdown. I went to purchase shoes in Bangkok, and the shoe section was closed off. I only had sandals to go to Canada with. I reached in to grab shoes and got them anyway. They just rung them in and didn't say anything. This was also the day they started taking people's temperatures before they were let in. I didn't see that line and just walked in. Nobody said anything. I was with my white boyfriend. I look fully Thai but don't speak a word of it.
I hope this mask removal thing is a start of something.
we feel the same way. While i don't spend much time in Bangkok and this is done on purpose even before Covid, I hear that everyone is still wearing masks there. We've seen it die down in Chiang Mai but some places still appear to want you to wear them. At least we don't have to do this outdoors anymore.
I think you are going to see Thailand get rid of vaccine requirements in the future, but probably not before the end of this year. They keep removing more and more restrictions and from what I have been told many people are not even asked for their proof of Vax. It's very easy to get a fake one if you wanted to game the system. nobody has the ability to cross-reference it.
SE Asia is beginning to open up again. Cambodia has long offered a two-week quarantine to avoid the vax upon entry, etc., but that didn't have an impact on transit through other countries' airports along the way, so we still had to get vaxxed and PCR tested to come back.
The whole world is a pick your poison situation it seems. I wasn't thrilled to go along with certain COVID things to get some relative freedom back, but I look back on it and realize we were living in the highest mercury air pollution in the world in Paramaribo. I watched a documentary about the gold smelting industry in Guyana/Suriname, basically Suriname a goldsmith on every corning smelting away with zero filtration.
Back home outside Evansville, Indiana, is the worst air quality in the USA due to the highest concentration of coal-powered electric plants, 7 within 30 minutes of the family popcorn farm, land prices cheap though.
All in all a much healthier move to get back to here to some mountain air, and hopefully when borders open up a little more, perhaps an ASEAN Hive Community summit.
I totally get that you had to do what ever to get out of jail. You were a whole family held hostage in Suraname. I am super happy that you're back where you belong. Even I myself was feeling bad about you being in that hole of a place. Now I'm relieved to see you guys doing what you're supposed to do. And the kids get to be kids and have a chance at something.
In Japan there was never any law or rule about wearing mask but almost everyone did it and about 80% still do. I will probably still wear a mask in crowded indoor places. I generally just don't like crowded places anyway so I don't mind wearing a mask there. It still doesn't feel good when it's a law and you are forced to do it. And people wearing masks in empty places or out in nature is a little silly.
So can I enter Thailand without the 💉?
at the moment you still need the jab to get in here but as I mentioned above they aren't really even asking for proof in many situations and people I know have ones in all sorts of languages that the Thai officials can't even read and there is no central database to confirm the papers. I think if you simply had anything that looked like a vax cert you would be fine.
Well, not sure I'm ready to fake papers, hopefully that will change soon enough, but thanks for the information!
!pizza
the fake papers things seems a bit risky to me. I'm sure that if caught almost any government would throw the book at you and try to get you to turn on who gave you the papers. I think this is why the people I know that have gotten the fake papers, don't even know what the actual source is. It could be the same people that make the real ones for all we know.
A lot of countries are too departmentalized to do anything like that, I think it’s probably more likely they kick you out of the country and don’t let you back for a while. That or you are forced to keep lying to cover up the first lie.
That is great news and the same has happened here with masks being scrapped. Maybe they were waiting for the politicians businesses to empty their stock levels first as they were all involved in one way or another.
sadly you are probably correct about that.
That's a great thing to hear if Thailand gets back to pre covid sensibility. It's my favourite SE Asia country but haven't been able to visit f or what feels like years.
Yeah it's a pretty great place but they really flew off the rails with the regulations. If one good thing can be said about all of this it is that I believe the Thai authorities kind of learned that all of the things they put in place didn't really accomplish anything so perhaps they will not go so bananas in situations like this in the future.
This is fantastic news hope to keep seeing more countries dropping these rules, I'm looking forward to reading your post when you announce ALL rules have dropped.
There aren't many rules right now outside of very populated areas what I prefer to avoid anyway. The thing about Thai people is there is one group of people who will comply with anything the government says and another group that doesn't want to do any of it. My voice doesn't matter really - not over here anyway - but I identify with the 2nd group.
⋆ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ ғᴏʀ sᴏᴜᴛʜᴇᴀsᴛ ᴀsɪᴀɴ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴏɴ ʜɪᴠᴇ
⋆ sᴜʙsᴄʀɪʙᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀsᴇᴀɴ ʜɪᴠᴇ ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴛʏ
⋆ ғᴏʟʟᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀsᴇᴀɴ ʜɪᴠᴇ ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴛʏ ᴠᴏᴛɪɴɢ ᴛʀᴀɪʟ
⋆ ᴅᴇʟᴇɢᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ʟɪɴᴋs 25 ʜᴘ⇾50 ʜᴘ⇾100 ʜᴘ⇾500 ʜᴘ⇾1,000 ʜᴘ
It was dropped here in Cambodia several months ago, a nice welcome back gift to us. Ironically though, it's so relatively cold here in the mountains that I often have my neck./face wrapped up at night to stay warm, but at least it's a choice and not a mandate 🤔.
There seems to be a general opening up of SE Asia at the moment, and Thailand's new marijuana legalization has already increased international tourism. I hope we begin to get a trickle of those folks crossing the border to rent our future Airbnb. The crossing here with Trat is supposedly going to open for international crossings/visas, etc., in a couple months.
Why is it still closed now at Trat?