Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Certificates of Entry or perhaps the demise of the Certificate of Entry document as discussed in a recent article from thaivisa.com. They are quoting various sources in here but the article is titled: Tourism Reopening: Four Phases on the Cards - no Quarantine at all From October. There is a lot of information in this article, again: Tourism Reopening - Four Phases on the Cards - no Quarantine at all from October. The phases and everything we have discussed on this channel. They are phasing in the reduced restrictions to those who are looking to enter Thailand especially for tourism purposes but for purposes of this video, there was one specific thing that I thought was worth parsing out. Quoting directly, and that is so- called "sandbox" initiative as part of this phased project: "Along with it will be an end to the Certificate of Entry document that will replaced by a Vaccine Certificate, perhaps the so-called "vaccine passport". Quoting further: "Thai Visa notes that this is all speculation based on Thai Media sources at the Ministry of Tourism and Sports. Potential visitors to Thailand are advised to await official clarification probably this Friday." This was published on the 15th of March 2021. So yeah that is a good point. This is not promulgated regulatory structure at all. This is being discussed albeit you do get a feel for these things over time and there has been a lot of exposure on this overall plan. Again, getting back to the point of this video, Certificates of Entry came in as a result of the Emergency Decree. They sprung up basically overnight. I think we were the first to be covering them. I think one of our videos on Certificates of Entry where we actually showed a sample one was like one of the first ones issued at least out of the States that was actually issued. So I mean we have been talking about this since basically they came about, since their birth if you will or their spawning by the Thai Immigration Bureaucracy. 

Long story short, it does appear that they are phasing this out. So that begs a lot of questions. Again, this is all speculation at the moment but yeah I have always viewed Certificates of Entry as temporary. Now my thinking on it was the system looks a lot like what is called ESTA in the American Immigration context which is the Electronic System for Travel Authorization. Specifically, the Certificate of Entry doesn't have anything to do with one's vaccination history. It is just a secondary document regarding entry to Thailand. Now whether or not that may evolve, remains to be seen but it is an extra for lack of a better term, control mechanism on inbound foreign tourists as well as inbound Thai nationals; people just traveling into Thailand have to get this Certificate of Entry but again I likened it to a more rudimentary version, an analog version if you will of ESTA. My thinking was it was going to evolve into a digital platform you had to deal with every time you got a visa to Thailand but it may end up evolving into something akin to this vaccine passport scheme. So we will keep you updated on this channel as the circumstances surrounding that progress.