Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing wristbands and the Phuket "Sandbox" initiative. A recent article from Thai Visa, that is thaivisa.com, the article is titled: Phuket "Sandbox" - All Tourists to Wear Location Tracking Wristbands. Quoting directly: "Visitors to Phuket under the Phuket "Sandbox" scheme will be required to wear a wristband that will track their location, officials confirmed on Tuesday." This was posted June 17th, 2021. Quoting further: "The GPS enabled wristband will be able to inform the Authorities of the exact location of each tourist on the island. GPS enabled wristbands first debuted earlier this year during a pilot program on Phuket."

We actually did a video on that when they were discussing that pilot program and they had these wristbands. I am keeping from chuckling a little bit because I mean as I said at the time I was kind of hoping people would take a deep breath and take a step back from this and maybe rethink this. Obviously nobody listened to me on that. Yeah, I find this to be, there is no other word other than Orwellian. I would urge folks who are policy makers on this to perhaps think this through again because I have to think that those who are looking or making possible plans to be tourists in Thailand are going to do a double take when they look at the notion that they have to wear a wristband that tracks their exact location via GPS at all times. I just think that a large number of folks the world over, this isn't one country specific, but around the world I think folks are going to look at that and really think twice about wanting to plan a vacation to Phuket currently. I could be wrong about that but I do believe that many people around the world, especially in 2021, are probably going to at least say "hey, let's hold off on going to Phuket until things kind of settle down a bit because I don't really want to wear a GPS tracking bracelet on my vacation!" Again, that remains to be seen and there may be people who take the exact opposite position; they don't really care, it's fine for them. Everybody is entitled to their opinion; that is what makes freedom great. But I have to say that I just hope policy makers maybe sit down one more time before implementing this because I think this could have substantial ramifications for possible tourism numbers in Phuket under this presently proposed scheme.