Transcript of the above video:

The topic of discussion today is what I would kind of in my head describe as "residual" Immigration policy. What are we talking about here? Well Thai Bureaucracy and Thai Policies regarding things like Immigration, Work Permits, things of this nature, they tend to accrete over time. I almost kind of look at it like a stalactite or a stalagmite in a cave. The minerals sort of build up over time and then you have this sort of formation, in a sense. The analogy is not fully, completely 100%, but that is how things kind of build up. Little by little they accrete over time.

We are now here in the end of March early April and there is a lot of talk of ending a lot of the restrictions associated with coming into Thailand etc. but there is also kind of this, it seems to be happening at a Government level, this kind of pullback to want to keep certain restrictions. It is a weird thing because people as a group, as a bureaucracy, the bureaucracy becomes almost a machine or a beast unto itself. It wants to keep certain powers. I think if anyone individually within that organization really you broke them all down, you broke them down, broke them all out and said "Do you really want to continue for example doing all these tests, ATK, PCR, whatever, anytime you travel?" I think if you talked to them individually, they would say, "No, I don't want to do that forever." But then when it gets into this bureaucratic climate, these things tend to kind of hang on. I think it was Ronald Reagan or somebody that said, "Nothing is more enduring like a Government program", they just hang on. Policy can be the same way.

So the question is "are we going to be looking at residual travel restrictions here in Thailand that are just going to hold on even after the pandemic?" I have discussed in a number of videos what are starting to be kind of my concerns about why if it can be determined to be endemic in June, why can't it be determined to be endemic tomorrow? What is occurring in this two months that is changing the overall situation? I am happy to understand that; that is a real question. I don't understand and I would love to know. That said, as far as policies go, they can tend to hang on. What I am really truly hoping is we do get back to the status quo ante Covid if you want to say that and get back to where we were quarter one of 2020 and go from there because I think that is the only way we are going to see the tourism numbers here in Thailand ever again, and frankly it is the only way we can get back to a life that really is worth living.