Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question, “Should the Thai Visa Exemption Program be expanded?" I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that's pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thai Immigration Policy: shape of things to come. As usual, I urge those who are watching this video go check out that article in detail, a lot of good information there. Quoting directly: "A larger issue concerns the potentially mammoth markets of China and India. Currently they require a visa on arrival giving them just 15 days at a cost of 2,000 Baht (US$57) with tour groups making the applications in their own countries before departure. The process is said to be cumbersome and some lobbyists want the new Cabinet to transfer these countries to a Visa exempt status, initially for 30 days. The issue here is National Security as there have been high profile cases of criminality in Thailand by Chinese gangs. Most pundits think a trial run of Visa Exempt is more likely to apply to India rather than China."

Yeah, interesting there. There does seem to be a bit of controversy surrounding whether or not China should be allowed to have visa exempt status to come into Thailand so that they could just sort of get on a plane like for example Americans, British, Australians get on a plane, EU can come that way: get on a plane come to Thailand, be stamped in for 30 days. Now China doesn't presently have that nor does India. What is interesting to my mind is that roughly within the last year or so, what I have just noticed just from personal observation, is that there does seem to be quite an uptick in Indian tourists and I haven't seen the numbers of Chinese tourists that we once saw. So I think there is an argument to be made in favour of allowing some sort of Visa exempt status for Indian tourists as there already seems to be greater interest from India in Thai tourism. So I think that there may be an argument, a good argument to be made that yeah let's go ahead and look at letting Indians in on a Visa exempt basis; again where exactly this pans out remains to be seen.

Again, we are heading into another high season here and we may see due to the initiatives of the Thai Government, we may be seeing an uptick in Chinese tourists coming back into Thailand. Hopefully that's the case. Quite honestly I'm not really of the type that believes there should be any exclusivity in terms of encouragement of tourists, exclusivity based on nationality. I think if folks have the money and want to come to Thailand, are inclined to come here, have a good time and abide by their visa protocols, abide by the terms of their visa, more power to them. Great let's get more tourists in; what Thailand needs right now is tourists more than anything. So hopefully, we will see more tourists this high season than we saw last year which again wouldn't be a huge improvement in terms of sort of the long-term look at tourism in Thailand but any improvement is welcome and hopefully we will see more improvement as the days wear on.