Transcript of the above video:

We have seen a number of announcements here recently that Visa free policies are going to be implemented for a number of different nationalities looking to travel to Thailand during what we refer to here in Thailand as the so-called high season, basically from about now, here in mid to late November going through December, January into February and sort of in the first part of March. That's sort of traditionally what has been considered high season and part of this obviously, this period encompasses many Western holidays as well as International New Year and then Chinese New Year on the other side of the international calendar.

But there has been some interesting developments with respect to these recent announcements regarding Visa free policy specifically regarding the Chinese. Quoting directly from a recent article in the Thai Examiner that's thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled Chinese visa scheme linked to Chinese beggars on Bangkok's streets as PM accepts its failures. Quoting directly: "Disfigured beggars flying into Suvarnabhumi Airport from China and staying in hotels while earning bags of cash concealed from kind-hearted passersby prompts Thai Police to introduce screening of Chinese tourists to prevent further abuse." Quoting further: "The Metropolitan Police Bureau in Bangkok this week arrested six disfigured Chinese women who entered the Kingdom in recent times as tourists and who were making well over 10,000 Baht per day begging on the city streets. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin admitted that the Government's Visa waiver scheme for Chinese tourists has been a disappointment as Chinese airlines cancelled flight slots and ground facilities booked at Suvarnabhumi Airport."

So a lot to unpack there. I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article on the Thai Examiner. As per usual they go into great detail; a lot of good information there for folks who are interested. What I find interesting is this is kind of just sort of another incident if you will that sort of shows a kind of running theme. That is for whatever reason and I do not understand why, foreigners of many stripes apparently believe it is a good idea to come to Thailand and beg. We did videos some years back now, it was pre-Covid and sort of if you go back and watch those videos, it is reflective of the times but so-called Beg Packers were a big deal, I want to say around about 2017-18 something like that, where we would see these young folks coming in Thailand, begging their way through their vacation, so-called Beg Packers, a play on the word backpacker; they came and backpacked but basically they were coming through and begging. Yeah, guess what? Thais didn't like it. I am here to tell you I didn't particularly like it either. I don't know what kind of gall it takes in a person to basically up stakes and come to some other country and just start begging to make your living off of the people in that country. First of all it says a lot about the kind attitude and compassion of the people in the country you are coming to but honestly, what are you doing here?

Then meanwhile, there are some serious implications of human trafficking with regard to this story. Again, I urge those who are watching this go in and check out that article in detail. We are doing another video contemporaneously with this one where we talk about this from sort of a law enforcement angle, but yeah there is also a human trafficking angle and then apparently a lot of these people are horribly disfigured which is kind of starting to beg the question at least implicitly when I am reading these articles, which is, is somebody doing this intentionally to these people and then sending them down here to beg, to make money off of them? I don't know what the answer to that question is but the fact that the question needs to be posed is bad enough.

So the thing to take away from this video is yeah it looks like we are now seeing another iteration of this "beg packing" phenomenon. Clearly the Thai Police and relevant authorities are aware of this so hopefully this matter will sort of be resolved in short order. That stated, we will go ahead and keep you updated on this channel as that situation evolves.