Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Tourist Visa requirements being eased. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Tourist Visa requirements eased for Chinese visitors. Quoting directly: "The government has further relaxed its Tourist Visa requirements and shortened the standard time required for approving visas for Chinese visitors in a bid to make the process easier for people visiting the country." Quoting further: "Under the newly relaxed visa requirements, Chinese visitors to Thailand are required to submit along with their visa application just six documents, namely their passport, three photographs, an air ticket, a document showing their accommodation in Thailand, a document certifying their permanent residence, and financial statements." 

So again, although this may seem like it pertains explicitly to the Chinese, and I urge those who are watching this video go check out that article in detail, you can read about that in detail in that article. But okay, I get there may be people that say, "oh this is clickbait, it is about Chinese, it is not about everybody." When you see a paradigm shift in terms of easing of requirements, it's kind of one of those 'a rising tide raises all ships' kind of situations where you see, okay they want to encourage Chinese tourism. Well what is really going on here is they are trying to increase the number of tourists coming to Thailand just generally. Now again, by easing in China there's a larger pool of potential tourists to Thailand which could be tapped but I think it's pretty safe to say, now I am specifically talking about this in terms of Tourism; I am not talking about long-term living in Thailand; I am not talking about Non-immigrant visas for example, specifically here we are discussing tourists and yeah I think overall if anything, Thailand has lightened up a lot in terms of Tourist Visa requirements. Now again compared to the three years under lockdown, yeah that is not a very good comparison but even going back prior to the lockdown, yeah I think we are seeing and I am just viewing it sort of anecdotally here on the ground and talking to folks and assisting people in getting Tourist Visas or assisting them in getting their status sorted here in Thailand, but yes the overall paradigm shift in terms of Thai policy makers I think is to encourage tourism and therefore I think generally speaking there is kind of a general feeling of let's just kind of be a little more easy going about adjudicating applications for Tourist Visas to the Kingdom of Thailand.