Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing high season in Thailand specifically the 'Twilight' of high season. What are we talking about? Well from sort of and depending on who you talk to, in like expat circles or even Thais, high season to my mind usually starts, call it November and it usually begins to taper off around about February. Now for lack of a better term, we sort of get a dead cat balance if you will, to use sort of stock market lingo, you get that sort of in terms of the numbers of tourists you sort of get that in Songkran and I know that this new government is going to be really playing up Songkran as an international holiday so I am kind of wondering if April this year might actually be more effusive than we usually see it. 

That said, usually you start seeing high season starting to kind of taper off February going into March, by about mid-March, we really notice here at the firm things really slow down; it's like a dramatic difference from one week to the next. From like the second week in March for the third week in March it just seems like in terms of demand for services and things, it just sort of goes off a cliff here for a minute. Now again we are doing different kinds of work over the summer but the reason for this video is one trend that I have noticed and again I am not saying that this is guaranteed to happen in the future, but one trend that I have noticed having lived here as long as I have, is that as high season starts to fade out, you start to see Immigration get more proactive. I have noticed this quite a little bit and I think part of the thinking behind that is look during high season they will do things like expand the Visa-free programs or they will allow for longer Visa Exemption status during the high season period or just generally speaking they are used to seeing folks coming in and using Visa Exemptions and using things like Tourist Visas but on the back half of the year if you will, what I think of as sort of the doldrums in terms of Tourism, not so much May but more like June, July and August, the demand for tourism in Thailand is not that high and it is sort of like the tide going out, as I think it was Warren Buffett who said regarding liquidity and when there is lots of liquidity in the market, but then liquidity dries up, he says: "When the tide goes out, you can see who is not wearing any swimming trunks." Basically, you can see them skinny dipping. The analysis is that when there is a lot of liquidity in the market, you can't really see the firms that are struggling because there's just so much liquidity out there.

In terms of Thai Immigration, sort of circling back to this, when there is a lot of tourism, Thai Immigration can't really get a feel for who is actually trying to utilize Tourist Visa status to live in Thailand during like high season when people first come here, especially during high season. Now you get over into like July and you have somebody who's trying to continuously do Border Runs, coming in on 30-day stamps or continuing to try to extend their visas in Thailand off of an exemption or a Tourist Visa and Thai Immigration starts getting a much clearer picture of who is trying to live in Thailand and then at that point they have to ascertain whether or not they have the proper Visa and if they don't have the proper Visa generally speaking they will then be effectively removed from the country if they go into overstay or basically they will say "yeah we are not going to keep allowing you to come in on 30-day stamps or even 90-day stamps as they issue now to certain nationalities; we are not going to keep issuing Visa Exemption stamps because we think you are living here. That can also happen with Tourist Visas as well. They will say "look we think you are using this Tourist Visa to live here and that is not the purpose of the Visa" and then you can also see crackdowns. I am not saying it's a foregone conclusion we will see crackdowns going into this "low season", but that said I have found that in the past, crackdowns are much more likely during low season than I have seen it happen during high season.