Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing retirees and the possibility of them being “locked out” of Thailand again. 

I am making this video, at the same time we are making another video about travelers generally but I felt retirees deserved a specific video on this mostly because most of the people that have contacted me asking around about this issue, a lot of them are retirees. If folks recall back in 2020, there was a hard lockdown of Thailand and basically they did a full-on quarantine back in March/April and we didn't really see them even start to reopen until right around about this time last year; sometime May, early June 2020. Now we are a year on from that. I thought I would make this video because people have asked me "do I think that retirees specifically might be locked out again?" My answer to that is "well we don't know. It is definitely possible.” I do think in the future it will not go the same way that it went in 2020 if they ever do one of these where they decide, they make the decision a pandemic is occurring and they have to go ahead and institute these quarantine measures.

I think last year they basically took the position of "we don't know what this is. BOOM! Lock it all down and then we will slowly reopen." In the future I could see them immediately when reopening occurs. Let me be clear, last year when this happened as I recall, the only foreign nationals who could come in other than Permanent Residents at first that had non-immigrant visa were those with Business Visas. That was the first category allowed in. The next category allowed in was if I recall again correctly, they then let those married to Thai Nationals or with Thai children or Thai family come in, so the O Visa. And sometime before they allowed all tourists in, retirees were then allowed in. It took a little while; a couple of months, two and a half, three months before retirees were allowed to come back to Thailand. That was a difficult time I know for many people. Do I think that is likely to happen again? It is difficult to say. It definitely could. I would say probably not. I think next time if we saw something like that where they just shut down the country, I doubt we would see quite such a phased reopening where they differentiate between business visas, marriage, retirement; I think it would probably come back online everybody at once. They wouldn't parse them out. 

Again it remains to be seen. I definitely think moving forward Thailand is very appreciative of their retiree community. Much more so than some people believe they were in the years that have immediately passed. I definitely think retirees are going to be considered a priority travel group and we will keep people updated on this situation as the situation progresses.