Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing, well a whole slew of different countries' travel issues. I thought of making this video after reading a great article in the Pattaya Mail, pattayamail.com, a lot of information in there. I urge those who are watching this video to go check out that article. The article is titled: Thailand's "revenge tourism" boom reflected in Cambodia too. They go into a pretty good analysis, kind of a comparative analysis of Thai, and Chinese, Indian, Lao, Vietnamese travel kind of issues, peccadillos if you will.

Quoting directly: "Visa exemptions and visas on arrival have been time-extended, while single day Visa Run hops to the Cambodian border are again possible for many." So we are talking about Thailand there. Visa exemptions are back, Visas on Arrival are back. They have been extended; we are up to 45 days on the Visa exempt, we are up to 30 days on the VOA, or the Visa on Arrival. Meanwhile it is much more possible, much more feasible to do a Border Run to Cambodia than it has been in almost 3 years, going on 3 years now." Quoting further: "Health checks at airports and border posts are a thing of the past," yeah another great development here in Thailand. Basically back to status quo ante and I couldn't be happier about that. Quoting further: "Chinese zero-sum tourists, still hamstrung by Beijing's COVID restrictions, may be missing, but have been compensated by increasing numbers from India. More than 60 Indian restaurants are currently operating in Pattaya alone." So interesting development there. Where the Chinese are kind of missing they have kind of had the gap filled by the Indian tourists. Quoting further: "Vietnam no longer requires test results, but Public Health measures such as mask wearing are still enforced in some provinces." Err. Quoting further: "Laos is in a similar position but has recently renewed flight connections with Thailand and Cambodia to facilitate tourist entry to Vientiane." Cambodia it is my understanding as noted in the title of the article we quoted, Cambodia is somewhat reflective of the Thai turn around here. They are trying to go for a more open policy. Again, like Bill Clinton said I believe, “It’s the economy, stupid”. The economy, we knocked out 20% of GDP as discussed back in January this year, 20% of GDP just decimated. I guess it was 18% was what we quoted at the time, decimated down to 1.8% of GDP; that is just staggering and we need to get it back. We need to restore the tourism sector so we can see some of that GDP restored here in Thailand. I think that would be a very good thing.

So interesting developments. A lot going on here in Southeast Asia and even Northeast Asia but the long story short is in my opinion, it looks to me like Thailand's about the most open, easy access place you can get to not only in Southeast Asia but to my understanding, most of Asia in general.