Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are posing the question, "Do Thai passports lack "power"? The reason I thought of making this video is I was reading a recent article from the Thai Enquirer, that's thaienquirer.com, the article was titled: Thailand's passport power improves but lags behind most countries including Timor-Leste. Quoting directly: "With travel opening up and requests for Visa now taking weeks if not months, the need to have powerful passport has become a necessity, but Thailand's passport power has continued to remain weak compared to others in the region. The latest announcement by the much watched 'Passport Index' was revealed last week, and Thailand's passport, despite its rising power over the past few years, continues to languish well below the likes of the newly formed Asian nation of Timor-Leste." (I will get back to that in a moment). Quoting further: "Thailand's passport ranked at 53rd place while the small nation of Timor-Leste ranked on 46th in the world where the median ranking stood at 45." Quoting further: "However when looking at the data of many of Thailand's economic competitors, Indonesia came in at 58th, the Philippines at 65th, and Vietnam at 73rd place. Even though in terms of rankings on the list, Thailand seems to be ranked higher than the above countries, the data from last year illustrates a clear enough picture that the rankings of each of those countries have improved quite considerably with Indonesia being up from 63rd to 58th, the Philippines from 74th to 65th, and Vietnam from 79th to 73rd, which is an important step in having a firm foothold on the world stage." So sort of going back to the Timor-Leste issue, while at first glance you would say that seems strange, why would Timor-Leste be a more powerful passport than Thailand, well remember Timor-Leste was a Portuguese colony so that may have something to do with it. Maybe some of the other Portuguese colonies are Visa free with Timor-Leste as well as Portugal; I don't know off the top of my head if that is true or not but I will say it does sort of stand to reason that being a former colony of a given country might give it a little more oomph in terms of passport power. 

But the general thrust of this article I think is pretty valid which is yeah Thailand remains kind of in the middle of the pack globally with respect to the "strength" of its passport but especially now where travel restrictions are what they are, to have a passport that has less visa restrictions compared to another passport is not something bad to have. Thailand has never been one of these jurisdictions that has like an Economic Citizenship by Investment package or sort of a Golden Passport package, anything like this. This isn't a country and I can tell you this from personal experience, it isn't a country where you can sort of fast track a passport. But as a Thai passport holder myself, I would love it if there were more Visa free options for the Thai passport but in recent years there have been some major changes, for example Japan and Korea have been added to Thailand's list and Thailand does add visa free countries from time to time. 

Hopefully as the years progress, we will see the Thai passport gain in strength especially when you look at the fact that other places in the region have seen their passports kind of be catapulted ahead in relative terms, even though they haven't sort of overcome Thailand's passport strength as of yet.