Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are the discussing the Phuket Sandbox. For those who remember the days, the heady days of the Phuket Sandbox when it was in full swing, you are probably sitting there going, "oh gosh don't tell me that's coming back!" No, there is no Phuket Sandbox at the moment, but I do kind of want to do a little analysis on this. I think it's worth doing. Usually, in fact most of the time we don't really like to get particularly political on this channel, that is not the purpose of the channel, we like to talk about legal issues, especially Immigration issues especially as they pertain to foreign nationals in Thailand, the Expat Community etc. but I thought this was worth noting.

This comes from a recent article in the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com the article is titled: UTN applauds Government's 'sandbox' scheme. Quoting directly: "The United Thai Nation party has trumpeted the Government's achievement in reviving Phuket's pandemic battered tourism sector through its ‘sandbox’ scheme." And they go on to talk about how it is like a model for the rest of the world and I urge those who are watching this video go read that article in detail, give you a bit more context for this video if you weren't following me especially during the, I hesitate to call it the dark days but it kind of was the dark days of all the lockdown and everything going back into late 2020, especially going into 2021. Late 2020 for me was especially a weird time because I remember we just kept doing videos on "travel bubbles” because it just boggled my mind that Thailand would just sort of stay locked down, they wouldn't come up with some kind of scheme to let people in. We kept making these videos on "travel bubbles". Travel bubbles never happened. They talked about it frequently in the present things, never happened. Travel bubbles didn't happen. What did come to fruition was the Phuket Sandbox. Phuket Sandbox, I kind of euphemistically referred to it as Devil's Island down there because you were stuck on Phuket when you flew in. I think it was 2 weeks, foreigners could come in, they got tested; they went through all this battery of stuff which I think in retrospect, I'll get to that a minute but you were tested; you went to your hotel; you did a couple of days where you could stay in your hotel but you could go to like I think fenced in Beach areas or like fenced in pool areas for a couple of days, then you could sort of roam freely on the island and then I believe after 2 weeks was over, if you tested negative, off you went into greater Thailand, if you will. They sent you free into the wilderness of Thailand.

I want to be clear, the Phuket Sandbox was a creative and effective initiative that solved a real fundamental problem for Thailand, namely Thailand has a significant tourism sector and it was massively battered by all of this global, quite honestly in my opinion at this point hysteria. I am not saying that the underlying cause, COVID being the underlying issue that was cited for these restrictions and lockdowns and things. I'm not going to be one of these people that says that “yeah it was a thing, it existed insofar as many other diseases have existed over the course of human history that did not warrant the response". I'm not picking on Thailand here, the United States is culpable for this too as is much of the rest of the world. There's only a few countries that just sort of said hey we are not doing anything on this. Your response is way over the top, I think Sweden is a good example of that; Mexico is kind of another one that just sort of said "yeah we get that there is an issue, we will be on the lookout for that but no we are not going to turn ourselves into a hermit state because of this issue." Thailand did implement a true lockdown to their credit. They zipped up the borders, it was done "right", it was a true quarantine. The United States I don't think really did that it was sort of weird to see all the hyperbole about how bad this thing was and then meanwhile there's still people streaming off planes, coming in from places that it was already known where this was an issue. Again not to get too deep into that but I do think the creativity and the leadership associated with implementing the Phuket Sandbox should be lauded because it is kind of like in that film Argo where he says "there are no good solutions here, we only have bad ideas" and then they say "well is this your best bad idea?" And he says "yes this is our best bad idea". This is a similar set of circumstances. Phuket sandbox was the best of a bad situation; it was the best thing I think that was probably feasible under the circumstances at the time. 

Now in retrospect, I think we all should be asking ourselves was any of the massive and quite honestly Draconian response to this public health issue really warranted and I think if people search their heart of hearts and really use their reasoning capabilities, I think reasonable people will look back and say "no we massively overreacted” but in the context, when we were swept up in it at the time, the Phuket Sandbox was truly kind of a beacon in Southeast Asia. It was my understanding that at one point Thailand was the only place one could get in in Southeast Asia in a tourism way. Every place else was fully locked up so Thailand at least offered a path to having some kind of Tourism and under the circumstances, that was pretty extraordinary, so it's worth noting. That said, I hope that when we look back on this period, we look back with far more skepticism about the underlying need to have implemented these really, really broad, Draconian is really the only word for it measures, that were put in place and while lauding the creativity of those who implemented the Sandbox, at the same time it is worth also examining whether it was really necessary in the first place.