Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing recent events here in Thailand. As I have noted in other videos, we saw the suspension and now it has been prolonged into the infinite which seems to be the case, the suspension of "Test and Go".

We really did start seeing some pickup. You could see it on the streets here anecdotally, walking around, talking to people. I would talk to clients who are running businesses here, we were seeing a pickup. Folks were coming in. There were tourists; there were arrivals; there was activity in the various entertainment zones and as we know, the lockdown never really ended, it just eased a little bit so a lot of restaurants were able to operate etc. but it was looking good. Things seem to be looking good and then December 21st of’ 21 rolled around and "Test and Go" ended. Yet again like April '21 where they were slowly tapering off the quarantine requirements only to then just instantly re-impose them, I saw an immediate drop off of inquiries, people looking into coming to Thailand and you started watching it on the street; it just sort of dwindled away which begs the question: "So that was our high season?" Now we are seeing in my opinion some pretty hysterical frankly notions being bandied about out there about, "we are going to be doing this, and clamping down and going after folks", quite frankly for something that yes it is more transmissible and it is going to spread faster but as all the data is indicating, it is far less lethal. It also begs the question “would we have done any of this if this was the situation in 2020 and this is what we knew it to be?” I think my answer to that is "no, I don't think we would have shut everything down, destroyed our economies over this", but that is one man's opinion. 

Long story short, yeah that appears, to quote Porky Pig, "that's all folks". It looks like that was our High Season. So moving forward through 2022, I am optimistic by the way. I don't mean to sound cynical or just overly negative, but I am optimistic that moving forward we are going to see things kind of open up more and more but it takes time and it is not going to happen overnight.