Transcript of the above video:

Now some of my frequent viewers on this channel may view this video is me engaging in some form of conspiracy theory. Okay fair enough, but I think it is kind of worth noting, there seems to be something I can only really describe as like a 'Cold War' if you will in terms of competition in the social media sphere if you will, the ether of the internet if you will that is arising as a result of competition if you will among countries here in Southeast Asia to grab up tourists. I know this sounds strange but it seems to me like we saw the case a couple weeks, well months back now of the Chinese national who was here in Thailand that had some issues with Thai Immigration because they were posting videos saying that Thailand didn't seem safe, which is pretty ridiculous. I mean anybody that lives here, it's pretty silly. Yeah, is Thailand perfectly safe? No, but whatever place is perfectly safe? Thailand is the safest place that I have ever, the only other places I've ever been in East Asia that I feel as comfortable and frankly I feel even more comfortable in Thailand, but Japan and South Korea. I mean honestly in terms of crime, person crime, yeah I was walking around this morning at the time I was making this video, it was pretty early morning and I saw a little old woman who was sleeping effectively on a park bench and that is something I would see in Korea quite frequently because crime was just basically non-existent, again person crime, and as a result you would occasionally see people sleeping on a park bench because they are not going to be bothered and they are not going to be hassled.

So I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Immigration Bureau refutes Indonesian woman's entry denial claims. Now I am going to do two other videos contemporaneously with this one where we discuss cash requirements associated with travel inbound to Thailand as well as onward booking requirements associated with Tourist Visas and entry to Thailand, so stay tuned for those. Those are going to be coming if they are not already up on the channel. This video though is really talking specifically about this phenomenon that appears to be kind of emerging if you will in the social media space regarding competing countries, it almost seems like countries are competing against each other to look better to tourists and they're sort of utilizing social media actors to go about doing that, that is what it appears to me. Again I could be engaging in a form of paranoia; I could be overly analyzing this and maybe seeing a conspiracy were none exists but it does seem a little strange. In any eventually, quoting directly from that article, quote: "The immigration Bureau has dismissed allegations made by an Indonesian woman who claimed that she and her husband were denied entry into Thailand for their honeymoon due to cash requirement." So to be clear, she apparently got in. Again as usual I urge those who are watching this video check out that article read in detail, lot of good information in there. Tip of the hat to Bangkok Post, yet again a lot of really well done journalism in as far as sort of digging into the underlying facts here. Quoting further: "The woman, who recently posted a video on TikTok under the name Herjastipbkk, recounted her experience, claiming her husband was refused entry due to insufficient cash. However, investigations revealed inconsistencies in her story." Yeah, first off let's be clear. Somebody brought this to my attention and I talked about it with that person. There's been this cash requirement, it has been almost 6 years, I actually said "well I did a video on that" and I pulled up the video and I was like wow that's 6 years old, no wonder nobody remembered it! We talked about this years ago when there was a crackdown on people who were effectively living in Thailand, utilizing Tourist Visas and Border Runs and Thai Immigration began to say, especially people that had clearly been coming back and forth and staying in Thailand long periods of time, they started saying, "hey we want to see 20,000 Baht somewhere; we want to see it in a Bank Account, we want to see it in cash, we want to see it!" 

As discussed, as we will get into in other videos, there's that requirement, there's also onward ticket requirements, booking requirements; again it's at Thai Immigration's discretion to ask for those things. But the point of this video is that apparently that didn't even happen here notwithstanding the fact Immigration has this discretion, it doesn't actually appear that it was utilized. It appears that this story may not have occurred the way that it was presented initially. Quoting further and again I urge those who are watching this video, read the entire article, good insight in there. Quoting further: "The video gained traction in Indonesia, amassing over 24,500 views with 1,476 comments, causing reputational damage to Thailand's tourism image, senior Immigration officers said at a media briefing on Wednesday night." Quoting further: "Pol Maj Gen Choengron Rimphadee, Commander of the Immigration Division 2 and also spokesman to the Immigration Bureau said the Bureau immediately launched a fact-finding following the woman's allegations." Quoting further and I think this pretty much sums it up to me, at least based on the information in this article. Quote: "Immigration Authorities suspected that the woman fabricated the story for social media content." 

Now my question, the question I am posing in this article, excuse me in this video is, "Is there something akin to a 'Cold War' going on in terms of these jurisdictions in Southeast Asia who are trying to make themselves look better as a tourism destination or maybe this is just a phenomenon yet again of overzealous social media operators who are looking to get clicks; they are looking to gain traction if you will, and to quote the article, "to gain traction in terms of so-called ‘going viral’ on various social media platforms". I don't know. It could be a mixture of both, it may not be either, it could be something else. But long story short, it seems rather interesting that this person has made up this, apparently has fabricated, according to this article looks like, well I should say there is evidence to suggest that there was fabrication going on with regard to the implementation of Immigration protocols notwithstanding the fact Thai Immigration has the authority to exercise the kind of discretion talked about in what appears to be, what was apparently a viral video I should say. It doesn't appear that it actually happened and as a result again to quote the article, paraphrase the article, ‘there appears to have been reputational damage to Thailand's Tourism Sector’. Hopefully this video will have provided some clarification, but long story short I think it is interesting just to observe the phenomenon if you will of this new manifestation of competition in the Tourism Sector here in Southeast Asia.