Thailand cant make up its mind.
 

So Phuket and Samui have "opened" for visitors.... as the month draws to an end Phuket is struggling with numbers in the low hundreds and Samui is struggling to top 30! Bit of a come down from the annual 2.7 million.
if you want to visit either you can....but the hoops you jump through and the restrictions on movement don't make it that attractive....in fact it's about as inviting as it was a year ago.....with one exception.
Thailand is now experiencing its biggest wave of Covid since the pandemic started.
The government just dont know what to do. Their militaristic instincts tell them to lock everything down, but whereas this worked before...largely due to luck, their luck has run out and their failures are becoming more and more apparent..
In the end, if Thailand is going to open up to tourists, it will have to protect their own, and that means vaccinations....the government has shilly-shallied for over a year now and no amount of sealed roots or sandboxes are going to bring enough tourists in the save the industry.
There are hardly any posts at all in the Thailand forum and I think this is I indicative of the state of Thai tourism.... no one wants to come....its just too much hassle at present and the end just doesn't get any nearer.
What this will do to any tourist industry that emerges after Covid is very worrying. Like after the tsunami but on an even greater scale, if the government doesn't pour in money as grants or loans, the big companies with the capital could move in displacing all the small businesses that simply have no money to invest. Thailand will lose a lot of the attractions that made it so appealing to tourists....a bland Benidirm or Miami growing in its place

Agree. The military govt of Thailand, in collusion with the royal family, has totally disrespected the Thai people. You know the King owns the vaccine factory, Astra/Zenica, and the govt has promised to buy only those jabs, to support the monarchy and thereby enrich the military.

The factory cannot produce sufficient quantities, the factory has prior contracts with other buyers and the Thai people stand last in line. The govt has also required all foreign vaccine contracts to be administered by the govt, no private sales despite huge public demand for Phizer and Moderna,

But all such talk is forbidden and repressed in Thailand coz of the cruel 'lese majeste' laws. The royal family, the institution itself, is an enormous drag on Thai society, education and economics because it fosters the notion that class structure, your parents precisely, dictate your future.

My rant over but still seeking a vax jab in Thailand.