A notice brought me back here to see a comment and I thought I would update how travel status goes in Thailand, since we've been out to two different parts of the country in the past month. That ties to how Thailand is taking the later stages of covid experience, which varies a lot.
We first went to Nakhom Phnom, a rural Isaan (Northwest) small town across the river from Laos, in part to drop off a computer for my wife's friend and IT specialist guy to look at. Most of out of the way places in Thailand seem relatively normal, except for people still all wearing masks, and foreign tourism largely not returning to normal. No one goes there anyway, so that wasn't so different. It's nice out there; it reminded me of where I'm from, in Pennsylvania, although of course it's not exactly the same.
Next we visited Phuket, for my wife to take our kids to have surf lessons. It's the largest island in Thailand, and a main beach resort area. Foreign tourism not returning to normal hit them really hard, of course, with the limited renewed visitation breathing some life into the economy, but not sustaining it at anywhere near the former level. Half the local businesses are closed in some places. It's not that US tourism dropped out; there are usually more visitors from places closer on the globe. Traveling from most parts of the US to there would be arduous, not something that would be easy to accomplish in less than 24 hours.
It's not that I'm a wealthy retiree here, but since I work from home (generally; we go back in to the office some now) it's not difficult to travel locally and just work from a hotel somewhere. We had two holidays over the two weeks I travelled so both times it was nice having an extra day out, since the weekend we used for travel days.
In Bangkok things seem a lot more normal, since tourism is only one of a large number of economic inputs here. If you don't go to where foreign tourists are it's easy to not notice differences, beyond people wearing masks. Omicron strains are less dangerous so people just keep getting vaccinations and dealing with it when they get covid. Case counts and deaths never were equivalent to back in the US, and I suppose people still do take it more seriously here. But the end effect is probably similar; ongoing economic impact for some, and restrictions tapering off beyond that.
My wife spent some time in Hawaii not too long ago and she said their tourism is doing much better, but that's a different story.
We first went to Nakhom Phnom, a rural Isaan (Northwest) small town across the river from Laos, in part to drop off a computer for my wife's friend and IT specialist guy to look at. Most of out of the way places in Thailand seem relatively normal, except for people still all wearing masks, and foreign tourism largely not returning to normal. No one goes there anyway, so that wasn't so different. It's nice out there; it reminded me of where I'm from, in Pennsylvania, although of course it's not exactly the same.
Next we visited Phuket, for my wife to take our kids to have surf lessons. It's the largest island in Thailand, and a main beach resort area. Foreign tourism not returning to normal hit them really hard, of course, with the limited renewed visitation breathing some life into the economy, but not sustaining it at anywhere near the former level. Half the local businesses are closed in some places. It's not that US tourism dropped out; there are usually more visitors from places closer on the globe. Traveling from most parts of the US to there would be arduous, not something that would be easy to accomplish in less than 24 hours.
It's not that I'm a wealthy retiree here, but since I work from home (generally; we go back in to the office some now) it's not difficult to travel locally and just work from a hotel somewhere. We had two holidays over the two weeks I travelled so both times it was nice having an extra day out, since the weekend we used for travel days.
In Bangkok things seem a lot more normal, since tourism is only one of a large number of economic inputs here. If you don't go to where foreign tourists are it's easy to not notice differences, beyond people wearing masks. Omicron strains are less dangerous so people just keep getting vaccinations and dealing with it when they get covid. Case counts and deaths never were equivalent to back in the US, and I suppose people still do take it more seriously here. But the end effect is probably similar; ongoing economic impact for some, and restrictions tapering off beyond that.
My wife spent some time in Hawaii not too long ago and she said their tourism is doing much better, but that's a different story.
