Tuk Tuk Boat on the River in #Bangkok

Have a strange affinity for three-wheeled transportation? Then you might enjoy the Tuk Tuk Boat.

This brand-new boat service is, essentially, a tricked-out yacht with a tuk tuk fashioned into the hull, complete with the classic blue-and-yellow color scheme and compact cabin for your “driver” (thankfully, the well-trained boat captain uses a wheel rather than handlebar controls).

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Up to 10 passengers can book private rides on this floating Frankenstein’s monster. One-hour journeys (B3,000) cruise up and down the Chao Phraya, but the hour-and-a-half (B4,000) and two-hour journeys (B5,500) enter some of the river’s most famous canals, going as far as Baan Silapin and the Taling Chan floating market (weekends only). Tell the captain where you want to go along the way, and he’ll take you there.

You can also craft your own route and rent by the hour. And if you want to refuel with beer or snacks, the captain can dock at Yodpiman, where you can pick up whatever your heart desires and use the loo while you’re at it.

This new experience can be booked through Klook, Airbnb or directly by calling 065-151-4599 or 064-778-6688. Guests can be picked up at several locations between Saphan Taksin and Wat Kalayanamit. 

Source - BK Daily

#Vietnam extends visa exemption to eight countries till 2022

Visitors from Russia, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Belarus will continue to enjoy Vietnamese visa exemptions for the next three years.

To afford the tourism industry growth impetus, the government agreed on visa waivers for above citizens until December 31, 2022, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) said Tuesday. Travelers will be allowed to remain in Vietnam for 15 days.

The visa exemption program for these eight countries commenced in 2015, set to expire on December 31 this year.

The number of Russian, Japanese and South Korean tourists accounted for about one third of all foreign visitors to Vietnam in 2018.

South Korea provides the second largest group of visitors to the country after China. In 2018, nearly 3.5 million South Koreans came to Vietnam, a 44 percent year-on-year increase, accounting for 22 percent of all international arrivals (15.5 million).

Japan came third with 800,000 tourists last year, rising by 3.6 percent from a year ago while Russia posted sixth with a record 606,000 visitors or 4 percent of total foreign arrivals.

European countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Belarus are additional emerging tourism markets. Western Europeans are big spenders and shell out on average $1,316 per trip while overall foreign visitors spend $900, VNAT data shows.

 

The government's three-year visa extension for eight tourism markets will assist travel agencies, airlines, and investors develop long-term plans. However, businesses are calling for an increase in visa-free duration from 15 days to 30 days due to the long-haul nature of travel between Europe and Vietnam. 

Vietnam features among Asian countries with the strictest visa policy. The country currently offers visa waivers to visitors from only 24 countries and territories including ASEAN co-members.

Indonesia, one of the world’s most liberalized countries for visas, grants visa-free travel to 169 nationalities, while the figure for Singapore is 158, Malaysia 155 and Thailand 61.

The number of foreigners visiting Vietnam in the first 11 months of this year is estimated at 16.3 million, an all-time high and up 15.3 percent year-on-year. Tourism revenue in the period came to around VND649 trillion ($27.96 billion), up 16.3 percent.

As 2019 draws to a close, the country’s tourism industry is well placed to meet its annual target of receiving 18 million visitors.

Source - VN Express

15 years on, over 300 tsunami victims from Thailand’s coast still unidentified

Fifteen years after the Indian Ocean tsunami killed upwards of 230,000 people on December 26, 2004, a container at the Takua Pa police station in Phang Nga, southern Thailand, still contains personal items from the hundreds of victims whose remains are unlikely to ever be given a name.

Wallets, documents, keys, electronic items, all labeled and catalogued as evidence, await positive identification. Nearby a graveyard contains 340 bodies buried in unmarked graves but police hope that, if people came forward to identify some of the items, there is still hope that some of the bodies could rest in peace with a name attached.

Colonel Khemmarin Hassini is the deputy police commander in Takua Pa district. The area, taking in the coastal tourist resort of Khao Lak, was one of the areas hardest hit by the Boxing Day tsunami. The shallow approach and low-rise of the beach landscape allowed the waves to hit with speed and continue up to a kilometre inland.

“There are still more relatives of the victims, both near and far, that have hopes of finding their lost loved ones.”

The tsunami was triggered by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake just before 8am (Thai time). But the killer waves didn’t reach the Thai coastline until about 2 hours later.

Around the Indian Ocean, the tsunami killed more than 230,000 people as waves as high as 17 metres crashed hit the shores of more than a dozen countries around the ocean’s perimeter.

More than 5,000 people died in Thailand. The Disaster Victim Identification unit involving police and an international force of forensic experts were able to identify more than 3,600 bodies. It took nearly two years but it was the largest and most successful project of identification of its kind.

Colonel Khemmarin hopes, even though nearly 15 years have past, there was still a hope they could re-activate many of the lead and put names to some of the identified bodies. The Colonel was part of the international forensics team and fears that many of the possible leads have gone cold in the time that has passed.

Speaking to Reuters in the Takua Pa place station he said… “If we are determined enough and reactivate our operations once again, I think some of the 340 unidentified bodies could be identified.”

In ten days it will be the fifteenth anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, one of the deadliest natural disasters in the last 100 years. Poom Jensen, the grandson of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, and a nephew of the current Thai King, was killed whilst his family was holidaying at Khao Lak.

Source - Reuters / TheThaiger

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The Thais want to examine your bank accounts

It has been reported that immigration agents in #Pattaya are being taught how to examine foreigner’s bank accounts for what they are calling ‘financial irregularities.’

Hundreds of officers attended a training seminar in the city designed to show them how to detect what had been described as ‘money laundering.’

In theory this means discovering bank accounts concealing funds that cannot be explained and may have been accrued through illegal activities.

Although, in reality, it seems officers are attempting to put a stop to agents who arrange long-term retirement visas for foreigners by declaring funds held in a proxy account that do NOT belong to the applicant.

The training seminar was held in Bang Lamung and presented by Lt-Gen Suwat Chaengyortsuk.

Sophon Cable TV said that the seminar was an attempt to ‘increase the efficiency of officers and show them what measures are available under the current immigration law.

The initiative was described as ‘ongoing’ with technical improvements being added in the future.

Is anybody really comfortable with Thai immigration officers having free and easy access to their bank accounts, especially at a time when it is being demanded that a minimum of Bt800,000 must be held in foreign owned accounts at all times?

What could possibly go wrong – and were is this leading?

Source - BangkokJack

#German media reporting MASS SCAMMING in #Thailand

 

The Interior Ministry has instructed state agencies to step up tourist safety after a German media report that #scams are widespread in #Thailand.

The move comes after German television show Achtung Abzocke reported on scams targeting foreigners, such as taxis charging excessive fares, overpriced products and services, gangs selling fake rail tickets and driving licences, and people pretending to be tourist police, said Ronnakit Ekkasingh, deputy mayor of the Pattaya Special Administration.

Mr Ronnakit was commenting on Saturday at a meeting to discuss measures to ensure tourist safety. Present were the Tourism Authority of Thailand’s Pattaya office, tourism associations, tourist police and immigration police.

Mr Ronnakit said Pattaya has an annual tourism income of more than 270 billion baht from its 18 million visitors. Of them, 10 million are foreign travelers, he said, adding it is important to come up with measures to keep them safe.

He said the meeting agreed to integrate the work of agencies to prepare for the tourist high-season, with a command centre to be set up near Bali Hai Pier in southern Pattaya.

Source - BangkokJack

#Cambodia - Construction of new Phnom Penh airport on schedule

Construction of a new airport that will serve Phnom Penh is on track and could be completed as early as 2023, the developer said.

Pung Kheav Se, chairman of the Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation (OCIC), the company behind the project, said they are now building the foundations of the airport, conducting an environmental impact assessment, and negotiating with people affected by construction.

Mr Kheav Se was speaking to reporters yesterday at the Cambodia International Construction Industry Expo in Phnom Penh’s Diamond Island

Mr Kheav Se, a renowned investor and chairman of the Board of Directors of Canadia Bank, said, “We are now laying the foundations and building the runway. If there are no issues with the land, I believe that the airport will be ready by 2023.”

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OCIC has invested in numerous big projects in Cambodia, including Diamond Island Development City, Olympia City, and, most notably, Chroy Changvar Satellite City.

Sin Chansereyvutha, spokesman of the State Secretariat of Civil Aviation, said the airport is not likely to be finished so soon.

“We need time to clear the land and lay the foundations and solve any land dispute. As per our schedule, the new airport will be ready by 2024, but it may be delayed until 2025,” he said.

Chrek Soknim, president of the Cambodian Valuers and Estate Agents Association, said the project is a significant achievement for the nation that will boost the economy.

“Once the new airport is finished, the real estate and construction sectors in Cambodia will attract more investors. The land around the airport has attracted a lot of investment already after it was chosen as the site of the new airport,” Mr Soknim said.

Source - Khmer Times

Runaway warming could sink fishing and reef tourism, researchers warn

Countries from Egypt to Mexico could lose 95 percent of their income from coral reef tourism, and parts of West Africa could see their ocean fisheries decline by 85 percent by the turn of the century if planet-warming emissions continue to rise, oceans experts warned Friday.

"Action in reducing emissions really needs to be taken, or we will be facing very important impacts" on oceans and people, said Elena Ojea, one of the authors of a new paper looking at the potential impacts of climate change on ocean economies.

The study, released at the UN climate negotiations in Madrid, was commissioned by the leaders of 14 countries with ocean-dependent economies, and looked at ocean fisheries and seafood cultivation industries, and coral reef tourism.

It found that reef tourism, a nearly $36-billion-a-year industry today, could see more than 90% losses globally by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario.

Countries particularly dependent on coral reef tourism - Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand and Australia - could see income cut by 95 percent, the paper noted.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, an ocean expert at Australia's University of Queensland and one of paper's authors, said his country's Great Barrier Reef tourism industry - worth billions a year a year - was already seeing losses as corals bleached and died.

Ojea, of Spain's University of Vigo, said the 30 million people directly employed in ocean fishing each year also "will be heavily affected" as fish struggle with hotter and more acidic oceans and move to new ranges or die.

She said the problem was most serious in equatorial regions, with some West African nations, in particular, facing "very huge losses" by the end of the century if emissions rise well beyond the 2 degree Celsius limit set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

But some cooler areas of the planet could see a rise in local fish stocks as fish move to cooler waters, she said.

Efforts to adapt fisheries to changing conditions and better manage them, alongside stronger efforts to curb climate change, could cut expected losses, however, said Timothy Fitzgerald, director of the US-based Environmental Defense Fund's Fishery Solutions Center.

"We know the most well-managed fisheries are also the most resilient to climate change," he told journalists at an event on the sidelines of the UN talks.

Vidar Helgesen, Norway's special envoy to the 14-nation High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, said the paper should send a "very strong message to the world" on the need to act swiftly to prevent growing ocean-related losses.

The report builds on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's findings that climate-related damage to oceans is likely to cost the global economy nearly $430 billion by 2050, and close to $2 trillion by 2100.

Source - TheJakartaPost