Thailand - Phuket’s hotels can now open. Someone forgot to tell the hotels.

Phuket is open. Sort of. And the hotels on the island are officially allowed to re-open but few are flinging open their doors anytime soon to welcome the hordes of tourists lining up to book a room. The holiday island is in a Catch 22 situation with the hotels waiting for the guests to return and potential visitors waiting until there are signs of life.

Although the authorities said hotels could re-open on June 1 they forgot to give hotels any advance notice so management could put all the many wheels in motion necessary to open a modern hotel.

A hotelier told TTR Weekly the first he knew of the lifting of restrictions was when he received a message on his phone saying the province had announced the island’s hotels could reopen.
“They gave no one any warning, but within 30 minutes of the text message on hotels reopening, the social security department sent out messages ending the monthly compensation payments for June.”

But opening up the hotels is just one small step to re-booting Phuket’s battered tourist industry.

What are the guidelines for quarantine, if any? Do guests require any specific documentation? Insurance? Which hotels are actually open? Who is co-ordinating the information? Do travellers get any information about these things when they make their bookings? How do travellers know the hotel’s open anyway?

And if travellers come to Phuket, then return to their province. will they be required to do 14 day quarantine, as required by some provinces?

For now, the only way you can get to Phuket is across the Sarisan Bridge, the only land link to the Thai mainland. The island’s marine piers are also open again but there are scant services running at the moment.

And the airport?

There has been no official announcement about the re-opening of Phuket International Airport, even for domestic services. The island’s provincial authorities applied to the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand last week to re-open the airport but there has been no official response. Many other airports have now re-opened around Thailand to limited domestic flights but the success of the domestic flights reboot has been sketchy with schedules constantly changing as airlines battle with the ‘new normal’. Passengers are also describing the whole process as a “hassle’ with longer times needed to get into the airport, through check-in, requirements for social distancing and the completely impersonal flight experience with flight crews dressed up like ICU staff.

But there are signs of life. Maybe Thai AirAsia, Nok Air and Vietjet Air know something the rest of us don’t. All three have bookings available, at least between Phuket and Bangkok, from June 16. Fares range from 1,100 up to 1,700 in the week after June 16, one way. But if you’re rushing to buy a ticket, on or off the island, be aware that there is no official green light for a resumption of flights, as of today.

International flights into Thailand are banned up to at least the end of June with, again, no official mention of what will happen after that. Residents of which countries will be allowed to fly in? What restrictions and conditions will be imposed? And which airlines are going to be flying anyway?

The CAAT has extended the ban on international flights twice already.

The Thai government said last month that they were going to use June as the month to clear a lot of the chartered Thai citizen repatriation flights. That the only new cases of Covid-19 in Thailand over the past 2 weeks have been returning citizens, all from Middle East countries, will be a niggling concern for authorities as they figure out how, or when, to re-open international borders.

Back to Phuket…

Even if the hotels are re-opening, where will these magic travellers be coming from. The biggest feeder market, weekenders from Bangkok, will be going to Pattaya or Hua Hin. They’re unlikely to take a 12 hour drive to Phuket, no matter how cheap the hotels, or pretty the beaches. So as long as Thailand is closed to international tourists, and the airport’s sealed off from international travel, the prospects for Phuket’s hotel industry remain extremely limited.

Even if some domestic tourism provides a kick-start to the island’s tourist economy, what will they do when they’re here? All the hot spots are ‘cold’, there are few tours that are considering re-starting for now and it’s wet season anyway.

Speaking to the GM of three hotels on the island, he told The Thaiger that they’re not re-opening until October, at the earliest.

“There are plenty of difficult months ahead with our old staff mostly laid off. When we re-open, many of the staff will be new. The whole things a mess.”

Any bets on June 16 for a re-opening of Phuket Airport to domestic flights?

Source - The Thaiger

Thailand - Government wants to reopen bars, pubs, soapy massages and amusement parks

The government is considering measures that would allow the resumption of 12 types of businesses and activities -- including pubs and concerts, parlours offering soapy massages, and sports competitions.

Taweesilp Visanuyothin, spokesman of the government's Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA), said yesterday the CCSA's business resumption committee had invited operators and organizers to discuss measures needed to control the spread of the coronavirus.

The committee is headed by the secretary-general of the National Security Council, Somsak Roongsita.

"The government will hear from the operators what their plans are for preventing virus transmission and we will see how we can cooperate," Dr Taweesilp said.

Some of the 12 business/activity types were already allowed to resume partial services. Officials would discuss measures for the resumption of more services at these premises, he said.

He made reference to sports fields, where practice is now allowed. He said they were discussing disease-control measures for sports competitions.

The upcoming relaxation of restrictions would also apply to bigger film crews for large settings, the reopening of classrooms, daily visits to elderly care centres, and national parks.

Dr Taweesilp said measures were also being set for concerts and event halls of more than 20,000 square metres, education-oriented science centres, and beaches.

Other business categories include amusement parks, water parks, playgrounds and game shops; meeting rooms for more than 200 participants; pubs, bars and karaoke shops; and bath-sauna-massage parlours, he said.

Seventeen new Covid-19 infections were reported yesterday, all returnees from the Middle East and mostly asymptomatic.

"The two-digit figure is very high, but is from the daily arrival of returnees," Dr Taweesilp, said.

Meanwhile, Maj Gen Burin Thongprapai, director of the army's Office of the Judge Advocate who chairs a panel investigating the Covid-19 transmission at Lumpinee Boxing Stadium, said army chief Apirat Kongsompong has sacked the management of the army-run stadium in line with the recommendation of the investigation panel.

Previously, Maj Gen Rachit Arunrangsi, head of the Army Welfare Department and manager of the stadium, who was among those infected by the virus at the stadium, was transferred to an inactive post after the incident.

He will retire at the end of September 2022.

A cluster of infections during a boxing event at the stadium on March 6 was blamed for a surge in the number of corona-virus cases in the following days.

Also yesterday, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said he was still concerned people may be at risk of infection at this stage of the unwinding process if they flock in large numbers to tourist spots and beaches, such as Bang Saen beach in Chon Buri province.

Source - The Bangkok Post

#Thailand - No date for resumption of international arrivals: PM

In an apparent effort to quell rumours and undue optimism, PM Prayut Chan-o-cha is downplaying the notion that international tourists will be allowed to return to Thailand in July. The government had set a tentative deadline of 1 July for lifting all restrictions put in place under the Emergency Decree to combat the spread of Covid-19. Last week it was reported the lifting of restrictions would mean that international arrivals would resume from July 1.

But yesterday the Thai PM said Thailand still has a long way to go in its fight against the virus before international tourists can be allowed to return. He added that the issue hasn’t yet been even discussed by the Cabinet, and that only tourists from certain countries may be allowed to visit Thailand, namely those where the outbreak is deemed to be under control.

When tourists are eventually allowed back in, he said, they’ll face “a number of restrictions” which he didn’t specify. This will include so called “travel bubbles,” using bilateral agreements with individual governments to help limit any further outbreak or second wave of infections.

The idea is similar to those enacted elsewhere as countries try to safely kickstart their tourism sectors.

In May, a “travel corridor” allowed people to travel between Seoul and 10 regions in China, including Shanghai, and in Europe, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania established their own travel bubble on May 15.

Australia and New Zealand have discussed plans to resume travel between the 2 countries, potentially as early as September.

The news comes as Tourism Authority of Thailand’s governor said last week he doesn’t expect international tourists to return to Thailand until later in the year.

“It is still dependent on the outbreak situation, but I think at the earliest, we may see the return of tourists in the fourth quarter of this year.”

If and when foreign tourists can return to Thailand, there will likely be restrictions in place to determine where they can visit. The resumption of any form of tourism will also rely heavily on airlines, most of which are struggling with huge financial losses and grappling with restarting flights in a very new international travel paradigm.

The PM has said he is in no rush to open up the borders, reminding reporters that all the new infections are now coming from repatriating Thais.

“We are not going to open all at once. We are still on high alert, we just can’t let our guards down yet. We have to look at the country of origin to see if their situation has truly improved. And lastly, we have to see whether our own business operators are ready to receive tourists under the ‘new normal’.”

A ban on all international travel in and out of Thailand remains in place until at least the end of June. The CAAT have made no comment at this stage about dates for a possible resumption of flights from Thailand’s international airports. Phuket Airport remains closed to all traffic.

Source - ThaiVisa / The Thaiger

#Thailand may hold a July Songkran event if Covid-19 situation remains stable

Thai citizens are being dangled a carrot – the chance to celebrate Songkran in July. Usually the annual water festival, traditionally the end of the dry season and the start of the wet season, is held on April 13. The event has become a big tourist magnet over the past decade as it’s morphed from traditional Buddhist festival into organised water fights in the streets of Bangkok and tourist towns.

This year it was cancelled as the country was busy being not busy; locked down in their homes instead of outside splashing water everywhere. But the government says they may still hold a Songkran festival in July instead IF the third phase of the easing of lockdown restrictions goes smoothly this month.

'Phase 3’ started rolling out yesterday and opens up just about everything excepting bars and pubs, and some other entertainment venues. 16 business types and leisure activities resumed yesterday. The curfew has also been reduced to 11pm to 3am daily.

Phuket seems to be trailing behind the rest of the country with a ban on its beaches and airport still in place.

CCSA spokesman Dr. Taweesin Visanuyothin says the Government might declare special public holidays in July to celebrate Songkran. The festival, apart from all the water splashing, is the biggest family get-together of the year when people head back ‘up country’ for large family celebrations. The festival is also the most dangerous time on Thailand’s roads each year.

Dr. Taweesin says the CCSA will assess the results of phase three relaxations this month, adding that…”if the Covid-19 situation improves satisfactorily and people strictly observe the basic guidelines of social distancing, regular hand washing and face mask wearing, it might ask the Government to declare special public holidays in July”.

We’re not sure what “improves satisfactorily” means given that there have no recorded local transmutations of Covid-19 for over a week. All the latest cases are from Thais repatriating on specially organised charter flights from overseas whereby all arrivals must spend 14 days in supervised quarantine.

There is still a state of emergency in effect until at least the end of the June which provides Thai PM Prayut and his appointed committee in the CCSA sweeping powers to address the Covid-19 situation in Thailand without consulting parliament.

Source - The Thaiger

Een klein #Bangkok-verhaal, voordat de rode lichten dimden

No Asian government will admit how much its economy depends on the sex industry, and perhaps ironically, it is the country that until recently had the most open sex trade in the region that has been one of the most guilty of obvious denialism.

As Asia Times has reported, the Covid-19 panic has closed the doors on bars, “karaoke” joints, massage parlors, brothels, and everything from the sleaziest watering holes to the swankiest nightclubs all over Asia.

As the disease itself, with the exception of a few small pockets, has infected relatively tiny numbers of people in this region, it is the fear-inspired response to the coronavirus that has caused the most damage, and as with all prohibition campaigns, “lockdowns” have hit all sources of entertainment, legitimate and otherwise, especially hard.

And that has been devastating for Thailand.

While it is true that Thailand has been successful in diversifying its tourism industry over the years, making the country more attractive to families and other “moral” travelers – and indeed, the manufacturing sector overtook tourism long ago as the main contributor to the economy – the sex trade has remained very important to national and regional GDPs.

In Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket, Hua Hin, Chiang Mai and other centers the availability of women, men, and everything in between “on the game” is legendary.

Or it was. But over the past few months a combination of government measures, some sensible and others less so, have dimmed the red lights all over the country, and the tens of thousands of people, many from rural areas, who depended on the sex industry have left the former hotspots, now chilled into stagnation.

Well, isn’t that a good thing, you ask? Isn’t it better for the nation’s youth to find meaningful, rewarding, clean jobs instead of selling their bodies for a quick baht, risking disease, abuse, and worse?

Perhaps. But leaving aside the evidence that Thailand has for the most part brought the worst elements of the sex trade – human trafficking, child exploitation, the spread of STDs – under control, decent jobs are not easy to find, especially for the unskilled. And they are very likely to get even more scarce as manufacturers, especially in the automotive sector, scale back just as the labor pool scales up.

But apart from the boring numbers, GDP forecasts and jobless figure, the merits of the sex industry, or lack of them, are difficult to analyze objectively, because very few of us can distance ourselves from our personal prejudices, religious and/or moral values, and cultural norms. That is especially so when examining a mysterious, exotic, alien country, which for most Westerners Thailand is.

In that light, the following anecdote – based on a true story, told by someone who would prefer to remain anonymous – might, well, shed some light.

It was a bar much like hundreds, maybe thousands, of others in pre-pandemic Bangkok. Small and unremarkable, it was nonetheless popular with some older expats, as the bar girls didn’t pester the customers much for “bar fines” (the standard pimping fee, which ran from the equivalent of US$10 and up), and the DJ played old rock instead of techno-crap.

One day a young woman, apparently a denizen of the place (either a bar girl or waitress, not that there was much difference – in places like this, most were “available,” often including the cashier and sometimes the manager), entered with a little girl in tow. The child was apparently her daughter, and as it was not a school day, Mom was off work to care for her. They brought in with them a birthday cake, complete with seven candles.

The candles were lit, everyone gathered around, and the DJ put on a rock version of “Happy Birthday.”

To moral, law-abiding Westerners, it might seem inappropriate to bring a seven-year-old into such a Den of Ill Repute, but Bangkok, despite its latter-day status as a world city, is still firmly in the East. In this environment, it was just a mom giving her kid a birthday treat, and sharing it with friends in her place of business.

A place of business in a country that has one of the highest income disparities in Asia, and where the minimum wage is $10 a day.

A place of business, that is, where this young mother and thousands like her knew they could make more from a quick roll in the hay with a Westerner taking a respite from his moral, law-abiding, incorruptible homeland than she could make in a week cleaning rooms and making beds at his four-star hotel. And maybe use some of that money to give her kid opportunities that were never given to her in her youth.

Back then, before all we heard about was “social distancing” and “PPEs” and horror tales about mass graves, “the game” was so open and prevalent in Thailand that it was more difficult than in the moral West to ignore the question: Why is it that while we honor Wall Street tycoons, usurers, corporate-bought politicians and exploitative employers, we sneer at people, mostly women, who earn their living from giving people pleasure?

People, mostly women, who like the rest of us want nothing more than to care for their families, the very old and the very young especially, and who often do so at great personal risk because they are denied the police and legal protections we moral folk take for granted?

Regardless of whether or not the old raunchy side of Thailand returns to “normal,” those aren’t questions that can be answered, not yet. To attempt to do so would raise too many other questions about the nature of law, of morality, and – scariest of all – of sex.

The little girl of this anecdote will have many more birthdays before any society acquires the courage to take on that kind of self-examination.

Source - Pattaya One News

#Thailand - Officials in Pattaya launch campaign to mark city’s phased re-opening

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Pattaya launches the “Pattaya is brighter together” campaign, meant to signify the ongoing and gradual re-opening of the city

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The mayor of Pattaya has led officials in launching a campaign to mark the phased re-opening of the famous tourist hotspot. Well more of a celebration! Normally hosting millions of tourists every year, Pattaya has been through a tough time during the last few months, with businesses, beaches and all nightlife and hospitality venues shut down due to the impacts of the Covid-19 virus.

Now, through the “Pattaya is brighter together” campaign, Mayor Sonthaya Khunpluem and other city officials are hoping to bring hope to residents and encourage visitors to return as Pattaya gradually re-opens and the journey back to some sort of normality gets underway.

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The event kicked off last night when city officials and members of various tourism bodies, as well as local media, attended an opening ceremony on Pattaya Beach. At the event, officials took part in coconut painting, using coconuts bought from local farmers. Even Mayor Khunpluem painted a coconut, with all artwork then exhibited at Pattaya and Jomtien beaches to signify that brighter times are to come.

 To date, Pattaya has gone around six weeks without a case of community transmission of the Covid-19 virus. The latest re-opening comes as the country enters Phase 3 of a nationwide easing of restrictions in light of a nominal number of new virus cases nationally, most of which are being detected in repatriated Thai citizens in state quarantine.

Source - Pataya One News

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Lockdown Collapsed #Thailand’s lucrative sex-industry

The black leather party masks that performers May and Som wear for their fetish shows in Bangkok are definitely not the sort to stop the corona-virus.

Behind closed doors, they practise for the day when health restrictions are lifted and tourists return, but they have no idea when and worry that the city’s infamous Patpong red-light district could be very different by then.

“This kind of place will be the last to reopen,” said May 31. Like Som, she goes only by her Thai nickname.

“Even when it does reopen, customers will be worried about their safety,” she said at the BarBar club on Patpong’s Soi 2 street. BarBar and other clubs such as “Bada Bing” and “Fresh Boys” are shuttered and the nights are largely silent.

Thailand shut bars and clubs in mid-March as corona-virus cases surged. It halted international passenger flights, stopping the tourism that had made Bangkok the world’s most visited city for four years.

Patpong went dark.

But residents say the decline had already begun for a red-light district that flourished in the 1970s as a rest stop for U.S. forces in Indochina.

“This COVID-19 is an accelerant of change,” said Michael Ernst, an Austrian 25-year veteran of the district and former bar owner who opened the Patpong Museum weeks before the new corona-virus reached Thailand.

“The go-go bar and its very one-dimensional concept of a stage and ladies dancing on it with a number. I think that’s already over, they just don’t know that yet.”

SHIFT

The number of go-go bars in Patpong district has waned in recent years as business has moved to other parts of Bangkok or online and as sex tourism has become a smaller part of the overall tourism industry for Thailand.

For decades, tourism figures were skewed towards men. But the growing importance of Chinese visitors in particular changed that. In 2018, more than 53 percent of tourists were women.

Nonetheless, Patpong’s nightlife district employed thousands of people, mostly young women. Most are now among the 2 million Thais the state planning agency believes may be made unemployed this year because of the impact of the virus.

BarBar is still paying some workers. But the manager of at least one go-go bar on Soi 2 just abandoned the lease.

Patpong had never known it as bad, said 70-year-old Pratoomporn Somritsuk, who for 35 years has run the Old Other Office drinking den.

“A lot of ladies here working in nightlife are mostly from a poor family or upcountry,” she said. “They have no chance to go work in a company.”

The lockdown has meant the whole sex industry has collapsed. Online escort service Smooci said activity in Bangkok fell to 10 percent in April.

Thailand has now begun to lift some movement restrictions with infections at over 3,000 and deaths nearly 60, but neither rising rapidly. There is talk of tourism resuming.

But a health ministry spokesman said that nightlife venues would be among the last to reopen.

“In the new normal, Patpong will have to adapt a lot. It may end up looking different, but this change will be for the better,” Rungruang Kitpati said.

Social distancing and the sex industry are hard to make compatible, however.

“I can provide alcohol gel or temperature checks,” said 38-year-old Jittra Nawamawat, one of BarBar’s founders. “But staying one metre apart is impossible.” – Reuters

Source - Bangkok Jack