Phuket opening officially approved! Bars still shut nation-wide

There has been a lot of talk going on about the island of Phuket opening to international tourism in what is being called the "sandbox" program but it wasn't until today that this was made official. In the past the promises of reopening the island under restricted circumstances had been talked about on many occasions only to have the government delay the opening at the 11th hour. This has been talked about for nearly half a year but it looks like we are finally going to move forward with this thing.

As of today, the government has officially approved the reopening of the island for international tourists who have been vaccinated without any quarantine.

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While it will probably be a while before we see massive crowds on the beaches like this - which was a nightmare anyway - it is still really great for the inhabitants of the island that this is going to happen. Phuket depends almost entirely on tourism with nearly every industry on it being at least in part, related to the massive influx of tourists that happens there every year.

This is a bit of a gamble on the part of Thailand seeing as how they still don't have the country's Covid problem under control but as a contained project, I still think it is not just a good idea, but a necessary one.

This will all take place on July 1st and the planned re-opening of Koh Samui, Koh Phangngan, and Koh Tao (murder island) on July 15th was also given the "go ahead" by the Cabinet meeting.

This is fantastic news for all of those islands as well because just like Phuket, there is very little industry at any of these places other than tourism.

Thailand's GDP is driven nearly 20% by tourism, and there are very few countries in the world that are so reliant on it in order to survive.

No one will be allowed to leave these places until 14 days after their arrival and then they will need to get a negative Covid test in order to do so. It remains to be seen if people that are already here will be allowed to go to these places, including me. From what I have read it appears as though people already in Thailand will only be allowed to enter these places if they have an international flight departing from one of them which would only mean Phuket or Samui.

In my mind this is good news, even though it is a bit risky but seeing as how all of the other plans that this and many other governments of the world have had towards Covid hasn't really worked anyway, I figure, what the hell... go ahead and do it.

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In other news, the vilifying of alcohol as far as the virus is concerned is set to continue, with a few concessions being made to king of appease the people of the country. Restaurants are going to be allowed to start serving alcohol again but all bars and alcohol-related entertainment venues such as nightclubs are to remain closed until further notice - whatever that means.

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The justification for this is that the latest "wave" of Covid is purported to have originated at a couple of Bangkok nightclubs and spread throughout the entire country from just 2 Bangkok areas - which I find very hard to believe.

I can tell you right now that restaurants are going to start to function as bars all over the country just like the one I mentioned in the past that distributes plates of food that the patrons were instructed to not eat but simply leave on the table to create the illusion that the patrons are actually there to dine and not to hang out for hours with their pals drinking.

Since the rules have always varied from place to place we have actually been able to accomplish this where I live for quite some time, but the same recent Cabinet meeting that approved the opening of Phuket has also agreed to allow restaurants nation-wide to serve alcohol. On a purely selfish note this is great news for me since all of the places that I went to get beers at weren't nightclubs anyway and they also serve food.

So we'll all just have to hope everything goes OK moving forward as far as the virus is concerned because this country is definitely suffering from the past year and half of having 20% of its overall income completely cut off.