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RE: Thailand no longer wants backpackers
there are now agencies in border towns that specialize in fake flights and hotel bookings to thwart this rather silly regulation. Since the border agents don't have the capacity to confirm or deny any of the information, this was always going to happen. However, i feel bad for the backpacker that turns up only to be told they have to purchase an onward flight at absurdly high airport prices
What is a rather silly regulation is there to clear out people working on no permit and staying indefinitely without any form of resident or work permits. Meanwhile, thousands of expats run honest business (paying VAT and more), or just work in education sector, Muay Thai fighters can also easily and indefinitely get 1 year Ed visa to study Muay Thai with any semi-reputable gym. Would you think England for example or USA is having success because they let any losers young and old bounce in and out of their borders, move into all the nature spots, and open immigrant bars, burger stalls and dive shops? No; I’m happy Thailand had the sense finally to start playing by it’s own rules. It’s a lot cleaner now for a start on many beaches. Phi Phi being a prime example, pristine and wiped clean after 2003 Tsunami, was a total dump by 2012, just now this year the government take it back and start to restore it. Good!!!
Backpackers are very welcome in Thailand - 3 month tourist visas are obtainable if you swing by a Thai embassy before your trip. If you want to stay longer,, study teach or work.
Final note, Thailand is however a victim of its own success. A booming pre-junta decade of economic growth lines the pockets of many many family offices. Many others cashed in land they had for decades, for absolutely fortunes (think PhuKet and places), and there has been trickle down. Thais want the high life, they are civilised and want a progressive, modern country. Industry is now huge - yet the whole world thinks it is still a quaint, poor little country begging for our $5 tips. Yes it was a lot more fun for us farang when it was .... these days it’s time to help Thailand continue on a strong path. They do have a lot to deal with in fact, being dragged face first into our full on consumer and capitalist world ....
it will be fun to see what the government does by closing Phi Phi. The government was largely responsible for its demise. I was there when the Tsunami hit (in 2004 btw, but that is just a typo)... and ok i will stand with you a bit as far as backpackers could apply for their 3 month visa blah blah blah, but honestly brother (or sister) that is not how backpackers operate... backpacking as a general rule is about turning up with ZERO plan, and just doing whatever and while we can sit here in our ivory castles and say that "well of course they should have pre-applied and paid for their visas" that is not what the entire objective of backpacking over here was ever about. Backpacking, in its very essence is not knowing where you are going to be tomorrow... you might meet some people and decide to totally change your plans - even country - because you got on with them.
Maybe that is not the way that it is now, but it was that way when i was in my 20's circa the 90's. what has changed since then?
I'd agree mostly, some things never changed since 90's apart from perhaps attitudes - but i remember backpacking used to be a gap year endeavor, not a lifestyle unless you were a hippy or dropout. Some came here and made business or careers, or were REAL teachers (not TEFL BS fakes), later came the criminals, then the bigger money to build the resorts, then the chains, until they'd changed quite a lot for the backpackers. Where once a beach was lined with huts for hundreds of baht a week, are now a thousand concrete A/C bungalows on a 2km strip of ruined natural shoreline, sold in 4 or 5 star package holidays worldwide ...Added to which: exchange rates are nothing like they used to be, and the place itself an economic tiger that isn't as cheap as it once was. Furthermore, not just Thailand but around the world generally - things are more restrictive than the wonderful decades pre Y2K where we really could roam about SEA through porous borders without a care in the world ... sad to say the world has changed, drastically and in past few years especially freedom wise. but I think other places and opportunities open up ....i think we forget of other horrors and sh1t times that were existing also in the region. The list of things that have changed is a long one ....
very good follow-up. Once these bio-metric (is that not one word? spellchecker doesn't think so) systems get installed globally, such as the ones i just encountered in Australia, i think travel will become even more restricted.
I guess age is taking its hold on me and as time goes by I become more of a "back in my day" type person :) The good news is that the people that are gap yearing it now, don't know how much easier it was and are probably more capable of simply taking it in stride.
I'm with you on the 'back in the day' part, and sometimes guilty of being in love with the past more than the present just a little ...
Yeah, I saw fake teaching certificates, or heard about them, and fake visas, etc, in Vietnam, and I just got back to America last year, and I'm not too sure if any of the visas or anything else I had were ever fake or not but I'm hoping I was not involved in illegal stuff but I can see that prohibition does not work and has not worked, when you force things onto black markets, be it drugs, beer, sex, the dark webs, and maybe even tourism or whatever.
you never had a fake visa. the days of the fake certs that you witnessed being sold are behind us now. I think the only one of them that would actually work anymore would be a international driving permit.