Good morning and how are you doing today? Hope you're having a wonderful day.
Now today we are looking at Thailand's attempt to open up tourism
with its sandbox plus scheme in Ko Samui.
First to get to Thailand you must have medical insurance that covers hospitalization with COVID
and you must have had the vaccine.
Now how does this sandbox plus thing work in Koh Samui. First you have to book at an AQ hotel or
villa. AQ stands for alternative quarantine this is different from your standard quarantine where
you would have to stay in your hotel room, this means that you can actually, the villa or hotel
you're booked into, you have free range of all the premises all the facilities and if they
have beach access the beach outside, oh sorry in their resort, so you can use the swimming pool the
gym the restaurants the spa facilities. You're not confined to your room you're just confined to the
place that you're booked in.
On arrival day you are taken straight to the hotel, you're checked in and you must stay in the hotel
not just through the hotel premises for the next three days.
Day four you're allowed to go on certain designated tours that are organized by
your AQ hotel. Day seven you have a COVID test, and if that comes back negative on day eight
you are free to explore the rest of Koh Samui but also the neighboring islands of Ko Phangan and Koh
Tao. I think though there is some restrictions on it you can't just travel by yourself you have to
take a designated AQ guide with you so it's not going to be cheap. By day 14 you're then
released into the wild and you're free to travel the whole rest of Thailand assuming it, except
for areas that may be shut down but technically day 14 you can travel the rest of the country.
So is it a good idea or not?
Well there are already a couple of issues coming on, it was only started on the 15th of July this
year and there's already a couple of issues coming up because flights in Thailand can only have 50%
capacity many of the airlines have now grounded themselves because they can't afford to go so
there's only Bangkok airlines that are flying into Ko Samui and those already expensive seats
are up higher in price, so there's the expense of getting there.
Then when you get there the AQ hotels are not cheap. The cheapest I could find was
2 000 US dollars for the 14 days up to 30 000 US dollars for an entire villa for 14 days,
that does include meals. So it's not going to be for your budget travellers you know it's, yeah.
Secondly the point is how much of the island is actually going to be open if you go there. Okay
for the first seven days you're confined to the actual resort but then If you go and explore the
island what will be open to explore? Now if you're going to go on a holiday say with your family and
you want to be in one resort, you generally stay in the resort with the kids, you access the beach
and that's what you want to do this is quite nice because it's just like your normal holiday,
but if you want to go out and explore the island what will there be to do?
Thirdly there is the changing quarantine regulations. In these uncertain times,
this thing is, you know, mucked up travel and we just can't get a grasp on it,
and whether we should be traveling or not is another question for another day, but
if you go there and you go through the quarantine process and then they change the regulations
or they stop flights to the island entirely then you could get stuck there so you have
to factor in that risk factor. Now there are far worse places to be stuck I mean
it would be a wonderful paradise island to be stuck if your wallet can afford it.
Let me know what you think of this kind of scheme, is it practical? Would you go on one
of those if you could? What do you think? Let me know and see you in the next video.