Waiting at Sydney Airport to check in for my first international flight in two years, I’m hoping they don’t weigh my cabin bag, as I’m convinced all the extra paperwork I’ve had to bring is adding at least a kilo! (OK, that’s probably a slight exaggeration – but I’m known to “carry on” in more than one sense of the phrase.)
Any overseas travel these days requires more preparation than previously, but Thailand, where I’m heading, is still one of the most complicated of the “open” countries. Even as a seasoned traveller, the whole process takes me days of work and there are times when I consider just giving up and finding an easier destination.
Some of the steps are relatively easy and similar for travel to other countries – you need an international vaccination certificate, which is simple (and free) to do through your online Medicare account; and you need a negative PCR test, which can be done right before the flight at testing centres at Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane airports (results guaranteed in less than 90 minutes), or at other clinics across the country a couple of days in advance (but not the free government ones – my test cost $79).
However, travel to Thailand starts to get tricky with the government’s “Test & Go” system, which requires you to book an authorised hotel for your first night, where you’ll quarantine until you get a negative test result. The Thai Government does have a long directory of these hotels on a website, but there is no way to sort or filter them for criteria like location, price, or amenities, making the list rather useless (unless you have time to go to the website of each hotel one by one to find those details).
For most people, the easiest way to find a hotel is through a site like Expedia or Booking.com because most of these authorised hotels have included the phrase “SHA Extra Plus” in their name to let you know they are part of the program. However, if you book the hotel through one of these third-party websites, you then need to contact the accommodation directly to arrange and pay for the arrival test. Inexplicably, this is not done through a central government system, but through private providers, and in my case it takes several days of emails back and forth to get this confirmed and for the hotel to issue me with a certificate I can use to apply for a “Thailand Pass”.
The Thailand Pass is required for entry to the country and creates another layer of bureaucracy you need to muddle your way through. As well as uploading proof of payment for your first night’s accommodation and PCR test (as an image file – PDFs are not accepted for some reason), you also need to upload proof of travel insurance that has at least US$20,000 of medical coverage for COVID-19. While that may sound reasonable, many policy certificates don’t explicitly mention COVID-19 coverage (even though it is included), which means your whole application risks getting rejected by the Thai authorities. It can take some time to find the right insurance that will be accepted.
You’re advised to apply for your Thailand Pass at least seven days before departure, to make sure there’s enough time for authorities to process everything. As I wait for my certificate from my accommodation, and search around for the right insurance, I start to get a bit stressed when I still don’t have everything eight days before my flight. In the end, I submit it all just before the deadline… and then the pass is issued within three hours anyway! I’m not sure whether to be relieved or annoyed.
The queue to check in for my flight takes much longer than usual because the airline needs to review everyone’s paperwork, so it’s worth getting to the airport early. But immigration at Bangkok is relatively smooth. It does become chaotic again in the arrivals hall, where you need to find your hotel representative amongst a large crowd, so they can put you into a van to be taken for a test (you also have to book a direct transfer with your accommodation in advance, with public transport or a taxi not allowed). In my case, the testing facility is a series of tents just off the expressway and I’m swabbed through the van door in a process that takes less time than getting drive-through fast food.
Locked away in my hotel room, I wait for my test results so I can go out into the city. It takes about five hours but, because I arrive in the late afternoon, I don’t find out until I wake up in the morning. In that sense, the quarantine isn’t too bad because I probably would’ve had an early night anyway after a long flight.
What is ridiculous, though, is just how complicated this whole process is. It’s not my place to argue that Thailand shouldn’t have these testing and quarantine arrangements (although it’s worth noting that its Asian neighbours and tourism competitors are dropping theirs). But the government should’ve made it much more streamlined. The consequences are plain to see here in Thailand right now, where tourist areas are still quiet and many hotels are empty. It’s partly the fear of testing positive on day one (and being forced into quarantine) that’s keeping people away, but also the hassle (and extra cost) of the paperwork itself. I suspect the tourism industry here won’t recover until the Thailand Pass system becomes less of an impediment for travellers.
You can see more about travel in Thailand on Michael Turtle’s Time Travel Turtle website.
