Thailand Pass – Quarantine or no Quarantine…?

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Viewing 6 posts - 31 through 36 (of 36 total)

  • rferguson
    Participant

    Just thought i’d follow up on my Thailand Pass (x2) experience.

    I booked my ‘Test and Go’ packages for both directions. Typically, these include your first nights accommodation, transport, PCR test on arrival and meals. The first three components are mandatory for the Thailand Pass to be issued.

    The first applicationa all went through very quickly and I had it issued within around 48 hours of submitting the application. I’d purchased the AXA COVID insurance as recommended and everything was very smooth.

    I was only overnighting in BKK on the way down to Australia staying at an airport hotel. I had arrived at 17:00 and my continuing flight the next day was 08:00.

    Arrival in BKK was well organised. After disembarking you are confronted with rows and rows of chairs where you sit down in order you arrive. Staff come and verify that everyone has their documents in order, then in groups of ten or so, the seated pax are called forward to the checkpoint to have their Thailand Pass scanned and show proof of PCR. It’s then on to immigration where the dox are checked again. When you emerge from customs/arrivals you can not leave the arrivals area until you have been collected by your hotel transport provider which show ID to security staff at the door to the terminal.

    A group of six of us were transported by mini bus to the same hotel. On arrival we passed through a pop up clinic and had our PCR test on arrival swabs taken. We were also given a leaflet with the expected test return times which were in bands. For samples taken between 14:00 and 18:00 the result return would be 04:00. I had mine taken at 17:30. You are meant to self isolate until your PCR result is returned.

    I was then checked in and allocated my room and advised of the meal procedures. I was surprised by the fact that meals were actually served buffet style in the restaurant during the isolation period as there were also guests at the same hotel not isolating. In fact, there were no controls at all over self isolation. No security present, it was completely an ‘honor system’. I had dinner in the restaurant and then went to bed for my early morning wake up the following morning.

    The plan was to take a GRAB to BKK around 05:00 so I came to check out at 04:45 and was advised my PCR test hadn’t yet been returned and I couldn’t leave! Thankfully, I had done my homework. The only two reasons you are allowed to leave ‘quarantine’ are upon receipt of a negative PCR OR being transported directly to BKK for an immediate flight departing Thailand. The receptionist was helpful and still contacted the hospital to chase up the result which was as expected, negative. I’d been living the life of a hermit to avoid COVID in the weeks before my trip so I would have been devastated to have received a positive result.

    The Thai Airways flight to Australia was 95% full which was unexpected. A sizeable amount of these were inbound BKK transit pax and as most of these seemed to be Australian Visa holders the gate staff were meticulously checking their documents which led to a near two hour delay to departure. It was literally as if a full 777-300 was being checked in at the gate.

    RETURN:

    Again, similar to the outbound in terms of the application with an approval within around 48 hours.

    This time around though, there was a lot more stress. I was absolutely gobsmacked at the mindset of most of the people in Sydney as well as the service providers. It was as if COVID didn’t exist. Like the UK, most retrictions had been lifted. Yet, unlike the UK, it was as if any reference to COVID in Australia had been erased. Although not required, many hotels, shops, restaurants i’ve been to still have some form of COVID protocol – for example at the Helsinki Hilton breakfast and Thai Airways lounge plastic gloves were provided and encouraged for use at the buffet. There were still marking on the floor as a recommendation. Plenty of hand gel dispensers. In Sydney it was as if there was a concious effort to remove any remnant of COVID restrictions. Yet, at the same time, a perfect storm was brewing. The borders had been opened and Omnicron had arrived. Cases in NSW were doubling daily.

    Less than 48HRS before I was due to have my pre flight PCR to depart Australia I was advised by text that I was a close contact of a COVID positive person. I knew my PCR test less than 48hrs after the ‘contact’ would unlikely show as positive. My bigger concern was my arrival PCR in Thailand picking it up. If I tested positive on arrival, my one night stay would become ten nights qurantine. This was quite stressful and so I was doing LF tests daily right up until my 09:30 flight departure from SYD to BKK. Mixed into the equation was the stress when I saw ‘Thailand suspends Thailand Pass’ in the media headlines. Thankfully, after having a read through, this only affected new applications.

    My Thai flight from SYD was operating via Phuket which seems common these days. I guess with the limited demand to BKK it makes sense for the airlines to operate a stopping service via another city. My Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi the following day also operated BKK-HKT-AUH.

    Once again, the flight was booked completely full although this time it seemed predominantly Aussies itching to get abroad for the first time in years. It was evident at check in that a LOT of pax were being offloaded for not having the required documentation and there was a queue growing at the ‘re-booking desk’. I often don’t have much sympathy for people that don’t do their homework but seeing whole families being offloaded on Boxing Day morning was quite sad. Especially as some of the reasons seemed to be in the fine print. Most seemed to involve transit. You can only transit internationally via BKK (some of those offloaded had tickets booked to transit via HKT) and you can only spend a maximum of 8hrs in transit airside (I felt sorry for an entire family of five that were told they couldn’t travel as their connecting flight from BKK to DEL was 9hrs after landing).

    At door close, it was evident that this ‘full’ flight would depart with around 70% of seats empty.

    We landed in Phuket around 8.5hr later and the majority of pax left here. BKK bound pax were to stay onboard and a baggage reconcilliation was performed before we continued onto BKK.

    The arrival process in BKK was exactly the same as the way down except this time I had booked a hotel downtown as I had around 30hr between flights and was keen to have a wander around one of my favourite cities the following day.

    Again I was met in arrivals and taken by private car to the Berkeley hotel in Pratunam. I arrived at the hotel around 18:00 and was advised a nurse would come to my room around 21:00 to perform the PCR swab and the results would be available 4-6hr after. I had chosen the Berkeley due to the appeal of the ’24 hours room use from check in’ policy they have. They also included meals with the package although these were served to the room in plastic airline meal like boxes and would be lucky to fill up a five year old child so I ‘topped up’ with (very in-expensive) room service items.

    The nurse visited my room and administered the swab test and I then had a relatively light sleep whilst going through scenarios of how I would fill my ten days in this room if the test came back positive.

    Again, it was apparent that there was no control over the comings and goings of ‘test and go’ guests. There were no security present and I could have quite easily literally walked out the door of the hotel.

    I called the reception at 4am and my test result had come back negative. I was hugely relieved. At 6am I opted to pay the very reasonable amount of THB450 or a tenner for the buffet breakfast which was a very decent spread. I returned to my room and found my quarantine breafast at my door – two fried eggs.

    I thoroughly enjoyed my wander around BKK that day in the sun. All the smells of street food and craziness are still there albeit on a very much wound back scale.

    I had a bit of an issue at the hotel when I returned just after midday for a shower. My room key card was deactivated. Assuming this had happened due to the regular check out time of midday I returned to the front desk in order to advise my my 17:30 departure which was 23hr after my arrival. I was greeted with a ’14:00 is the absolute latest checkout’ reply. To which I had to pull up my reservation for their own hotel and display their own ’24 hour’ policy as part of the test and go package.

    I have no regrets, it was amazing seeing familiy in Australia for the first time in years but travel has certainly changed and I won’t lie there was a moment or two when I thought to myself ‘is this really worth it’? But, it was. 🙂


    BPP
    Participant

    rfuruson, your fortitute, patience and perseverence are quite something. Glad it all worked out but it does sound more like a ‘war time’ transit than a ‘pleasure flight’.
    BPP

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    Polly
    Participant

    RFerguson

    That was an amazing report, and thank goodness you got negative results. Your heart is literally in your mouth, waiting for these results.
    And what happens if you then get told it’s positive 2 days later, but actually is a false positive.

    Nerve wrecking what happened to me in Singapore, 2 days arguing with them, resisting being taken away! no proof offered, then the 4 days in their facility, being tested, and tested etc. my breakfast one morning was a jam sandwich! Ghastly. Phoned down and got 2 hard boiled eggs sent up. A hot dog next morning.. it went on and on.

    It has really shaken us re any travel destinations that now require test on arrival. We so love Asia and wish they would accept us fully vaccinated and neg pre boarding. Anyone who travels under these constraints is either very brave, or desperate to travel for family reasons.

    We genuinely trusted the Singaporean gov VTL invitation to travel, and feel very let down. Especially as the MOH just barefaced told me there were taking in 1000s of travellers like me supposedly positive, into community care facilities for isolation. Claiming we were negative in our own countries, but mysteriously turned false positive on entering Singapore.

    Travellers beware is our new motto.

    3 users thanked author for this post.

    Kopite
    Participant

    Superb and very detailed report Martyn thank you.
    Very useful info thanks.


    Kopite
    Participant

    Thanks rferguson for your very detailed report and useful info.


    TGRW
    Participant

    I just wanted to add to the excellent information provided by r Ferguson and share my experience of arriving in the Phuket sandbox yesterday evening (21st Jan).

    In a nutshell, impressive. We landed on sq738 at around 6 pm local, with the amount of flights being Low this process is very smooth and it helps to be in the first 20 passengers off the plane. Pre immigration you are sat down, all paperwork checked, then sent to the next check, immigration, luggage, customs, swab test and to your transport.

    You have to book and pay for everything pre departure.

    We were off the plane and in the JW hotel in 42 mins, check in took a little longer with paperwork checks and organising the test later in the week.

    You are confined to your room until you receive your results, ours took 4 hours, an evening arrival, room service and an early night and you are free for the morning.

    In passing i asked how quiet it had been during the height of the pandemic, “out of 265 rooms and villas, we only had a maximum of 5 booked a night”

    we understand travel can be stressful at this, this experience has proved to us, it is worth travelling again and to start topping up our air miles for fun after two years of very careful travel plans.

    8 users thanked author for this post.
Viewing 6 posts - 31 through 36 (of 36 total)
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