Thailand & Pattaya News, from Fabulous 103fm (25 April 2022)
Next Sunday is D day for change in numerous regulations for Thailand. Restaurants, even ex bars but with food licenses will be allowed to remain open until midnight instead of the current 11PM, whilst clubs, bars and gogo style businesses are only allowed to open as eateries too. Rayong joins the new group of provinces where alcohol CAN be served in outlets, along with Songkla in the south, other provinces are allowing most services and business types to resume but with limitations on number of customers. Home quarantine for covid cases and those who have been in contact with covid cases, such as co-tenants and family, is reduced from 7 to 5 days, with a so-called SELF HEALTH OBSERVATION for the following 5, and changes to the arrival system here, which are expected to include a reduction to a nominal amount of travel insurance required, together with zero testing for arrivees with current vaccination records is also expected to be officially announced this week, ahead of the season when the largest number of tourists book for both the summer AND the high season.

Mae sot shook late Saturday evening as a car bomb exploded on the Burmese side of the Thai-Burma bridge. Left at a checkpoint, it resulted in building damage, power outages and gunshots but no reported injuries. In sync with the explosion, some 50 Burmese attempted to cross close by into Thailand, they were duly nabbed, while waiting for their rides to places of work here, and will of course be deported.

In NAKHON RATCHASIMA, 10 people were being held over the weekend following a raid on an illegal gambling website operation. 6 million baht’s worth of goods were seized during the raid which also saw accounts frozen for those who had WINS in their online banks. 2 more so-called bosses are being sought.
When a TRAT man took a motorbike to sell to a local bike dealer, he wasn’t impressed with the price offered but, as they haggled, the store owner’s family called police NOT because of the price BUT because the bike the man was selling already belonged to the shop. It seems he had stolen it when it was parked outside a mobile phone shop 2 weeks before. Police, who had already filed a report on the theft, took the errant thief into custody and the bike was returned to its rightful owner.

Meanwhile at home and in Pattaya vendors of illegal ‘Happy water’ were nabbed over the weekend by police. A mix of ecstasy, meth, diazepam, caffeine and painkillers are used to make up a powder which, when mixed with fluid, leaves users overly happy HAS been on sale in many popular areas for a while now. Must be a big business as one arrestee saw 2 houses, three bikes and other goods worth a combined 9 mill baht seized.

The city reports a busy weekend with domestic tourism combined with expat spending. Despite being the weekend just after songkran, when most are usually less well heeled, the region was busy and even in the heat of the day beaches, zoos and the like were seeing huge numbers.
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