Phuket governor outlines plans to track and trace foreign arrivals

[Thaiger]

The governor of Phuket says the authorities and provincial officials are creating a command centre for the purpose of tracking and tracing foreign tourists under the island’s sandbox scheme. The island re-opens in 1 week’s time to vaccinated tourists from low to medium-risk countries. According to a Pattaya News report, governor Narong Woonciew says a meeting was held yesterday between officials and operation centre officers, who plan to use “Phuket Smart city technology” to monitor the movements of international arrivals. Narong himself has been appointed incident commander, with various government agencies, military officers and the police contributing to the tracking […]

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[Rob2010]

I can't get this fantasy image out of my head of Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau ( obviously with accompanying Pink Panther theme tune ) being assigned to the case to entrap the dirty, nasty Johnny Foreigner (aka J. Farang) who is seeking to smuggle in a dastardly 'truth' serum which, if unleashed, will do untold damage to all sorts of government bodies and officals and god knows what else.

And no points for guessing which former general sits furtively in his office with an increasingly nervous 'tick', played by that villian for the ages, Herbert Lom.

Apologies to those members of a later vintage wondering what the hell I am rabbiting on about.

[Stardust]

And who is responsible for the security of the datas and privacy?! 

[AsItIs]

Many farang dress dirty and don’t shower. As hosts we have to be very careful

[AlexPTY]

I will not be giving a secrets away if i say that any mobile application has permissions and location tracking could be easily disabled on any phone.

[AlexPTY]

12 minutes ago, Tjampman said:

I was in Thailand recently and had to install the Thailand Plus app...

However the app didn't work when I was off wifi/internet  

So dont seem too difficult to prevent. (well I did install it on a spare phone without simcard)

i cannot insert a screenshot here, but if you disable location tracking, every time you lunch the app, it will ask you to enable tracking "only when it's used" or "all the time"

[Guevara]

2 hours ago, Rob2010 said:

I can't get this fantasy image out of my head of Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau ( obviously with accompanying Pink Panther theme tune ) being assigned to the case to entrap the dirty, nasty Johnny Foreigner (aka J. Farang) who is seeking to smuggle in a dastardly 'truth' serum which, if unleashed, will do untold damage to all sorts of government bodies and officals and god knows what else.

And no points for guessing which former general sits furtively in his office with an increasingly nervous 'tick', played by that villian for the ages, Herbert Lom.

Apologies to those members of a later vintage wondering what the hell I am rabbiting on about.

But some of us know what eventually happened to Herbert Lom (Dreyfuss). Or is this wishful thinking on my part?

Coincidentally, Herbert Lom played the King in the original King and I at Drury Lane, London.

[Jayce]

47 minutes ago, Tjampman said:

So dont seem too difficult to prevent. (well I did install it on a spare phone without simcard)

That's exactly what I would do too. 

If you want to take it one step further and you know your way around custom ROM's for your phone, you could also have a rooted phone with magisk and a couple of plugins which allows you to spoof your location data and feed the app bogus IMEI etc 

[Martin]

A tourist will generally have a sim card and mobile package from their home country. Do Phuket officials seriously expect tourists to keep their mobile data on for 14 days and run up huge data roaming charges, just for the privilege of being tracked and monitored constantly. Even if a tourist thai sim card was bought and installed after arriving it'll be a different phone number to that which you gave for your COE etc. and so all the tracking intentions will come to nought. This just has not been fully thought through at all. 

[Alavan]

2 hours ago, AsItIs said:

Many farang dress dirty and don’t shower. As hosts we have to be very careful

So do Thais... but I have news from you.
Dressing "dirty" has no connection with getting or passing Covid

[TobyAndrews]

3 hours ago, AsItIs said:

Many farang dress dirty and don’t shower. As hosts we have to be very careful

Hosts? You Thais!!!

You will never do anything for a foreigner without being paid for it, and usually three times what a Thai would pay.

[321BOOM]

 

Before leaving LOScam 3 weeks ago we lived 7 years on Phuket.

Regarding the trace and track app / QR codes, address lists there are a bunch of solutions for this problem.

Below find some examples

1. Do not visit LOScam at all as long such kind of requirements persist – this is for sure the best solution. If somehow you decide to visit LOScam which is entirely up to you than you can

2. Not install the app and all the time when you enter a place where scanning is required open your camera function or your phone only and predict you scan, my wife did that numerous times and not once somebody checked it

3. Leave your phone at home, buy an old nokia or predict you not have one with you. If they ask you to write your name and tel. number, what about ‘Mickey Mouse’ and 0123456789 ?

4. Ignore areas where scanning or address writing is required. Worked very well on Phuket Airport, domestic terminal.

5. Avoid places where scanning and address lists are required, there are plenty of businesses who do not ask you to do so. Simply patronage them.

6. If you willing to install the app, leave the Phone at home or shut it down.

Etc. etc.

All this are examples which worked well by our experience and experience of friends of ours. My wife for example went mostly for Var. 2, I preferred Var. 3, 4 and 5.

 

[kmc]

Hmm.  Getting tracked and followed by government 24.7.  Having pay 100 dollars each for several covid tests despite being vaccinated.  Having to wear a mask outside in hot humid weather and while swimming.  Having to stay at an overpriced SHA hotel.  I suppose if you have family living in Thailand you would put up with this but there won't be any tourists.

[King Cotton]

1 hour ago, kmc said:

Hmm.  Getting tracked and followed by government 24.7.  Having pay 100 dollars each for several covid tests despite being vaccinated.  Having to wear a mask outside in hot humid weather and while swimming.  Having to stay at an overpriced SHA hotel.  I suppose if you have family living in Thailand you would put up with this but there won't be any tourists.

I'm sure you'll be correct, there . . . just too much hassle for a holiday in most people's books.

 

Hello, kmc and welcome to Thaiger Talk

Please feel free to tell us a bit about yourself in 'Introductions'. It's good to pick-up on those sometimes differing regional or geographical perspectives.

And check-out the Guidelines, too, when you get a free minute. They're there to help us all enjoy our time here.

Happy posting

King Cotton

[Stonker]

Anyone prepared to jump through all the hoops to get here, only to then try to be clever and avoid the app, would be way beyond stupid given the consequences since they would risk being blacklisted for ten years to life after they had spent 14 days at best in a prison field hospital and at worst 14 days in the general prison population.

[Stonker]

Purely a personal view, but while I think it's one thing to deliberately flout the laws in your own country it's a very different thing to do so when abroad, either as a tourist or expat.

While your own country is an accident of birth, with no element of choice, tourists and expats make a deliberate and conscious choice to be here / abroad and, for expats, a deliberate and conscious choice to stay.

Tourists who don't like the laws abroad and aren't prepared to observe them, whether they agree with them or not, simply shouldn't go there.

Expats who don't like the laws or the country have no-one to blame but themselves for their failure to do due diligence and their inability to make an informed and balanced decision - nobody else - and the sooner they realise their failure and their mistake and move on the better for everyone.

[satpete]

danger comes from half or not vaccinated thai citizens and not from vaccinated travellers,
from working and living situations of workers and staff,

government should give rapid antigen test to everyone for free at least once a week,
not mandatory but many people will check for themselves to stay healthy,
but very good rapid tests needed

most vaccinated tourists will not pay 5 expensive PCR tests to stay 14 nights in Phuket,
1 before flight, 3 after arrival and 1 more on departure depending on home country or airline

 

[Stardust]

15 hours ago, Stonker said:

Purely a personal view, but while I think it's one thing to deliberately flout the laws in your own country it's a very different thing to do so when abroad, either as a tourist or expat.

While your own country is an accident of birth, with no element of choice, tourists and expats make a deliberate and conscious choice to be here / abroad and, for expats, a deliberate and conscious choice to stay.

Tourists who don't like the laws abroad and aren't prepared to observe them, whether they agree with them or not, simply shouldn't go there.

Expats who don't like the laws or the country have no-one to blame but themselves for their failure to do due diligence and their inability to make an informed and balanced decision - nobody else - and the sooner they realise their failure and their mistake and move on the better for everyone.

About the expats I think you have no clear view. Many of them have family there and many are already grandparents there and came long time before the coup and Prayut government. They made their choice 30 to 40 years ago and not yet. To judge the expats you first should understand and know something about the expat comunity. There are many europeans companies in Thailand like Bosch, Siemens, ABB, BMW, Grimm etc,etc and many came by them already in the 70s to 2000. You think you can judge but not have knowledge about the structure of the Thai economy and the expats?!

[Woifal]

I think Thailand has chosen an island from America as a model for the so-called sandbox program. But I think Alcatraz is a bad role model for tourists. 

[Stardust]

First who said to break the rules? And second you want to tell us all the expats wants to break the rules. They have companies here and pay sallaries and care for Thaifamilies, Thai people and pay taxes but should be tolerate everything and shut and pay this is what you advertise here. By the way what are you doing for Thailand to critizize the expats who support a lot the people and country?!

[Stardust]

9 hours ago, Tjampman said:

Oh then it is totally OK to break the laws you don't like!?

I don't understand your sentiment.

I tend to not like foreigners in my country when they don't follow laws and behave badly.

Do you really expect to be treated different when you slight the rules in other peoples countries?

I guess you have no Thai family and you are not living in Thailand, thats why you not understand a lot. Maybe you saw some bad examples in a bar and think this are the representives of the expats in Thailand and know no other expats or the comunity. But I can give you one another example like Tim from Thaiger and I think he will see him not in the light like you do about expats. Why many still expats after many years in Thailand and the ones with Thai family is another chapter but I think the Thaiger team or king cotton can you explain more about that, the same with rules and laws in Thailand would be a huge chapter, too. But to understand the facts first you should know about the expat comunity, especially the ones who have companies, work by companies and the ones who have a Thai family then you will understand more because yet you dont have any knowledge about thats why you not understand it!