Thailand removing some travel restrictions on April 1st

I keep waiting for this to be an April fool's joke because the government rarely announces anything that makes sense but apparently, and I have checked multiple sources, there is meant to be a rather extensive ease on travel restriction entering the country starting on April 1st. This is good news but could also turn bad since the government here seems to really go over the top even when a single Covid case is discovered.

So it used to be 14 days of quarantine for everyone, now it has changed to 10 days for those who don't have a vaccination certificate and only 7 days for those that do have one. For the record for anyone out there it is very easy to get a vaccination certificate if you want one, even if you don't want to get vaccinated.

Anyway, that is another topic altogether.

This about face on the part of the government probably comes after intense pressure from the tourism industry and some very wealthy people who are in charge of it being a bit bored of this whole not being able to have any customers because the borders are closed situation. You can be guaranteed that this has almost nothing to do with looking after the general public, although it will be presented as such.

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I don't know how much of an effect this is really going to have on tourism because I don't think that most people are interested in staying in quarantine for 7-10 days any more than they are interested in doing so for 14 days. I think it will have some impact on the semi-permanent resident expat community who has been holding off for quite some time since the quarantine "hotels" that are approved by the government tend to be quite expensive and most of these people don't want to spend thousands of dollars a week on a substandard hotel room that they don't really even want to be in anyway.

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_{some of them are ok, like this one that is advertised by Thai Airways, but I have seen some other ones and they were nothing like this}

Other things that the authorities have suggested is that the guests would also be allowed to use hotel facilities provided they test negative upon arrival including the gym and the pools of said buildings. In the past this has not been allowed. Something quite stupid that one official said is that the people staying in quarantine will also be allowed outside the hotel in order to get their own food, if they choose.... which kind of defeats the purpose of quarantine in the first place, dont you think?

This easing of restrictions doesn't apply to the entire world of course as they will almost certainly not extend this reduction of quarantine to anyone from Africa. They say that it isn't for any country that has a different variant of the virus - but those of us who live here know that this means "Africa."

So i guess this is a step in the right direction if the country is going to get on track to be totally reopened by October, which as far as I have heard is the objective. We'll have to wait and see!