We then booked our accomodation and flights – flights are as normal but accommodation needs to be booked in an SHA Plus hotel to qualify for your 14 night quarantine (reducing to 7 or 10 days from 1st October 2021).įor Phuket Sandbox hotels, Agoda have a useful function for booking Phuket Sandbox approved hotels that we used. The website is pretty clear and easy to use, and this Phuket Sandbox infographic pops up with a handy list of all the info. There are just a couple of steps for the Phuket Sandbox and all of your registration is done online through the website īefore booking a flight and hotel, we pre-registered – for this you’ll need digital copies or photos of a few items:
Thankfully, getting into Thailand via the Phuket Sandbox was – for us at least – straightforward. So, with fresh memories of endless paperwork front of mind, we went into our Phiket Sandbox application with a little trepidation. In the Phuket Sandbox, you have to stay inside a very large island, sleep at your hotel, and otherwise do what you like. In ASQ you have to stay inside a single room. The Phuket Sandbox, however, is effectively a beach holiday with 2-3 Covid tests thrown in. Whilst our ASQ stay was at the beginning of Thailand’s programmes to allow people to arrive from abroad, it was quite a difficult and convoluted process.ĪSQ was also a less than fun way to spend two weeks, locked as you are in a hotel room. We are likely in quite an unusual position of now having come into Thailand via the Thai ASQ scheme and now the Phuket Sandbox. But now I am imagining that and so are you, sorry.Īnyway, after a very welcome and unexpectedly smooth trip to the UK at the start of August, we banked on the Phuket Sandbox to get back to Thailand. I don’t want to imagine a similar scenario in the UK with Boris Johnson waiting dutifully at Heathrow, clammy paws outstretched for a big Covidy bear hug while he leers at passing women.
No wonder then that the first trickle of travellers to arrive on the island were greeted by the prime minister, although this must have seemed pretty surreal to a bunch of jetlagged folk stepping off a long flight and became reassuringly farcical when the opening ceremony had a Covid case.
It’s fair to say that the Phuket Sandbox has generated a heck of a lot of buzz locally in Thailand since it launched in July 2021.Īfter over a year of effective closure to the outside world, the Phuket Sandbox is a small and heavily caveated step towards reopening for a country more reliant than most on tourism. This means you only need stay in the Phuket Sandbox for a week before being allowed to travel elsewhere. Phuket Sandbox Update 30 September 2021: in a positive update, from 1st October, quarantine has been reduced to 7 days for vaccinated travellers and 10 for unvaccinated or non-fully vaccinated.
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