Ermin and I were looking to go away somewhere warm in April and after researching a bit we decided to go to Thailand.
Thailand has been slowly opening for travel and in April the government maid the entry requirements slightly easier but there’s still many steps you need to do before and during the trip to comply with the Covid restrictions. We travelled under the Test-and-Go scheme to Phuket and in this post, I will be going over the steps we made before and during our trip regarding Covid regulations.
Thailand Pass
Every traveller under the Test-and-Go program needs to have a Thailand Pass to enter the country. The application for the pass can be sent 60 days before arrival and can take 5-7 working days to be approved. We got our applications approved fairly quick within 3 days and it arrived on a Saturday via email.
The application is somewhat extensive and you need to upload a few documents for it but once you have all the needed documents ready, the application goes fairly quickly to finish.
What are the requirements?
For the Thailand Pass, we provide the following documents for entering Thailand:
- Passport details
- Certificate of Covid Vaccination
- Insurance policy that covers minimum 20 000 USD including Covid related costs
- Paid 1st night hotel at SHA Extra+ certified hotel
- Paid 1st RT-PCR test and the ATK home test kit
- SHA + transport from airport to hotel
When I was filling in our applications, I uploaded screen shots of our EU Vaccination certificates and a cropped pictures of the QR code to speed up the approval. I also bought an extra travel insurance from FWD Insurance to make sure that all the requirements for Covid were met. I found a link directly on the Thailand Pass application and paid roughly 650 THB/18 EUR per person for it.
I uploaded a confirmation of our hotel booking and a screen shot from email exchange with the hotel confirming our transport from the airport. Also, I uploaded the receipt for paying the 1st RT-PCR tests which I did through the PSAS website. The website is the official RT-PCR payment website for arrivals in Phuket and Krabi.
Travelling to Phuket
Once we had our Thailand Pass approved, the travel to Phuket was quite smooth. We had to show our Thailand Pass QR codes during the check-in and once we landed to the Phuket. We also did our 1st RT-PCR test in the Phuket airport when exiting the building. Everything was working like a smooth machine with registering the test, taking the sample and then being escorted to our hotel transport. I would say the whole test taking process took less than 10 minutes and we where on our way to our hotel.
When arriving to our hotel, we were directly escorted to our room where we were met by a hotel receptionist. She helped us to download the Morchana app where you will get your 1st RT-PCR test results and you will upload the day 5 test result. Once everything was done with the check-in process, we had to stay in the hotel room until we received negative test results from the first test. The test result should come in within 8 to 12 hours but ours were already processed within 4 hours. Once we got the negative test result, we were able to leave the hotel room and move around freely.
Day 5 test
We stayed the whole week in the same hotel that was SHA Extra + certified. On our day 5 in the hotel, I asked the reception for the antigen test kits. We did the kits in our hotel room and then sent a photo of the negative test result with our passport to the hotel reception. They very kindly uploaded the results to the Thailand Pass site and we didn’t have to worry about anything else.
Sara Travels 