The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Monday January 9th, 2023
New Thai travel requirements could dampen GDP forecast growth by Murray Hunter
Thailand’s vital tourism industry, just emerging from months of coronavirus stagnation looks likely to be crippled by an announcement by deputy prime minister and health minister Anutin Charnuirakul, likely driven by fear of Covid-bearing Chinese arrivals, that all visitors at some point will be required to show proof of at least two vaccinations and have health coverage that includes Covid-19 treatment upon arrival.
In addition, incoming tourists at an as-yet-unannounced date will be required to wear a mask in public places and transport, and take a rapid antigen test if they develop Covid-19 like symptoms during their stay. There has been no date set for the requirements become mandatory.
Some expatriates claim their vaccine certificates are no longer be retrievable in their phone apps, and many are wondering how authorities will enforce the mask mandate selectively upon incoming foreigners, with those already in Thailand not mandated to do so, as all mandates were lifted last October when Covid-19 was declared endemic. There is a possibility that this requirement will raise the level of local xenophobia towards foreigners.
The scrapping of all Covid-19 entry requirements late last year led to a surge of tourists across the border from Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos creating a dramatic increase in economic activity in border provinces. Every hotel in Hat Yai, just north of the Malaysian border, was full over the new year holiday period. Arrivals from Thailand’s immediate neighbors to the beginning of November were made up of 1.24 million Malaysians, 373,811 Cambodians, 538,789 Laotians and 365,593 Singaporeans.
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O valley #poem & #painting by Amir Khatib
“O valley,
I will order you to pass the baby to his mother’s breast,
From the sky
If I decide not to enter your land
Without paying tribute, or be killed!”
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Vivienne Westwood: Activism and the Godmother of Punk by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
There was the punk scene, Malcolm McLaren, their racy clothes shop at 430 King’s Road that started out as Let it Rock, the creation of a look, and the gathering of the earth rumbling Sex Pistols. In fact, the late Dame Vivienne Westwood was already a proven stirrer, suggesting that she, not Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon, a.k.a Johnny Rotten, came up with the title for the barnstorming “Anarchy in the UK”.Boldly, she claimed that prior to McLaren and herself, there was no punk.
The Westwood look became ubiquitous with enthusiastic teens of the late 1970s, the use of studs, clothes replete with antisocial indignation, and the jarring, spiky hair to match. In the opinion of Dame Zandra Rhodes, “We’d had flower power… then suddenly you had this very-hard hitting punk.”
In her 2014 memoir, Viv Albertine of Slits fame offered a striking description of aspects of Westwood costumery: “mohair jumpers, knitted on big needles, so loosely that you can see all the way through them, T-shirts slashed and written on by hand, seams and labels on the outside, showing the construction of the piece.”
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Screws & Chips #51 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas
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For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
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