Comments on: MAI reconnects Southeast Asian cities https://www.ttrweekly.com/site/2025/02/mai-reconnects-southeast-asian-cities/ News for Southeast Asia's travel planners. Latest news, travel news, B2B news, Southeast Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Brunei. Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:22:25 +0000 hourly 1 By: Jaffee Yee https://www.ttrweekly.com/site/2025/02/mai-reconnects-southeast-asian-cities/comment-page-1/#comment-139701 Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:22:25 +0000 https://www.ttrweekly.com/site/?p=248117#comment-139701 I suspect it will be very difficult to generate sufficient demand to sustain operation since most Malaysian still consider Myanmar unsafe to travel now. Moreover, Malaysian citizens are still the only ones among all ASEAN countries require visa to visit Myanmar and many will not put up with the hassle. They can easily travel to any of all the other 8 ASEAN countries for holidays visa free and avoid the extra visa fee and unnecessary hassle. For example, 4.9 million or nearly 5 million Malaysians visited Thailand last year in 2024.

If Myanmar is sincere and keen to have Malaysian to visit to revive their severely damaged tourism by Covid and the military coup, they should implement visa free free travel for Malaysian immediately. Ask why it is not done, the argument is that Malaysia has rejected the reciprocal arrangement. But even China has now opened up visa free travel for many countries that do not grant visa free travel for Chinese citizens! So why can’t Myanmar do it?

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