Lately there hasn’t been a whole lot happening with us. We have mostly been at home, but have travelled around a bit.
The COVID situation in Thailand has been getting worse. Seems like record infections and deaths every day here. We have been tracking the infections and, despite all the lockdowns, the trend continues to be up.
The lockdown situation is frustrating for us, but we are lucky. We have been vaccinated. We were able to fly to the US in May to do it. Unfortunately there are so many people here who aren’t as lucky as we are. The vaccine rollout in Thailand has been incredibly slow, and people here are not happy about it at all.
We’ve had conversations with a number of people here about how they’re doing, and so many are barely scraping by. They told us stories about what they’ve heard from friends, and it’s heartbreaking to hear.
We’ve tried to help out by eating at local restaurants as much as possible, tipping generously where we can, and having some cash to hand out to those whose last resort is begging. Many times we’ve tried to tip street vendors near our condo and they’ve given back the change, and refused a tip. We’ve also found them to be very honest too. When we’ve been uncertain of the price, they will take only the bills or change required to purchase an item.
Some people may wonder whether we regret our choice in coming here, and to that we emphatically say NO! We don’t regret the choice we made to sell everything and move to Thailand. We only wish the circumstances were different. I did have some concerns when I heard about the coup in Myanmar, because I suspected it would have a negative effect in Thailand. It has, but by that time, Crystal was here and I was two weeks away from leaving.
We still hope things will change for the better in Thailand, and soon. We had no plans to leave, and still don’t, although we remain flexible if the situation were to change and get even worse. That being said, we have many other things we want to do around the world, and if it meant we had to leave here now and do some of those things elsewhere, we would.
Our plan in coming here was to travel around Thailand, and Southeast Asia once it opened up. The rest of Asia is so close, but also the western Pacific, as well as Australia and New Zealand. One could spend a lifetime travelling in this area alone!We are lucky to have options. Most Thai people have few options but to stay and tough it out. It has been tough on so many of them.
We hope to be able to stay and tough it out with them, and that things will get back to normal soon.
Leave a Reply