Coronavirus Update – Where are We Staying?

We decided to ride out the coronavirus outbreak in Bangkok, Thailand. How we got here and why we decided to come here was the result of a quickly changing set of circumstances and options. Our original plan was to return to the USA and Canada for a three-month visit and then resume our nomadic lifestyle that we started in January 2016. When we returned to the USA on December 17^th, 2019, our plan was to spend about three months visiting friends and family and then head to visit our friends in Paraguay and spend some time in South America.

As time progressed, we decided to travel back to Asia instead. One of the main drivers was the possibility of visiting Pakistan in the fall of 2020 with friends. We typically try to limit our cross-continent travel for cost reasons so decided not to travel to South America, back to North America, and then on to Asia all within a year.

By early February, our plan was to travel to Thailand in mid-March and explore national parks and snorkel in Southern Thailand. On February 22 we booked flights from Seattle to Bangkok via Korean Airlines with a stop in Seoul, South Korea for March 19^th. Over the next couple of weeks, Korean Airlines changed our flight details twice and finally canceled it. The changes were due to coronavirus and the challenges of flights through South Korea due to coronavirus restrictions.

With the progression of the coronavirus, we realized that the likelihood of being able to travel from place to place and see new things and observe daily life was getting lower by the day with the spread of the virua. Our focus changed and we began looking for a good place to settle for a few months to wait out the coronavirus. Our original choice was to go to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It made sense from a visa perspective, we get 90 days per entry on a tourist visa in Malaysia. There are plenty of apartments available for rent and the cost of living is reasonable. I am sure that family members would have allowed us to stay with them in the USA or Canada, but we wanted to get to a warmer climate and one that had fewer cases of coronavirus.

The choices for how to get from Seattle to Malaysia were dwindling. Flights connecting in China had been canceled for some time. Both Korea and Japan had high rates of coronavirus cases and many countries were refusing to allow people who had been in those countries, even if just for an airline layover, to enter the country. We ended up booking a flight on Singapore Airlines from Seattle to Singapore. We booked a low-cost airline, Air Asia, from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. We moved up our travel date by a couple of days to try and increase the likelihood that our flight would actually take off and not be canceled.

On the day before our flight, I was chatting with a friend in Malaysia on WhatsApp and learned that Malaysia was closing their borders to foreigners as of midnight that day – we would not make it to Malaysia in time. I began chatting with friends in Bangkok and we decided to go there. We chose to keep our Seattle to Singapore flight. I was still a little nervous about whether the flight would take off. New travel restrictions were popping up every few hours. I decided to not book our onward flight from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur until we were sure that the flight would leave, which meant waiting until we were on the plane and it was taxiing down the runway.

We boarded the plane in Seattle with no problems, the airport was not very busy. Our flight was about 85% full. Many people were trying to make it to their home countries before all flights were grounded and borders closed. Thanks to wifi on the plane, I was able to book a flight from Singapore to Bangkok and communicate with our friends in Bangkok regarding our schedule.

Our flight from Singapore to Bangkok was practically empty. We were on a 787 that typically holds about 250 passengers. There were only about 35 people on the plane. When we arrived in Bangkok we did not depart via the jetway even though the plane parked at the gate. We left via the rear exits and boarded a bus that took us to the health check area where we got our body temperature scanned to ensure that we did not have a fever. We were told to self-monitor for 14 days – take our temperature twice a day and to contact the authorities if we developed symptoms.

A day after we arrived, Bangkok ordered all entertainment venues, bars, and other facilities closed. About a week later they closed all non-essential shops. Restaurants and food carts remain open for take-out business. Grocery stores, convenience stores, and pharmacies are still open. There is no curfew or stay in place order, but unnecessary travel is discouraged.

We are happy about our decision to hunker down here in Bangkok. We love the warm weather. There are relatively few covid-19 cases, less than 1700 cases and 10 deaths in a country of 66 million people. By contrast, when I wrote this, the USA had 164,000 cases and 3173 deaths. We are fortunate to have friends that are letting us stay in the guest bedroom of their home in a nice area of Bangkok. A couple of supermarkets are within walking distance.  A 7-Eleven, drug store, and several small food stalls are about 300 feet away. I can go running just about every morning, so overall we are very comfortable and safe.