Quarantine in Paradise

I’m writing this blog post while stuck in paradise — Koh Samui, Thailand. It’s a picturesque island in the south of Thailand, with luxurious white powder sand beaches and clear turquoise water, picturesque rock outcroppings onshore and offshore, jungle and coconut groves in the center of the island. I came here for the first time in 1985 and absolutely fell in love with it. There were few tourists and you could easily live on a shoestring budget. Now Koh Samui has all the mod cons like standard hot and cold running water + air conditioning, big box stores, two movie theaters, yoga studios and gyms, hooker bars, techno clubs and plenty of swanky seaside resorts. Tourism is the major industry (it used to be growing coconuts for export.) Last year there were a reported 2.7 million visitors to Koh Samui.

Standing on top of a hill with sweeping views of Chaweng Beach, Koh Samui

Thailand wasn’t part of the plan and how I ended up here is another story. I finished treatment for breast cancer in the end of January 2020 and flew to Bali mid-February to detox, convalesce, heal and do lots of restorative yoga. Everything was perfect - stayed in Ubud a short walk from my favorite yoga studio. I ate a mostly raw vegan diet (so many amazing restaurants in Ubud!) with cold pressed veggie juices and fresh coconut water kefir every day, leading into a 10 day liquid fast (7 days of that was water fasting.) The fasting was stunningly effective - It helped eradicate some of the symptoms that stick around long after chemo. Water fasting reset my body and after I eased out of it back to raw vegan food, I had a much clearer head and tons more energy. I felt transformed. I rested and slept A LOT, did my yoga almost daily, had some cool adventures and met some great people. I need to write a separate blog post about Bali!

Terraced rice fields in Bali

I fell back in love with Bali and extended my trip so I could attend a professional raw chef certification course at Alchemy, my favorite raw restaurant in Ubud. My plan was to join my friend in Koh Samui for a few weeks, then go back to Bali. We decided to travel to Koh Samui via Singapore when our visas were expiring. On our travel day, our driver informed us that Singapore had just shut their borders. We weren’t able to confirm this with any news online but we were refused boarding passes at the airport. We had a harrowing time trying to rebook other flights; so many people scrambling to do the same was causing airline websites to crash. The Immigrations office looked like a refugee camp with people in line preparing to hunker down and spend the night on the floor. Forget about social distancing! And the airline’s ticketing office was unairconditioned, packed full of stranded tourists with only three people working. It felt like a hotbed for the virus. We tried all sorts of combinations of flights and travel to get out; neighboring countries like Malaysia were also closing borders and most flights here transit either thru Malaysia or Singapore. We finally flew out the next morning on the first flight to Jakarta, Indonesia, with a second flight to Bangkok, a cross town taxi to the other airport in Bangkok and finally our flight to Koh Samui. Turns out it was the last flight that day because so many were canceled. It was pretty stressful particularly because these changes were all happening so quickly that we couldn’t get accurate or current info to base our plans on. Thailand a few weeks ago was more lax about Immigration compared with neighboring countries. I’ve heard they are securing borders and cutting out any transit flights through Bangkok. Also the airline that flies to Koh Samui has since suspended flights.

A deserted beach in Koh Samui

Life is back to a slow pace in Koh Samui due to COVID-19, especially after a case was confirmed here last week. Low season was already setting in and as international borders were closing many tourists here fled. Banks are closed so the money changer/travel agencies for tourists are closed. Many restaurants and hotels are closing for indeterminate lengths of time; restaurants & coffee shops still open have to close by 8pm and are mostly for take out only; the places that are still open take your temperature and make you use antibacterial gel before you can enter, then they have guidelines for social distancing such as these screens I've shown in the photos. The other popular islands like Phuket and Koh Phangan are more shut down, beaches are closed and streets are pretty empty. Phuket closed off the island for 30 days except for essential/emergency services. There are a lot more confirmed cases of COVID-19 there.

Thais get upset if they see foreigners out with no masks, particularly if they're walking nearby. They associate the virus with foreigners so that has inflamed some racism. A law was instituted a few days ago requiring everyone to wear masks in public or be subject to an astronomically expensive fine. Masks are expensive and hard to get so locals get creative. The housekeeper showed up today wearing a mask fashioned from an old bikini top.

COVID-19 originally came to Thailand from Chinese tourists who flooded here for Chinese New Years a few months back. There were a lot of cases identified in Bangkok and other areas, and the government did a good job of containing it. At first Thailand had a very high rate of the virus but now the rate is low compared with neighboring countries.

Big stores that are still open generally will take your temp and make you use hand gel before you can enter. Gyms and yoga studios, clubs and bars and massage parlours closed a while back. All the markets and open markets still have plenty of food and shelves are full. This sign was posted in front of a health food shop at a swanky yoga resort.

There still are some people out on the streets doing their daily business. It's sparsely populated enough that it's not a problem to go out if the right precautions are taken. We sometimes take a ride on the bike just to get out, and sometimes to go the beach. We see plenty of Russian families together for a normal day at the beach as though nothing strange was going on in the rest of the world.

Getting ready for a bike ride to another beach

We have now been here for over two weeks and the most likely time we would have had contact with the virus would have been those travel days from Bali-Jakarta-Bangkok-Ko Samui so we are out of the danger zone. We've been mostly staying home since we arrived and are continuing to be careful and take precautions. I'm still supposed to be convalescing from cancer treatments so it's good to stay home and rest a lot, quarantine-style. I’ve discovered a new fondness for hammocks.

Hammock life

Many other non-Thais, like myself, are preparing ourselves emotionally for the limbo of not knowing when we can go back to our countries, if we will be in long-term lock down here, and wondering how we will manage our visas if we can't leave here and the Immigration offices close. We've heard rumors that this may happen any time. The Immigration office here is overwhelmed with requests and tends to make crowds of people wait for hours -- just what we want to avoid.

In hindsight, going through the cancer experience was just practice for the pandemic that took hold shortly after I finished my treatments. It has left me longing for the simpler times when cancer was the biggest of my worries, and I didn’t have an inkling that a virus could bring life to a standstill and global economies crashing. That seems like ancient history now with what we are up against.

While this wasn’t part of the plan, I thank the stars that everything worked out this way. I feel my immune system is much stronger since I did the water fast. I finished cancer treatments before the idea of possible exposure to the virus at hospitals was a concern. I got to have my time to chill and rejuvenate in Bali before the stresses of traveling here, and now I’m sitting in paradise waiting this out.