As I was riding around at night in Khon Kaen I saw many signs of life, people eating outside, bars and clubs open, gatherings at the park, and more.  More importantly, nobody was wearing any masks.  People could freely enter or leave their homes or businesses and they wouldn't think twice about going to the gym or visiting a massage parlor.  It suddenly occurred in a flash that I can no longer be taking this for granted.  I then made sure to visit a massage parlor that night.

What was happening in other parts of the world was looking very scary.  Manila had just gone into lockdown that night.  My mind starting turning to my ex.  This was all causing quite the head fake.

[Update November 2022]  Even at that time I still couldn't imagine that covid would affect that area too, but eventually it did.

During the last two days I had chatted with a bunch of Thai locals and a worrying theme emerged about case clusters in Bangkok.   They also said the government has not been as proactive as I was led to believe.  Bangkok saw a "surge" of cases in recent days that doubled the active cases about a week ago.  Also, Cambodia closed schools due to a single case.  This included the school I had been volunteering at a few weeks prior. 

To drive the point home further, I found out they started canceling social events in Bangkok, including the one I planned to attend.   Regardless, I went on ahead with my plan.  The bike was safely locked up at the 185 Residence in Khon Kaen to be retrieved at a later time.

It wasn't a surprise to see the sea of masks on the flight to Bangkok, and it seemed to confirm what all my friends were saying.  But where was my mask?  I figured at some point I would need to buy one.

As the flight landed, I went to my pre-booked hotel for an insane discount of course.  I started researching in a flurry where I could go next because borders were starting to close around the world.  An express trip to Malaysia might need to happen, like pronto.  But the speed at which things were happening in the world was well out of reach of the speed at which I was planning or making decisions.  There was no way I could keep up, much less act timely.

[Update April 2024]:  In actual fact I could have found a way.  This will be touched on in the last entry to this journal, 'Hindsight is 2020 Vision'

Options were in fact presenting themselves.  But this was all starting to feel like a 'choose your own adventure' gone wrong.  At any rate, for now, I would need to do a few more business things in Bangkok and retrieve my luggage at the Sananwan Palace in the outskirts.

Dealing with my passport issue would be most paramount.  I could enter Malaysia with the current one but it would expire too soon to get a work visa installed with the new employer.  The new employer advised me to fly back to Shanghai first and sort it out at my Embassy there.  Still, I was hoping to try and solve the problem in Bangkok first.

[Update November 2022]:  In the end I did not go to Malaysia.  To this day, I keep asking the question ... what would have happened if I did?  Let's say I just flew directly to the new employer and took a risk.  They could have sorted it out.  Even I could have stayed in Thailand and waited it out for a few months while biking in areas that were not locked down.  Most of the safe areas were in Isaan anyway.

The truth is that many, many, many people were stranded in 2020.  I made a massive mistake of thinking that I was the only one in this situation.  Can't really blame myself, it was an intense time.