Before and during quarantine March and April 2020

We finished our official 14 days of strict quarantine yesterday!! Who anticipated a trip to the grocery store could be so exciting? We went a bit out of our village to the capitol of our province, Sa Kaeo. There is a store there much like Costco in the USA called Makro. One can buy in bulk or normal quantities like Costco. What fun! We spent probably at least an hour shopping for necessities and some nice to have but not totally necessary items.

Since my last post about the wet market, we have traveled to Bangkok to pick my daughter, Pon, up from her university. We also needed to get to our house in a nearby suburb to assess the damage left by some nasty tenants who left suddenly. We also picked up some western things like tortillas, tortilla chips at the local quality grocery store near the house. Fortunately the main damage was to the wood floors, just ugly but not structural. They moved furniture around by dragging it rather than lifting. They also left the windows open so things were pretty dusty. It could have been worse.

We live about 4 hours away by car from Bangkok. On the way to Bangkok, I noticed that almost everything was business as usual in the towns we went through. Restaurants were open as were all local businesses. Face masks were rare. Once we got to the big city, masks were normal and restaurants and coffee places were delivery or take out only. The grocery store was not particularly busy and was pretty well stocked. All the malls were closed, except for the grocery stores. There was an army of motorcycle food delivery people waiting just outside the mall to deliver orders from the restaurants in the mall.

Our favorite street vendor and coffee place near our Pakkret house.






We crammed Pon, her cousin Aem, and our two dogs in the back seat, filled the trunk to capacity and headed back to the village. On the way back, things were still business as usual although it seemed that some restaurants were not allowing seating. Upon our return, we were told to quarantine for 14 days. Fortunately we have a fair bit of land to wander around on without interacting with anyone else. Aem lives next door along with her sister’s family and her mother, so we kept her with us to quarantine.

The first two pictures are of the puppies before we were quarantined.




After quarantine!  So cute!!




Not much social distancing when the puppies come to visit!

We had enough food to get through most of the time and Aem’s sister did some shopping for us when we ran low. Fortunately we have good internet, fairly consistent electricity, a good kitchen, and a vegetable garden. Aem’s family also has free range
chickens so we have all the eggs we can eat! 

Breakfast one day



Chilaquiles made with Doritos and fried potatoes!


Nachos made with what was at hand

My routine was wake up, let the dogs out, make the coffee, then walk the perimeter of our land for 20+ minutes to get some exercise. After that it was coffee time and computer play time. Did I mention I am a star at Microsoft Spider Solitaire. I am at level 182 and I am a Spider Grandmaster 8. Lots of excitement here! I read some kindle books from my huge store of them, chilled with Spotify and watched too much TV. Oh! I cooked lots of potatoes and eggs. I made chilaquiles, nachos, smash burgers, brownies and ate too much of all of it! But we got through it! We all recognize how fortunate we are to be able to stay safe with minimal discomfort. We had some food delivered a few times; pizza and some local Thai food.

Once we finished our 14 days, taking our temperature every morning, we went to Makro, the ATM and took care of a few nagging errands. What a difference two weeks made. Pretty much everyone was wearing a mask. At Makro, it was a requirement. Even back in Wang Nam Yen there was probably 99% compliance with masks. However, on some level, business goes on as usual here. Car repair places, tire stores, hardware stores, pharmacies, and most other places were open. Construction of roads, houses and businesses continues. We had a well for water dug (we kept safe distancing of course). 




And a quick visit with good friends before we returned home.






All for now! Stay safe!

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