As the western world descends into purgatory led (as is traditional) by Italy, I find myself bewilderedly wandering through a series of destinations which have every appearance of being, for a certain sort of traveler, a picture-postcard version of Paradiso. It’s difficult to express just how surreal the experience has been. I’ve been pouring over hospital reports and charts of infection rates and reading reports of friends getting sick¹ while looking out over beautiful clear crystalline waters in bays dotted with impossibly scenic islands.

This was intended to be the end of by travels through Southeast Asia, a final relaxing two-week jaunt up the long isthmus connecting Thailand to the Malay Peninsula before ending in Bangkok. But it turns out it’s incredibly hard to relax when you’re watching the world meltdown in real time. I did what I could — the reservations were prepaid — but I spent as many days just staying in as I did awkwardly embracing the beach lifestyle.

Thailand did eventually come to their senses and start reacting appropriately to the pandemic.² My last few stops have been all but closed. Perfect timing would have had me on a flight out about five days ago. But in the middle of all the flight cancellations and shutdowns it still feels like I’m narrowly threading a needle. I’ll take what I can get.

I started this trip in Ko Samui, just for a couple days. I had booked into a small resort³ — Buddhist-inspired with a private beach and nice restaurant⁴ and fancy spa. There was limited stuff to do (there were daytrips to do snorkeling and scuba and visit some of the other islands, and I’m sure there were restaurants and bars I could have gone to off-site, but with only a day there I didn’t feel like exploring) so I swam a little and napped in the shade under a beach umbrella and drank way too many cocktails while reading as the sun went down.

My next stop was Phuket, for the better part of five days, and that’s where I did all the Instagram-worthy activities.⁵ I waded through a beach cave at low tide, got paddled through a tropical paradise by canoe, saw famous movie shooting locations,⁶ lounged on a white sand beach sucking down Piña Coladas, swam and snorkled⁷ and just generally did whatever was on the agenda for the tour group.

Other than that I mostly stayed in. I went out to grab food a couple times,⁸ and wandered through the city once at night. But it was obvious the country was shutting down, even if they didn’t want to admit it yet. The restaurants were only about a quarter full, one of the tours I had signed up for was canceled because there weren’t enough people,⁹ and perhaps most astonishing, the beaches were nearly empty. If your vision of paradise involves a pristine stretch of beach that doesn’t have 500 people jammed on it, well, travel during a global pandemic and you’ll be surprised to find a couple dozen on it.

This is when I should have left. But I really wanted to see Ayutthaya so I just rebooked my flight in a week to South Korea and resolved to finish out my time in Thailand. But this was when they went from basically no restrictions to increasingly draconian ones. First they locked down arrivals from specific countries if you didn’t have a medical note attesting to your virus-free condition. Then they shut down the visa-on-arrival system, and further announced they would no longer allow visas to be renewed in the country without a latter from the embassy attesting to the fact visitors could not travel home. Finally they just shut down the borders entirely, coupled with closing all the historical temples and shutting down the markets.

So my last week in Thailand was kind of dismal. I would have changed my itinerary, but most of the closures were announced the day I arrived, so I showed up in Ayutthaya only to be told everything was closed as of that morning. I left two days later to Bangkok to find all the restaurants in the hotel, save one, were shut down — and as the only person eating in the one remaining I was told they were closing that as of tomorrow. But by then it hardly mattered; I had a flight out the next morning, and took it.

One of the stranger experiences of the past week was deciding where to go next. I could have flown to Oslo — the flight wasn’t canceled, although I couldn’t have gotten into Norway.¹⁰ The United States currently looks terrifying. The obvious choices seemed to be Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea.

Singapore had announced a mandatory two-week quarantine, which made that unappealing. Taiwan closed its borders. That left South Korea, which has always had an idiosyncratic approach to the Coronavirus. They’ve haven’t closed their borders,¹¹ instead relaying on aggressive tracking and testing to shut down the spread of the disease. So that’s where I decided to go.

As I’m writing this, I’ve just landed in South Korea. I’d been worried there was gonna be some problem getting in¹² but I didn’t need to worry. I got to passport control, got my stamp, and entered Seoul.

This is the first place I’ve been that I didn’t have any idea how long I was staying or where I was going next. The city’s still open. All visitors are “advised” to follow isolation procedures for two weeks, but it’s not mandatory.¹³ So I guess this is home, for the foreseeable future.

Next: Seoul (GMP) to Jeju (CJU)
Prev: Singapore (SIN) to Ko Samui (USM)

Footnotes

¹ And recovering, thank heaven

² Tourism is such a crucial part of the Thai economy that some of the observers I’ve been read theorize the government was just incredibly reluctant to shut off that source of funds, and a remarkably fortunate series of events led to a surprisingly low number of cases for the first couple months. But we seem to be in the middle of a second surge of infections in the region — Singapore has recently seen a influx of cases as well, leading to a tighter lockdown — and by now tourism has dropped so much they’re probably not losing all that much money by shutting down the country.

³ Zazen Boutique Resort & Spa

⁴ Including one of the fancier included breakfasts I’ve ever had. They had these adorable small bottles of fresh pre-mixed juice like kiwi-mango-pear or watermelon-lemon, although I was pretty addicted to the fresh pineapple juice.

⁵ Although I didn’t take a lot of photos, and I don’t have an Instagram account.

⁶ The Beach and The Man with the Golden Gun

⁷ Big Tip: I know it’s super awkward, traveling alone, to have someone apply sunscreen to your back. But you cannot reach it yourself, and it probably doesn’t immediately occur to you that snorkeling involves lying face down in the water for hours.

I did not require medical assistance. But I strongly considered it, and even now a week later I’m still shedding dead skin.

⁸ Vegetarian food in Thailand, as in most of Southeast Asia, is still kind of difficult to find. I tried the “pasta night” buffet at my hotel in Phuket, and discovered that meant a tiny salad bar, six chafing dishes containing the same selection of Thai dishes you always find, and a choice of about a dozen pasta dishes, only one of which was vegetarian. That was the tomato sauce. But I had my choice of spaghetti, linguine, fettuccine, and penne.

⁹ The tour guide told us they had seven boats, of which one was still running.

¹⁰ And Thai Airlines refused to refund the cost of the ticket. In fact, I couldn’t make any changes online; you had to email them (which I did twice) even to reschedule the flight. And you couldn’t even just get a voucher to reschedule, you had to know what dates you were planning on traveling. It’s a complete clusterfuck, in other words.

¹¹ Except to Japan, in a kind of weird diplomatic spat

¹² The day before I flew, they announced a mandatory quarantine for anyone arriving from America. Didn’t apply to me, luckily.

¹³ I’m mostly planning to, anyway, barring trips to the grocery or corner store, although I might hit a bar or restaurant if they’re not too crowded.