Traveling Through a Coronavirus Landscape – Situation Fluid

Situation fluid.

On the Floor of an Airport

March 19, 2020

We’re sitting on the floor of an airport; it’s mostly empty. We’re not in a hurry, because we’re not going anywhere. We had been in a hurry, just minutes ago. That was back when we thought we might be going somewhere. Our laptop and phones are slowly going to sleep from lack of use.

You see, flights to the US seem a long-shot at best. Cambodia is far from home—more than 14,000 kilometers if you could go in a straight line. Except you can’t. Not normally. And definitely not now. (Did you know that the midpoint of a straight line from Cambodia to Washington DC is over October Revolution Island, an unpopulated Russian outpost in the Arctic?)

We are a long way from home.

Typically, one might traverse the distance with one layover. Now, we would need to fly from Siem Reap, Cambodia, to Singapore, to South Korea, to Hawaii. From there, we would have to connect to somewhere in California and then on to the East Coast. Count them: five flights. Contagion risks aside, all of those flights would have to happen seamlessly, something hard to imagine as we look up at the airport screen. Canceled. Delayed. Canceled. Canceled. Canceled…

We are not going back to the USA right now.

Anyway, we were only considering going home because we couldn’t go to New Zealand. Why consider going to NZ, you ask? Because we have some very smug friends who just moved there. In a statement that now sounds downright prescient, they said six months ago that they wanted to live in NZ because it is an island nation that will be better insulated from a worldwide catastrophe. And now here we are amid a global pandemic. So, naturally, they had begun—ever so not subtlety—to tell us to follow in their footsteps. Though, by the time we thought they might be right, New Zealand borders were already closed to foreigners. At least we didn’t spend too much time deliberating on that option.

Honestly, we just came from New Zealand and were now only considering going back because we couldn’t go to Australia. That’s where we decided to go when the sky started falling. First of all, it is not terribly far away and only requires one layover. Secondly, delicious cappuccinos. Really, the best cappuccinos that I’ve ever had. Thirdly, they have a sound health care system and an honest democratic government. And we know the language. Australia seemed like a great place to weather this storm.

That conclusion was six hours too late.

Situation fluid.

Writing on the Wall

March 18, 2020

Skipping back twenty-four hours, to the day before we sat on the airport floor watching flight cancellations appear out of the corner of our eyes, we were in Kracheh, Cambodia. We had decided we were content to stay there for some time. It is a lovely town, not too big, with a friendly citizenry and a pleasant walkway along the Mekong River (where numerous welcoming middle-aged Cambodian women line dance in the evenings). Also, I might add, it has a passable cappuccino.

We had just arrived in Kracheh that afternoon, coming from Mondulkiri, which is known for elephant sanctuaries, not for its cappuccinos, accommodations, or amenities. Pretty far off the beaten path. The relatively bustling metropolis of Kracheh (population thirty-something thousand) was supposed to be a waypoint before meandering through the rest of Cambodia. After that, we were going to continue to Thailand, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. India’s train network was to take us to a flight back to the states which would have arrived this week.

By this point, though, we heard the news that India closed its borders to all travel. So, we thought we could slow down and enjoy Southeast Asia more. No big deal. The Thai Kickboxing camp wrote to say that they canceled our week of training. We could reschedule. People traveling from Europe wouldn’t be allowed into Thailand at all, though that didn’t affect us. We had also heard that Vietnam was limiting entry, but, whatever. We were good.

At least we thought we were good.

[Looking back, it seems that the writing was on the wall. But at the time, each factoid felt like a tiny piece of trivia. I’m a little embarrassed that we didn’t read the situation better, but then again, we didn’t do any worse than the Federal Government of the United States of America.]

Through a week of these seemingly isolated events, we spoke with friends and travelers from around the world to gather their interpretations of the situation. What are you planning? What do you think will happen? What should we all do?

Then, that evening in Kracheh, we sat down and did what we call ‘playing grown-ups.’ Most conversations in life aren’t in earnest, but this one seemed like it should be. We talked about where we were and the places to which we might go. We spoke about health care systems—which are better equipped, and which are more likely to be overrun, God forbid. And, of course, we discussed the fact that deciding to be anywhere other than where we were would require more traveling, which presented its own unique risk factor.

The State Department recommended against going abroad, but what about the people who already were?

This conversation went on for a while. I’m not sure that we’re super good at being adults. You don’t have to pass a test to become an adult—or to have kids for that matter. You just wake up one day, realize you’re old by some people’s standards, have children you are responsible for, and now you have to make grown-up decisions.

It might be worth mentioning that twenty-four hours before we had gone through this same exercise and concluded we should hang out in Kracheh and slow travel through South East Asia.

Situation fluid.

Crossing the Rubicon

Morning, March 19, 2020, again

In the morning (of the sitting-on-the-floor-of-the-airport day), we dragged the boys out of bed at six, informing them that there was yet another change of plans. Instead of enjoying Kracheh for a while and seeing the river dolphins, we needed to pack up and hit the road. Poor guys.

We were moving erratically, making it all feel frantic. Everyone else takes a long loop of Cambodia—either clockwise or counterclockwise—whereas we were cutting through the middle, in what was beginning to feel like a desperate move. The path is so ill-trod that most roads are dirt-packed, and there isn’t a bridge across the Mekong, only a dilapidated ferry crammed with motor-scooters and carts of sugar cane.

As the ferry slowly came into port on the far shore, we couldn’t help but feel that we were crossing our own little Rubicon. But, just when you think that everything is catastrophic, and everything is serious, you notice that the gentleman in front of you is spending an extended time scratching his back with a telescoping back scratcher. That somehow has a soothing effect on the journey.

So it doesn’t feel crazy that the night before, we completely reversed ourselves and bought tickets to Australia. Didn’t I mention that? Yeah, that’s what we did.

We arrived in Siem Reap, stopped for an imitation Mexican lunch, then considered which of the many lovely hotels to stay in and where to rent a scooter so that we could visit Angkor Wat—our flight wasn’t until the afternoon of the next day. A few hours to explore one of the world’s most amazing historical, archaeological, religious monuments isn’t much, but we knew we needed to hurry and fly out, just in case Australia decided to close its borders.

It was then that we received an email informing us that Australia was closing its borders. In 31 hours. Our current flights would get us there in 37. Six hours too late.

Situation fluid.

Our New Plan A

Afternoon, March 19, 2020

And so we rushed to the airport and sat on the floor. We looked for flights leaving sooner, for a while we thought we had found an itinerary to Australia that would get there in time. One website said it was sold out. Another said it wasn’t. We went through the process, asked ourselves eight more times if we were making the right choice, and clicked “Purchase Tickets,” with all of the solid conviction one can muster after repeatedly changing his mind.

For many minutes we thought we were all set. But no email confirmation came through. A look at our credit cards’ website confirmed that our card had not been charged. We didn’t have the tickets. We looked for another way. There was no other way. We searched some more. You know the rest. We tried to go to New Zealand, nope. We attempted to find a practical way back to the US, no way. And so we sat there.

It was late in the afternoon, and we still didn’t know where we were going to sleep that night. It definitely wasn’t going to be in Australia or on a flight headed there. Time to embrace reality. In Cambodia, we are, and in Cambodia, we will stay. So we booked a place. We splurged a little and got a lovely house. Somehow we felt we deserved it, or if we didn’t deserve it, we at least wanted it.

Then, just to add insult to injury, we received an email informing us that, “There are FIVE more tickets available to AUSTRALIA — Click Here To Book Now!”

I was getting whiplash from tossing back and forth. We had just decided! Our house had a pool. It was late. We were tired. But we had crammed into several sweaty minibusses and bounced haphazardly half-way across Cambodia for this chance, and so we tried. We tried one more time to book a flight to Australia. And one more time, we failed. Hope is a funny thing.

Situation not so fluid.

Here We Stay

April 2020 – maybe forever

So we’re here. In Cambodia. For who knows how long. And we’re safe and comfortable. Which, right now, is enough.

Thank you for reading. There are many miles and barriers between us, but the humanity in us calls us to reach out from where we are to where you are. How are you? How is your family? Are you safe and comfortable?

But before we go, I want to say one more thing, from the depths of my heart. I want to thank our boys for their resilience during all this tumult.

As we struggled to make solid choices on shifting ground, we bounced these wonderful children from one uncertainty to the next. We told them we were staying in Kracheh; then, we wrapped them in masks and sanitizer to bus them across the country. They never complained. We told them we’d fly to Darwin to keep them safe, then Perth, then anywhere but here. They agreed. We rushed them to the airport like the iconic protagonist sprints to slide under the stone door of an ancient temple, slowly grinding to a dark and terminal close. Only, unlike the protagonist, we didn’t make it. And when we found ourselves in that dark place, where we asked them to sit still for a couple of hours so we could somehow find the happy ending, they never broke down. I, meanwhile, almost cried when our youngest patted me on the shoulder and assured me that I would succeed—and wasn’t disappointed when I didn’t.

We’re a million miles from home, surrounded by uncertainty (like everyone else), and we get nothing but optimism from them. So much gratitude and love for our resilient boys. We learn so much from them.