Thread: How are you coping in these Covid times

Originally Posted by TheRealKW

I suspect quite a few years too...

Its hard to predict. The covid might go but a financial crisis from the covid will add a year or 2. Or the covid might slip away in 6 months and it will be boom times.

Originally Posted by Fondles

life is great, Pattaya muchly imporved without all the annoying tourists.

Work is going gang busters, crazy crazy busy.

All in all, am loving it !!

What are you working on in Pattaya that is going to improve with less ppl

I've been able to concentrate on doing jobs around the house and rarely leave the property which is good for me at the end of the day.

Business wise it should be the best time of my life as I have achieved patent status for my new product in a number of major countries but as I cannot travel sales of manufacturing licences are impossible.

I have a mate preparing an animated video presentation of the product and along with zoom internet meetings I hope I can achieve some sales.

I've become a bored alcoholic.

Days have gone from 100% fitness to 10% fitness, 50% drinking, 40% hanging around bored and annoying everybody else in the house.

Originally Posted by JPPR2

We were going to stay until near end of September but Singapore airlines called us saying that they want us to change our return trip to no later than Aug 31st. While they didn't state it, I suspect they are cancelling all flights into Thailand. They also noted in the update that they are not allowing international flights into Singapore, you can only be in transit. We will land in Singapore and be escorted to a quarantine area for our layover.

Just a suggestion because I think in your case you can afford it and would see the benefit from easier/more comfortable travel:

See if you can cancel & refund your Singapore Airlines flight and re-book your travel with Emirates with your main stopover in Dubai. No quarantine necessary, no visa needed, and the airport is wide open. You could stopover for a few days and look around/recover from the main flight, then continue on to BKK. None of the nonsense that Singapore is requiring, and its almost normal in the airport except for the suffocating mask.

Its been weird for me. Landed in BKK in March 2020 thinking I was going to be there for a month then back offshore again. Covid was happening but most people thought it was gonna be another SARS or MERS or whatever with very little impact overall. Then 2 days later trying to catch a domestic flight, all the airport staff was in a panic and taking everyones temperature. I was very hungover and had a mild fever from that plus hustling through the airport sweating my balls off. They wouldnt let me board the plane because of it and were acting like I had ebola or something. Eventually I cooled off and was allowed onto the plane but that was the first WTF moment of the pandemic.

Then 3 days later Thailand closed its borders. Wife was pregnant at the time so I knew if I left Thailand, I wouldnt be able to return, and I would miss the birth of my kid, so I stayed and didn't go to work. Stayed for months watching the stock market fall and the oil prices go into the negative and started drinking more than ive ever drank in my life while I planned for the worst, thinking im going to have to survive for a long time on savings and investments, which made me drink more. Im not even a drinker, went years without even a beer, but the anxiety of it all was murder. Then kiddo was born and I had no fucking idea what the hell I was doing. We went a few months barely leaving the house except for the grocery store and immigration because pregnant wife, then tiny helpless infant.

Then Thailand started being without cases again so we travelled a bit, then work contacted me and I was gone. 10,000 nasal swabs and numerous weeks in various kinds of quarantine later and 2021 is shaping up to be quite profitable due to having to work extended trips.

I genuinely panicked in the beginning, but not from the virus. From the reaction to the virus and what that would mean for the economy and employment.

Now I honestly could not give any less of a fuck about covid, and I think the world needs to rip the damn band-aid off and let people get moving again.

I also think the USA's vaccination problem is less "antivaxxers" and more unreachable people. Theres no infrastructure for mass vaccination there, compared to Thailand. Ironically the USA has more vaccinations than they could ever need but no outreach or plan to get it to people, while Thailand is the exact opposite.

Overall im coping just fine and the outlook is good for me, but the extended travel and requirements are getting very old and Im missing alot of my daughter growing up.

And Thailand immigration/covid restriction/visa rules suck donkey ass and are causing me more problems at the moment than anything else.

Originally Posted by Slick

the suffocating mask.

You don't have to wear this you know, there are simpler alternatives.

Originally Posted by Backspin

What are you working on in Pattaya that is going to improve with less ppl

I dont work in Pattaya, 70% of our product is direct export the other 30% is line fitment at the automaker facilities before the vehicles are exported.

Originally Posted by reinvented

lockdoown last year was ok, but this year is a bit of a trial.

i think bored, uncertain, in need of a holiday sums it up.

Very much sums it up for me. Last year I nailed work, like did 3 years worth in a year. Massively productive.

This year sucks donkey balls. For the first time in my life "work" seems like "work".

Kind of compounded by the fact that I work in the bedroom, and work is always piling up, which makes it a 7 day a week struggle. Wake up, and there is the computer, waiting.

I really want a break, but in all honesty cannot see that happening for at least another year. Compounded by the fact that the Thai AstraZeneca is not recognized by the WHO currently.

I constantly have to remind myself that everything could be sooooooo much worse. But sometimes that seems small cheer.

Originally Posted by nidhogg

I constantly have to remind myself that everything could be sooooooo much worse.

I had to tell myself this quite often in the beginning when I thought the world was ending. Quite a few friends didn't even make it 6 months and had to move back to their home countries to survive, and even there it was a struggle.

Originally Posted by armstrong

I'm desperate to go back to work but I can just imagine the carnage I'd come back to leaving wife and kid together all day.

I'm curious as to why that would mean 'carnage'.

Anyway, I've been back for almost a month now in Thailand, after being apart from my wife in Saudi since February 2020.

It was two weeks doing quarantine in Pattaya which was a very uncertain time as it was unclear how I would get from Chonburi, a 'red zone', to CM and then unclear what happened after that regarding quarantine. I looked into driving in a hired car, which seemed less than optimum because who knows what would happen with checkpoints etc. Then there was the train, but that would have meant time hanging around in Bangkok. Finally I got the Nok Air flight from U-Tapao to CM a few hours after slick posted the info - thanks for that slick.

So, after that it was isolation here as of course my main worry as someone double-vaccinated was my unvaccinated wife and what I'd give her. Luckily our home consists of two ground floor buildings about 15 yards apart so I was on the couch in one for a week.

At this stage I'm just glad the whole shitty procedure is over. If I had opted to renew my contract I'd have had to return already, so realistically I wouldn't have been able to leave Saudi at all. I'd have been looking at almost two and a half years straight, apart from my wife in Saudi from Feb 2020 until June 2022 - that would have been a really poor prospect. And who knows if I'd even have been practically able to get away and return within three months in 2022.

We're together at home COVID free and I'm just thankful for that at the moment. I'll be looking into some online teaching and examining but probably not this year.

Actually, definitely not this year.

yeah, that 7 day a week thing is the killer
always on, then when youre not, youre fucked in catching up

I've gone from 'Meh' to 'Oh fuck' and now I think I've kinda settled on a middle-ground between the two.

Has meant a massive change in plans though.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Has meant a massive change in plans though.

Don't worry, it'll work out yet . . . and then you'll look back and wish it hadn't.

Originally Posted by Slick

re-book your travel with Emirates with your main stopover in Dubai. No quarantine necessary, no visa needed, and the airport is wide open. You could stopover for a few days

Thanks for the suggestion. However no matter where one flies out of to BKK, they will have to submit to the 14 day quarantine. So we would prefer to leg it out on Singapore Air, get that quarantine nonsense over with and get home. I look forward to my dog runs, moto rides and mountain bike rides and of course my pool bar....

Originally Posted by Slick

Its been weird for me. Landed in BKK in March 2020 thinking I was going to be there for a month then back offshore again. Covid was happening but most people thought it was gonna be another SARS or MERS or whatever with very little impact overall. Then 2 days later trying to catch a domestic flight, all the airport staff was in a panic and taking everyones temperature. I was very hungover and had a mild fever from that plus hustling through the airport sweating my balls off. They wouldnt let me board the plane because of it and were acting like I had ebola or something. Eventually I cooled off and was allowed onto the plane but that was the first WTF moment of the pandemic.

Then 3 days later Thailand closed its borders. Wife was pregnant at the time so I knew if I left Thailand, I wouldnt be able to return, and I would miss the birth of my kid, so I stayed and didn't go to work. Stayed for months watching the stock market fall and the oil prices go into the negative and started drinking more than ive ever drank in my life while I planned for the worst, thinking im going to have to survive for a long time on savings and investments, which made me drink more. Im not even a drinker, went years without even a beer, but the anxiety of it all was murder. Then kiddo was born and I had no fucking idea what the hell I was doing. We went a few months barely leaving the house except for the grocery store and immigration because pregnant wife, then tiny helpless infant.

Then Thailand started being without cases again so we travelled a bit, then work contacted me and I was gone. 10,000 nasal swabs and numerous weeks in various kinds of quarantine later and 2021 is shaping up to be quite profitable due to having to work extended trips.

I genuinely panicked in the beginning, but not from the virus. From the reaction to the virus and what that would mean for the economy and employment.

Now I honestly could not give any less of a fuck about covid, and I think the world needs to rip the damn band-aid off and let people get moving again.

I also think the USA's vaccination problem is less "antivaxxers" and more unreachable people. Theres no infrastructure for mass vaccination there, compared to Thailand. Ironically the USA has more vaccinations than they could ever need but no outreach or plan to get it to people, while Thailand is the exact opposite.

Overall im coping just fine and the outlook is good for me, but the extended travel and requirements are getting very old and Im missing alot of my daughter growing up.

And Thailand immigration/covid restriction/visa rules suck donkey ass and are causing me more problems at the moment than anything else.

Oil has rebounded nicely since the negative prices. That was more about opec fighting than covid. Having a kid in 2020 was unfortunate timing for sure.

Originally Posted by Fondles

70% of our product is direct export the other 30% is line fitment at the automaker facilities before the vehicles are exported.

I work in the automotive sectors as well Fondles. 100% export to the OEM direct. With the Covid controls at both factories I am not allowed on site unless it is critical and then to get there is quite complicated. We have not been impacted at all due to Covid. Lots of creative line management is all it took. For now I work 100% remote but being over here in the states has made for many late night early morning calls which when in Thailand are all during the day for the most part. Good thing though, at least near term I can manage this from virtually anywhere in the world but I am done traveling. Its just too much work and forever changing requirements.

Originally Posted by OhOh

FIL had ample buyers for his Durian and Mangosteen with high prices.

Interesting. I had some mangosteens at the weekend. Probably the best I have ever eaten. Only 18 baht a kilo. They came all the way from the south of Thailand by lorry. Apparently they cannot sell enough down there - international buyers gone awol due to Covid. That's what they said, anyway. But my point is, excellent mangosteens at a good price (for the buyer). What price did your FIL get for his mangoteens?

Originally Posted by Norton

Indeed and the core problem causing the ever worsing situation here. For us that have been in the country for many years, the writing was on the wall the moment the gov shut down the country and announced a local vaccine producer would be the major supplier for Thailand.

Resulting in the total chaos we have now. A chaos which will only get worse. If you are now considering returning to Thailand, suggest you don't.

Aside from getting irritated upon occasion my personal life here in Ban Nok has changed little. Of course, would like to get a jab to reduce chances of getting infected and croaking so atm my focus is on doing so.

Got a 100% for sure jab scheduled 5 Sept. First 100% for sure jab didn't happen so we will see if the 2nd works out 5 Sept.

As you had mentioned, accompanied with a slight sarcastic chuckle, when we talked the other day.
I believe this one will follow through.
Best to ya.

Originally Posted by Neverna

Interesting. I had some mangosteens at the weekend. Probably the best I have ever eaten. Only 18 baht a kilo. They came all the way from the south of Thailand by lorry.

Funny you should say that. One of the neighbours knocked on the door a few days ago with a big bag of them, apparently her sister lives on Samui and had a shipment to around here.

Edith saw the bag and pounced on them and said the price of them now was completely something, something, something because of something really somethinging something.


It may have been during the FA Cup final.

Originally Posted by Norton

the writing was on the wall the moment the gov shut down the country and announced a local vaccine producer would be the major supplier for Thailand.

I'm by no measure an expert on Thai politics, and even I knew this was a sure sign of trouble ahead.