I am an American. I’ve been involved in the sporting goods market for over 40 years (I’ve worked on everything from product development, to sourcing and production, to business development and product distribution.) Now due to a health issue and the pandemic I am semi-retired. I have lived in Thailand for a little over 20 years now.  

In the beginning Thailand was doing well as a result of taking strong action right away, plus they had a little bit of luck (imagine if all the tourism centered around Chinese New Year had happened)  Some of the restrictions they put in place have been over the top but you can’t argue with the results. But now it seems the cat has gotten loose and they’re running from crisis to crisis. Samut Sakon, then Thonglor, now it’s prisons. What will be next? Meanwhile, they didn’t formulate and execute a strong strategy to vaccinate the population.  My fear is they’re spending too much time on working out a vaccination plan and are taking their eyes of the mitigation tasks. It seems they can play checkers but not chess, which requires thinking three or four moves ahead.

I couldn’t manage the job but I would put Narongsak Osatanakorn in charge! (Chiang Rai governor who led the cave rescue) He was decisive and more importantly, he communicated well with the press and the public. I think it’s fair to say that any trust people had has been lost. This is due to a failure to communicate a future strategy with the citizens. They’ve done a good job of sharing data and explaining where we are today (statistics) but whenever they talk about future plans they mess it up by announcing half baked plans and issuing contradictory statements.

It affected my ability to travel, to work, and to maintain my fitness program. But I was hit with a double whammy.  At the same time that the pandemic struck I also developed health issues.  So for me it’s hard to put all the blame on the pandemic.  In a way, maybe it was good timing.  If I had to be laid up with a back problem, now’s as good a time as any because there’s not as much activity going on.

I was doing consulting work which requires traveling around Asia.  That’s impossible now so my income has taken a giant hit.

I love that there is no traffic, that you can get a taxi quite easily, that the shops and restaurants (when open) are generally not crowded.  I’m not sure I will be able to adjust if and when things return to “normal”.

Unless something unexpected happens, such as a flood of vaccines becoming available and a population willing to get inoculated, then I can’t see things returning until Q1 2022.  I hope and wish we can save the tourism high season (Q4) but that doesn’t look realistic at the moment.  

No change.  We’ve been going back and forth about moving to the USA at some time in the future but even the pandemic has not made us shorten the timeline.  Not yet, anyways.

I’m looking forward to being able to travel domestically. There’s a lot of Thailand that I still haven’t seen. And then after that, perhaps I’ll be able to make a few more international trips to reconnect with some good friends.

If someone is really in distress, I would recommend connecting with a friend you can meet up with for a coffee or at least call on a daily or weekly basis.  Even if the friend is in another country, it can help. Get out of the house!  At least take a walk around the neighborhood. Better yet, find a temple you’ve never been to or go check out a new section of the city.  Try to plan it out and avoid the hottest part of the day.