The Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advice has changed. Advising that “If you are usually based in the UK, you should return to the UK now, if flights are still available”.
We have assessed our circumstances and our decision is to stay put at the moment, for the following reasons:-
Flights home are available, however, none are direct, meaning stopovers in a variety of different countries including China and Thailand, which from our point of view would be putting ourselves at risk. Even if there were any direct flights, we would still not feel comfortable putting ourselves in a confined space with people whose travel history we were unaware of.
We don’t want to leave the safety of our semi remote location in a country with less than 100 cases, to return to our home nation, which has 8000 cases, putting ourselves at risk whilst travelling.
Toilet rolls and food are readily available here at present. Plenty of mangoes in the trees to harvest if the shops do start to run low on food.
We have gated accommodation, with 2 lovely dogs, who give us plenty of warning if anyone is approaching and they are good company, but terrible card players.
So basically there we have it. We have made the right decision in our minds and believe us when we say we have thought long and hard about it, discussing it for hours, researching online and observing the mood and reaction of the locals to foreign nationals.
Obviously, with our travels paused for the time being, we won’t be posting as much on the blog, but please feel free to send us an email, via the contact page, for a chat to help pass your time and ours, during this period of isolation.