WELL, remember when I said that the people here think that dogs are the things that spread the virus, it’s getting ridiculous now. Quick story; I took our Lola out for what seemed to be a nice walk this morning, but no no, it all took a turn when I turned the corner. This woman started shouting at me in Chinese (obviously no idea what she was saying) pointing at the dog and saying, what I assume, quite aggressive things at me and started following me down the street. Thankfully, I turned another corner after about 3 minutes and she gave up because “tīng bu dǒng” (That means ‘unable to make sense of what one is hearing’ in Chinese.) THEN, yes, there’s more, I got to the entrance of our accommodation holding the dog on the lead, a snacks bag in my other hand, and the staff are there asking me to write my name and phone number in the same notepad I have already written in 3 TIMES today and take my temperature, again, for the THIRD time. I can deal with the 3 times thing BUT the staff would jump out of their skin every time Lola took even one step towards them… As you can imagine, I’m there crouching holding her to stay sat, while having a thermometer pointing at my head and writing in their stupid notepad… ABSOLUTELY ABSURD!
Pshhh I’m so glad I got that out of the way. Anyway, this was the ‘go’ today…
- The Hazmat Suit People
- Getting out of China
- Zac is on ITV!
More drama happened today. The Coronavirus is now on our doorstep… Well, our next door neighbours doorstep! This afternoon we had a knock at our door, we opened the door to 3 people in hazmat suits and masks trying to communicate with us but they couldn’t speak English so they just left us. We heard them talk to our neighbour next door and the next minute he was gone with a notice stuck on his door stating that he has been taken into quarantine for Coronavirus observation… So that’s great. Our neighbour could potentially have the virus and just look at how close we live to eachother… it’s humourous. The picture below.
At this point, we were a little bit more nervous about the chances of us getting this virus BUT to make it worse, we read the headline of “Foreign Office urges all British citizens to leave China”. Suddenly, we see our English Teachers group chat blow up saying things like ‘Do we leave now?’, ‘Are there still flights departing?’ and ‘Are the people who have already left, coming back?’. Three weeks ago we broke up from school as it is the Chinese Spring Festival Holiday. Some of the English teachers went back to the UK and some went travelling. We decided to go to Thailand and come back as soon as the Coronavirus kicked off (great timing). Other teachers are still in England and have now cancelled their return flight back to China as we were actually supposed to go back to school TOMORROW, obviously not a chance.
As we are still in China we have a few options;
Option 1: Wait out the virus and see what happens. In this case, we run the risk of the whole country going tits up as we have no idea what the truth is about where the virus is and how bad it could get. In this case, all food and water stocks could become deplenished due to minimal shops and businesses running and all accommodations are on lockdown. However, we will save a lot of money as most normal flights out of China are averaging around £3000 (one-way) back to the UK. We also have 2 dogs and a cat that we would have to get pet passports for, but all businesses are shut so they won’t be going anywhere. However, it seems like the window of opportunity to leave is closing pretty quickly which is concerning. Option 1 seems like a bit of a dilemma right?
Option 2: We go back to the UK, pay the money for the flights, find somewhere for the pets (that won’t happen, there isn’t anywhere for them to go) and we go back to no job. Oh and it’s more likely we catch the virus travelling through the airports than staying where we are in Guizhou, as the airports we would have to stop in (Beijing) are more likely to pass on the virus. Option 2 also seems like we would have quite a dilemma…
Option 3: We just wait it out, stay away from other people, keep our hygiene up, wear our masks and hope we don’t get this virus and China goes back to normal. That option seems more do-able hey… but very unlikely to happen anytime soon!
I’ll let you know about our decision making of our options. #Prayforus
In other news, Zac (my better half) has been posting quite a bit on all social media platforms about our situation here during the Coronavirus and ITV West Country got in contact with him because of it! He had a Skype interview with them earlier this evening answering questions about what it’s like to live here at the moment, making quite a nice (well, it’s not nice) news story. SO, if you are in the region of ITV West Country, his interview is showing at 6pm on the ITV News Channel. Check it out!
There will probably be more events tomorrow so I’ll keep you updated!
Tone & Travel 