I have lived in Thailand my whole life and never did I ever imagine experiencing a lockdown due to a virus. I married a Filipino national many years ago and we traveled to the Philippines in January for a quick vacation. We were scared. We are both nurses and when we came back to Bangkok and went to work in early February, many cases started to arise.

We thought it was pneumonia, and then we heard about the coronavirus. We have to either travel to work in our own transportation or the shuttle provided by the hospital exclusively for its health workers. The hospital didn’t want us to be exposed nor to be roaming around and infect someone if we have the virus. It’s scary. It’s devastating as days and weeks go by numbers of positive cases are increasing and so is death. We were scared to even go to work but then we know we need to help save lives. It’s a risk. A huge risk, knowing that you are interacting with people that have the coronavirus.

Every time we go home, we go straight to the shower and steam ourselves for 30mins or so with lime and lemon. We wash our clothes right away even if we just go out for a bit. We don’t wanna take any more risks since we already are exposed and highly likely to catch the virus. We are now used to drinking warm water with lemon and we barely take any cold drinks. We make sure to wash or clean every single thing we buy or anything we get from the outside. After just a month of doing those things, it has become a new normal life for me and my husband. We still want to live. I have seen people die in the hospital without anybody looking after them.

Everyone’s scared…but some people are just too stubborn and still go outside as the government has implemented a curfew from 10 pm to 5 am only and the movement of people is still free. Social distancing is not being observed strictly and people are roaming around as if nothing serious is happening. Even if the businesses start reopening, I don’t think it will go back to what used to be our normal life was.