So this blog has been a big quiet for a while and I apologise for that.Life has a way sometimes of just throwing challenges at you and there were just too many to handle and put into words.
My partner are I travel and had decided to settle in Indonesia for a couple of years (We have a rescue dog here and also just fell in love with the place and the people) We left to go to Cambodia and then onto Laos to pick up our visas for Indonesia - these have to be picked up outside of the country. We had a great time in Cambodia and spent a lot of time just taking in what was going on around us. We also got the chance to spend time with friends who we haven't seen for a while. Then we moved onto Laos. This was when Covid really hit hard. We had a flight booked to return to Indonesia and the borders of Laos were closed 2 days before our flight. We then learned that immigration was closed and our visas would take longer than originally planned. We then learned that if you want to rent a house it is virtually impossible to do so without putting down a big deposit and signing for a minimum of a year. After that we ran out of our meds and life just slowly started slipping away from us. We had to sort out renting a room in a hotel until inter province travel was allowed. All the shops were shut and we found it increasingly difficult to find fresh food. When we were allowed to move around again we moved to the Capital as we had another flight booked. This flight was then cancelled and we had to find somewhere to rent in the city. For various reasons the prices in the Capital are ridiculous. We were in what was essentially 2 small rooms and paying over $350 a month excluding bills. We managed to get medication which was a huge plus but were just so defeated by the situation. showers were rarely happening and we could only get access to the same few vegetables all the time. There is very little access to easy transport so we couldn't really get around which doesn't help much with people who are feeling depressed. We spent months making the same trek to the visa office to apply and then pay for another months stay in a country that we couldn't leave. Laos did not have a visa waiver program so we still had to pay to be there even though we couldn't actually leave. Because we were in such close quarters I began working in the early hours of the morning and then napping into the afternoon so we could be both have some alone time. We started working with an animal sanctuary and fostering animals. We fostered 2 cats from the sanctuary who both found their forever homes. We also rescued a dog and another kitten. The kitten we called 美丽 (beautiful in Chinese). The dog, who we called Minnie, helped us more than she will ever know. She was an incredibly skinny 2 year old who roamed the streets around where we were living. We got the vets out and had to give her treatments for infections and vaccines as well as getting her spayed. I would never consider visiting Laos ever again apart from to see her. The only way we could make it out of Laos was to get on a charter flight which had to get approval from the government and cost us about 5 times what it would have usually. The weekend before the flight we had to get PCR tests done and fill in a load of paperwork to a. be allowed to leave the country and b. enter Malaysia's airport and c. Enter Indonesia. We ended up with plastic wallets full of different documents that we needed. When we made it back to Indonesia we were staying in a studio apartment. We started to foster again a few days after we got there and the kitten that we had sadly passed away. After that we moved our of the studio apartment and are now renting a house. Our visas are finished and we are allowed to live here legally, We are both in a better place but have needed time to work through this experience as it was a lot. Next week it'll hopefully be back to normal blogs. Thank you for your patience. You are OK. You are not alone. You are enough.
0 Comments
|
Archives
January 2021
Categories |