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Corona in Thailand: How I managed to enter Phuket

2021-09-24T23:46:40.044Z


At the beginning of the year I was supposed to go to Thailand as a correspondent. But moving to Asia in Corona times? Almost impossible. After nine months I'm finally here. If you are dreaming of far away too - follow me!


Enlarge image

Author on Mai Khao Beach, Phuket: "I'm gone"

Photo:

Karl Vandenhole

At night and in the air, lying like a ball over the three economy seats of the Boeing 777, because almost no one else is flying, I understand that it's really happening now.

I'm gone.

Harry Styles saved the first part of the pandemic, the second the belief that I would soon be gone, away from Germany, away from the eternity hatdown and in a part of the world where incidences were low and people were in bars .

Around the time, at the end of 2020, when you were allowed to move within a maximum radius of 15 kilometers from your own front door in German cities (do you remember?) And when the question of what we were talking about was discussed in the Sunday evening talks on television Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea can learn in the pandemic, where public life largely took place at the time despite the crisis, I signed a contract for a female correspondent for SPIEGEL in Southeast Asia. More precisely, in Bangkok.

I sent a farewell email to the collective address of the entire editorial team, about which the email program had warned me,

you are sending this mail to 590 recipients

, as if it had already suspected something.

I did one-on-one farewell beer meetings.

I waved from the jetties.

I said goodbye.

I had no idea.

Enlarge image

Selfie on Phuket, like proof: "I'm really finally here now"

Photo: Maria Stöhr / DER SPIEGEL

Because then nothing happened for nine months.

Except that I experienced firsthand the zero-covid strategies of the Southeast Asian countries, namely to keep the number of infections low by largely isolating themselves from the rest of the world.

Emigration in the pandemic?

Sweet.

My little story must have affected many who actually wanted to leave for Asia during this time.

I didn't get a work visa, least of all a journalist's visa.

It was February, it was April, and a subfolder on my laptop called "Thailand - last Step" already contained 38 PDF files with titles like Prayer, "Visa_maybefinal", for example, and "Application_jetztm Maybefinalfinal".

I had powers of attorney issued, I had to deal with authorized signatories, two visa agencies in Bangkok and a notary at Gänsemarkt, and with the Hamburg district court.

It didn't help.

The initial joy gradually turned into a suspicion as heavy as stone: almost to experience a great adventure.

I've already gone through the quarantine.

Follow me!

It was May, in June I started pulling my summer clothes out of the suitcase that I had packed for a completely different summer in winter.

Before I get into this text about how I made it to Thailand in the end - you may be wondering what the agony of a would-be correspondent has to do with me?

There you have a point.

And if you think this text is an insolence from the Visa-on-Arrival generation, then you are right anyway.

However: If you have been dreaming of something far away for a year and a half, of something that is different from the Black Forest or Büsum - or let's just say how it is: If you really want to get away - then what follows now could you interested.

I've already gone through the sandpit quarantine for you.

It blooms for you, whether you want to work or vacation in Thailand.

Follow me!

August 10

Telex of Obtaining Media (M) visa for Ms. Maria-Theresia Stöhr

, is a poor subject for an email that is salvation.

Never mind, I'm on the train to Berlin.

Thai Embassy, ​​get my visa.

I have copied all of the documents three times, and hold them against me like an infant who is being protected from the rain.

We all have to wait outside the garden fence of the Thai embassy to be called.

We, that's a very old, fat German with slippers on, who wants to go back to his retirement apartment on Phuket.

Because of Corona, he was panicked back to Berlin.

If he had stayed in Thailand, he says that Berlin would be the last.

Then a travel agent who works for a Thai boat rental company and me.

12. August

Now comes the part for those interested in long-distance travelers among you: Thailand has lifted the quarantine. Let's put it this way: There is now an alternative to the 14 days of quarantine, which you actually have to spend in a hotel room when entering the country without even being allowed to step into the hallway. The project is called »Phuket Sandbox«.

The idea is that vaccinated or recovered people from abroad, especially tourists, can rent the holiday island of Phuket for 14 days, where they deliver a PCR test three times and otherwise can move around the island quite freely.

In the end they are allowed to continue on to the mainland.

The hope is to revive tourism in the country, which had collapsed completely and on which millions of people in Thailand depend.

Before the start of the sandbox, more than 70 percent of the island's residents were vaccinated.

In the entire country, the vaccination rate is 18 percent.

20th of August

I book the flight.

Hamburg - Dubai - Phuket.

And a hotel that meets the quarantine criteria, i.e. has a seal with the name SHA + (Safety and Health Administration Thailand).

The hotel immediately writes an email.

That I still have to submit "a few more documents" so that my quarantine leave is also approved.

These are:

  • Passport copies for all guests

  • Vaccination certificates for all passengers (except children under 18 years of age)

  • Previous and next travel destination

  • Identity of any friends / relatives you might meet on Phuket

  • Flight details (arrival and departure flights)

  • Advance payment for the accommodation (»Please note that in the event that entry is refused by the Immigration Office, the payment will be refunded in full«)

  • Download the Corona warning app »MorChana« to your smartphone and grant it access to your location at all times

  • Certificate of a health insurance valid abroad that expressly includes the treatment of Covid-19

  • As soon as I have all the documents together, the hotel writes, I will have to book and pay for the PCR tests in advance.

    In Thailand, three tests are required, on day 1, day 6 and day 12.

  • Then I can apply for the Certificate of Entry COE at the Thai embassy.

    This is required in addition to my visa.

  • The mail ends with the words: "In the meantime, if you need any further assistance, please do not hesitate to let us know."

    September 6th

    After the embassy in Berlin had reserved "five working days" to issue the Certificate of Entry, I postpone the trip by five days.

    I joined the self-help group “Phuket Sandbox” on Facebook and have since known what despair is.

    Again and again the thought: Is something still going wrong in the last few meters?

    The day before I was still doing the PCR testing in Hamburg, because the airline also has to have a valid test result so that I can even get on the machine.

    Maybe 35 more people will fly with me in economy class to Dubai, in business class it looks a bit more crowded.

    The Boeing, in which I am currently occupying space 25K, fits 550 passengers.

    7th of September

    After 16 hours the plane descends, small islands appear below me like the backs of elephants.

    A friend to whom I send the picture writes that it looks like a fairy tale, what kitsch is and what is right.

    We land around noon. The travelers walk along the empty corridors of the airport at a slow pace, with unsteady steps because when was the last time they were so far away. We pass several body temperature measuring devices with their antelope necks on the edge like the speedometers on Hamburg's Stresemannstrasse. A sign on the ceiling: "Health Control". Two dozen women in full-body protective suits and goggles are blocking our way. They point to the QR codes on the posters that we should use to wake up the Thai Corona app. This app will now monitor where I am, where I am going for 14 days. I am not allowed to turn it off.

    There are white plastic chairs on the sides of the aisle. We should sit down. The women check our documents. I am nervous. But not as much as the young guy, apparently from France, on the chair next to me. He does not have a Certificate of Entry. He can't find it any more, he says, and fans out all of the transparent sleeves that lie in his travel folder. I don't know if he was allowed to stay on Phuket in the end or if they sent him straight back.

    Then the passport control comes. In the past, I always found it scary when fingerprints are taken when entering the country, like scanning a Karstadt customer card. But this time, a screen next to the Thai official shows which vaccines I was vaccinated with - and when and where. Sure, I entered it somewhere in advance. But here, at passport control, I realize how much about the condition of my body I was revealing in order to get to a vacation island.

    After the PCR test at the airport, a sticker is stuck to my blazer, "SWAB COMPLETED".

    A taxi takes me to the hotel.

    When I stop at traffic lights I see a restaurant whose terrace is empty, but which has its menu and pictures printed on a large poster.

    There is, for example, "Fried Rice in a Pineapple Boat", which may have been invented exclusively for British and Bavarian package holidaymakers, but who have not come around for almost two years.

    "Sandbox is a joke"

    The woman at the hotel reception explains that I have to come to the lobby for a temperature measurement before 12 noon and show my Corona app so that she can forward it to the health department.

    I meet Massimo and Silvi at the desk, an Italian couple with their two children. You are coming back to Thailand from your home visit in Verona, where both work in microfinancing in Bangkok. They also do the sandbox quarantine. Massimo says they spent $ 1,000 on a travel agency to handle all of the sandbox immigration documentation. "Sandbox is a joke," he says. No normal person can see through that. And even more normal people, I think, go to Lake Constance for three weeks for the 1000 euros.

    I have to go to the room and stay there until my PCR test result is there, which takes a maximum of 12 hours.

    From the balcony I can see the sea behind the palm trees and the pool below me.

    A large bucket hangs above the entrance to the water slide, which slowly fills up with water, only to pour it down every two minutes, actually onto the children below.

    But there is no child.

    There is no one at the pool.

    Throughout the afternoon, the bucket pours into nothing every few minutes.

    A gong in the empty opera.

    The phone in the hotel room rings.

    “Miss Maria, we've called several times to tell you your dinner is just around the corner.

    We didn't reach you, ”says a woman.

    "Oh, I'm sorry, I was sitting on the balcony."

    There is a serving trolley in front of the hotel room door.

    On top of it, covered, the plate with the papaya salad that I had ordered in the "medium spicy" version.

    O stupid German palate!

    I am about to go to the sink, to cool my sore tongue, when the woman from reception calls again.

    My result from the airport PCR test is there.

    It happened unusually quickly.

    I'm negative, she says, and then: "Miss Maria, you are free now."

    That's what you get from it now, I think, that's the new freedom: trapped and monitored on an island for two weeks.

    Then I take the bath towel.

    I want to go back to the pool for another time.

    This contribution is part of the Global Society project

    Expand areaWhat is the Global Society project?

    Reporters from

    Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe

    report under the title “Global Society”

    - on injustices in a globalized world, socio-political challenges and sustainable development.

    The reports, analyzes, photo series, videos and podcasts appear in the international section of SPIEGEL.

    The project is long-term and will be supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) for three years.

    A detailed FAQ with questions and answers about the project can be found here.

    AreaWhat does the funding look like in concrete terms?

    The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is supporting the project for three years with a total of around 2.3 million euros.

    Are the journalistic content independent of the foundation?

    Yes.

    The editorial content is created without the influence of the Gates Foundation.

    Do other media have similar projects?

    Yes.

    Big European media like "The Guardian" and "El País" have set up similar sections on their news sites with "Global Development" and "Planeta Futuro" with the support of the Gates Foundation.

    Have there already been similar projects at SPIEGEL?

    In the past few years, SPIEGEL has already implemented two projects with the European Journalism Center (EJC) and the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: the “Expedition ÜberMorgen” on global sustainability goals and the journalistic refugee project “The New Arrivals” as part of this several award-winning multimedia reports on the topics of migration and flight have been produced.

    Where can I find all publications on global society?

    The pieces can be found at SPIEGEL on the topic Global Society.

    Source: spiegel

    All news articles on 2021-09-24

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