4318

 Well, apparently this was our second day of being in an Orange zone, but life is the same. Although there were some ambulances this morning so we'll see if things change.

New restrictions

 Late last night we heard that 8 provinces on the Thai side of the country will be blocked off, and that local authorities in each will have power to create coloured zones, like last lockdown.

And then this morning they also said nation wide curfew and other restrictions.

We still don't know if we are actually lockdown or its just the province borders sealed. Waiting to here from province leaders if we are in a yellow zone or anything like that.

4020 cases in SR so far, 100 times more than 3 months ago

 Some blog post I've read recently that I thought you might be interested in:

These 6 cultural differences explain everything by Craig Greenfield 

Covid in the slums from A Life Overseas

Food of today, so colourful

We have our main meal at noon. Its mostly sone version of rice and fish. Today it looked photo worthy.

 Chopped onions already, then asked SIL to pick some eggplant.

3800 and something

 Just 3 months ago we were at 40, now almost 4000 cases in our province!

The children and I enjoyed these 3 book. Historial fiction! So reading them outloud counts as History and English as well as being family time.

It also tied in with vaccines and diseases. The main characters had to be quarantined as the girl had measles. My children asked "What is measles?"

Kids theses days mostly don't need to know about measles which is amazing as for centuries  it was such a big problem and would have been common knowledge.

It was fun that came up during the 2 week vaccine drive in our town. All 3 adults in the house went out to get our first dose of Sinopharm.

Another fun by product of these book is that now the kids have asked to do chores! The children in the books have daily household jobs they call chores, so now our children want some as well. Long may it last.

Finally! My turn to get Sinopharm part 1

The government is offering Sinopharm free to whoever is willing and able to get it in our town! 

(But only between July 10-23rd. And only if you can navigate the ever changing registration process, and brave a day out in the sun with 100s of people.)

I had an exciting day- leaving home before 7am to get to the hospital early. 

Got to see old friends, met some other people and saw how the road work is going. When else do I see 2000 expats all in one place during a pandemic?

I hardly go into town these days, we can get most food from our local market, and we both work at home. And Covid-19, so not a good time for non essential trips.

Central Market trees gone! I hardly recognise the street. Like someone has had their head shaved.

Most people in town had their jab in their commune spread out over the 2 weeks. But foreigners were asked to rego through City Hall and all get it done at the hospital beginning at 8am today.

I got there just after 7am. It was already packed.

Lined up to fill in a form.

Lined up again to get a number.

But at 9am they said they had already given out all of the 300 numbers for the morning. We were told to leave and come back at 1pm.

But there were 100s of us and we had already waited so long, no one wanted to leave their place in the line. 

An hour later they handed out a few more numbers. I got 322. Sat down in the shade with my bag of snacks and an Aussie I met in the que. He came to Siem Reap for a 2 week holiday early last year....

Our numbers got called out around 11.15 and we went to the next building. A lady wrote down our details in a notebook, they looked at our forms. Vaccinated us, took a photo and sent us off.

Soeun and his sister already had theirs done a few days ago at our commune's temple. 

In 3 weeks time we will get our second jab. (It was only about a week ago they changed from 2 to 3 weeks between jabs.)

Hope a virus outbreak didn't start today, or we may be seeing each other back at the hospital sooner than the planned 3 weeks...

 

3000 plus cases of Covid-19 in Siem Reap so far

It was only about 40 less than 3 months ago, in early May. I started recording the days tally in blog post titles.

Our town is being offered our first dose of Sinopharm over a 2 week period this month. July 10th-23rd.  It turned out week into chaos as we tried to work out how to register and get jabbed. Some of us had to rego a couple of times due to very local confusions. And it seemed each commune was doing things differently. It wasn't until July 13th a letter came out saying foreigners would all get vaccinated together, by then some villages had already jabbed some expats, our wouldn't allow it though.

Vaccines are almost here!

I have been posting our province case count in the post title but I'm not sure what we are on now, the internet has been slow or off recently. I'm guessing its around 1600 now.

Yesterday, Thursday, suddenly it was time to put our names down to get vaccinated. Soeun, his sister and others from our street rushed to the chief of village s house with their documents.

Some communes are taking expats names too, but some are just doing Khmer first. My passport is away getting a new visa. It only happens once a year, its funny that jabs started just when Im apart from my main ID document. Hope I 'll be able to rego soon. It seems there is a lot of chaos surrounding the process.

My temple pass ran out last month, its hard to feel as excited about riding at the moment. Hope soin I can pay another 200 for 12 month again. Back in normal times it was 37per day.