Out of Red Zone, faded back to Orange, maybe over 11k all up in SR now, since 9th March

 So at the end of last week our village finished in Red and went back to being Orange. We are allowed to leave the house now, and technically it means we can go food shopping a few times a week. However, we can't actually access any food shops as the surrounding villages are still in Red. And the market isn't closed, but it isn't open either.

Internet is still unstable. Can't do much at day, no school, streaming, calls etc. We can download and upload at night. And using message apps seems ok as the message just sits there until it can send.

I can't access the news so I don't know today's SR tally.

It felt surreal on Saturday to hear a loudspeaker from outside telling us to stay in our houses. We already knew we were in Red Zone so it wasn't a surprise but still weird. Also, they said they were bringing us some covid medicine 

Our internet is still really patchy, since Thursday. Going in and out all day, can't use it for school or calls. It's ok for sending messages as the messages just sit there until it comes back on.

It's quite a weird feeling- we have to stay in our house as we are in Red Zone, and we have hardly any internet, so it's hard to know what is going on out there.

Most people around us earn and shop each day, so Red Zone means they are hungry. Luckily it's rainy season so there are leaves and fish, snails, crabs, etc around. It was much harder when we had a similar lockdown in the hot season. I saw a lady digging for a crab back then, she had to dig down a long way just to get one crab. In contrast to yesterday, there were groups of children running around looking for snails. 

Soeun and his sister have been growing veggies in our yard, and we usually eat them for our main meal each day so it's not so hard for us. We also have supermarket food stored in the fridge and in cans which is something others don't have. Also we had a warning before this started so Soeun was able to get two bags of rice, enough for us and to share. 

We have friends in hospital this week, hopefully, they can get out and get back home despite lockdown. 

In some ways it is a normal week for us. The children and I just keep doing school each morning, We can't use our online lessons, but we have plenty of other things to do. Soeun and the boy camping out the back are fixing the floor of the outdoor meeting room. 

So in some ways this week feels surreal and chaotic and in other ways it feels normal. 

Red Zone

 T'was the day before Red Zone 

And all through Siem Reap

People were panic shopping

Even though it wasn't cheap

So not only did they find cases at our market yesterday, they found over 400 in the province. Its been only 80 per day recently.

So a lot of our town is going into Red Zone soon.

5 communes

Our internet has been so patchy today and yesterday. Can't use it for school or Facebook.

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So as of the weekend, we are back in Orange zone. I'm not sure what it means but we can't get fresh fruit at the market so there must be some roadblocks. Although I went into town and bought fruit and the supermarket. So we have access to foreign fruit but not local?

I caught a tuk tuk home and on the way the driver picked up his teenage son from the commune medical place. He had just had his second Sino shot! Other teens we know in our village also went for their 2nd shot today too.

We are back into school routine, and I'm easing back into riding after many weeks of tiredness and a sore throat.

I recently wrote a guest post for a blog I've been reading for years. 

You can find it here: Broken Blenders on A Life Overseas.

The boys are working on the meeting area at the back. We've had the roof for awhile and a dirt floor. Now they are starting to put edges so they can make a floor up out of the flooded muddy area.

Airport ride, first time in ages.

 

Phnom Penh most vaxed capital city!

Driving in Siem Reap City | Road to Angkor Wat Temple | Road to Kravan T...

5651 in SR so far

 We are in what on what is supposed to be the final day of a 2 week "lockdown". Apparently we are in Orange Zone, and 7 other provinces on this side of the country are also blocked off to deal with the Delta variant. 

Since it started though we haven't had any change to our lifestyle, perhaps we were already living as orange people? I don't feel like I'm waiting for lockdown to end, like the other times. 

Siem Reap is also in the 2nd last day of our vaccine drive. July 10-23 we all registered and got our first jab. Then 3 weeks after that we all went back to the same temple or hospital for our 2nd one. I'm not sure of numbers but if all went according to plan , by tomorrow the majority of adults in town will have had both Sinopharm shots.

Teenagers are already registered, it will be their turn soon.

UPDATE: I just read SR "lockdown" extended to 19th.

https://youtu.be/-H--FDGEey4

Sinopharm dose 2 done!

Round 2 was much less exciting, as expected.

I arrived at the hospital at 7am, walked past 100m of expats. 

Very orderly and spaced out compared to last time. Even when we got to the snaking back and forth bit near the end if felt more spacious. 

The guy behind me and I were talking about last time and remembering how many people missed out on numbers for that day etc, and we were feeling nervous that it would happen again. 

We could see the people ahead of us getting numbers, but he said "I won't believe it until I actually have a number in my hand." And I had the same feeling, it was all very similar to last time so it felt like we were about to have the same frustrations and disappointments. Esp when they called out that they would only hand out 400 numbers for the morning. 

The people getting numbers in front of us would sometimes hold them up for us, and we would try to guess if we were in the first 400.

It was a big relief to finally hold a card that said 353!!! And that was at 7:30am!!! Then I found an out of the way place to sit and watch them set up the jabbing station. I think they started at 8:am. I was done at 10:30am. Phew!

7am I walked past 100m of foreigners 

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I started reading Alice in Wonderland to the children today. It s so fun reading them books that are fun for me too. The first years kids books were kind of boring to read again and again. But now they are old enough to enjoy lots of different things. They don't take to audio books most of the time, we try every now and then. 

Here in Siem Reap we are all getting our second jabs of Sinopharm, 3 weeks after we got our first. I'm not sure of figures but I guess that the majority of adults in our town will have had both doses buy Friday. Teenagers have already been asked to put their names, and they will be done soon.

Mean while in Australia, they recently halved the cap on people flying back in, from around 6000 per week to 3000 per week. It has already been super hard and expensive to get there, people have been missing events like being with their families for deaths, weddings etc. I was shocked they made it even harder as there are still over 30K people trying to get back in.

And then more recently they made visits harder by taking away the auto exemption. So getting back out of Aus takes more paper work and there is the chance you could be denied. More here:

Now it is even hard for multicultural families and expats to visit. 

 https://youtu.be/LEmY7QnKMIY

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 Thankfully the kids have been playing UNO with Daddy and going for walks with him, and Aunty is here still cooking lunch everyday and other things too. My sore throat and tiredness continues, so we have had to take a break from homeschool. Pretty frustrating. We have been doing school for 3.5 months so maybe it is time for a break anyway. 

4518 cases of Covid-19 in our province so far

I think this is our 3rd lockdown, but they have all been quite different. I'm sure I'll forget all these details in a few months, so recording it here in case I get curious....

So on July 29th some new restrictions were brought in, including provinces near Thai blocked off- banning travel between provinces. Delta is in the community. (And some other country wide things like 9pm curfew came in around the same time. Which confused me as I thought we already had curfew.)

Also they said within those provinces there might be lockdowns. A day after this announcement came out saying most of our town is now in Orange Zone. Back in hot season the capital city was designated as Yellow, Orange and Red zones, Red being the most dangerous. 

Neither of our hot seasons lockdowns had colour, but they were much more strict and swift than this one (so far). So I was confused. 

This so-called lockdown had a big lead up to it, we heard about it 24 hours before the details were announced. Whereas the other ones were put into action before we knew about them.

And so far this one isn't visible in our neighbourhood. The market is still open, we are still allowed to go outside. The road still has traffic, and there are no uniformed people around near us, the closest I've found is about 3km away. Whereas the other ones the street and market were spookily empty apart from uniformed people. 

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 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.