COVID-19

Post-trip blog TO-DO list & Vending Machines!

Happy New Year! Here is an eclectic post, to get me started again after a long hiatus.

We arrived back in Canada in late August and have been very busy adapting to our current reality of working, job searching, volunteering, school, activities & socializing. Adapting to this faster paced lifestyle after 2.5 years of the pandemic has been hard for the parents, but we take comfort in seeing the kids thrive back at home. Thankfully, we did not ruin their lives by taking the trip as may have been suggested once or twice!

As the COVID-19 pandemic soldiers on, we are a year behind our peers in adapting to the “living with COVID” phase here in Nova Scotia. We managed to avoid infection until early December, but we were fortunate to be able to contain the spread to one member of our household. Adapting to life at home sure would be easier without this elephant in the room, but here we are.

We spent the last four months of our trip cycle touring from Austria, through parts of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and England. It was such an as awesome experience overall. Can’t wait to get back on the EuroVelo and other routes in the future.

Rather than continuing on with the chronological approach to my posts, I have divided up my photos into categories that may evolve into posts. Who knows when I’ll be able to write about all of this, but here is the list of potential topics:

For today, I’ll share a few vending machine photos. Most of the machines were located in walkable areas, except for the pizza machines, which were often in parking lots. I like how the dispensers could help small business owners reach more customers and/or keep consumers in smaller towns, rather than having to travel to shop. Bicycle tire inner tubes on the EuroVelo routes could really make someone’s day!

flowers in ‎⁨Chenoise-Cucharmoy⁩, ⁨France⁩

That’s all for now, except to say that I am on chapter two of the book “Curbing Traffic, The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives” by Canadians Melissa & Chris Bruntlett, and absolutely loving it. There may have been tears of joy. Read it!

Covid-19 update

It is now mid July 2022 and we have only 5 weeks to go in our trip 😢. We have managed to avoid infection so far, and have maintained our strategy since my post in March, but also made the following changes: (We know it will not be possible to completely maintain this level of caution when we return home, but we have a lot of fun planned for the next few weeks and don’t want to get sick and miss anything.)

We came back to Europe, where cases are high and restrictions are minimal rather than stay in Asia where cases are lower and public spaces are safer. This has been anxiety provoking at times, but we wanted to try cycle touring (1771 km & counting!) and end our trip in England, so we took the chance.
We were able to get our two kids under 12 their second dose of Pfizer in April ~ 9 weeks after their first dose in Bangkok (free of charge again). Thank you Germany! 🇩🇪💉
We are using public transit on occasion. When possible, we choose busses or trams with open windows over subways. We travel at off-peak times on longer train rides (as we have bikes with us).
If we are in a crowded indoor space, we may choose to wear glasses/goggles and breath steadily rather than chit chatting (respirator masked too).
We are taking more risks to do the activities we want to do. We may have been the only ones masked at Wembley stadium, but we had a blast at an Ed Sheeran concert in June! (The crowded subway home was probably the biggest risk.)
We have purchased a nasal spray to provide additional protection against COVID-19. It is comforting to have another tool at our disposal as the 7th wave is ramping up in England and hardly anyone else is masking. Three of us are 6 months + since our third dose, so we know we are not well protected against infection at the moment.

A few observations & thoughts:

I have noticed that there are a lot of signs around and emails received that indicate that some precautions are required or requested by a venue, but they are consistently ignored by visitors & staff. Why bother posting these?

Yes, so why are all of your staff unmasked?

Another thing that is wild to me is how if any precautions are taken, they are for droplet spread. #covidisairborne Hand sanitizer, gloves & face shields are not going to help…..

It would be wonderful if Western society would employ a vaccine-plus strategy and #ventilate #filter & #mask because #covidisairborne, but that seems unlikely at this point. Even recommendations to avoid the 3Cs (see link below) would help, but we seem to have given up.

Click to access 3CS.pdf

Sukhothai infrastructure

We stayed in Sukhothai, Thailand for 16 days in February 2022.

Our hotel was about 1.5 km from town where most of the restaurants were, so we rented bikes for daily use. The main roads were dangerous for biking (especially with kids), but we were able to make use of the bike path & quiet streets to minimize our time on the main roads.

*Note that there are thorns everywhere so you cannot take your bike off of the asphalt, ever! We had a number of flat tires to deal with before we figured this out.*

The bikes we rented for two weeks are normally rented to visitors of the historical park for a few hours. Exploring the ancient temples on bikes was magical as we could relax & explore in the car-free spaces (two of our days).

Some main roads have wide shoulders for motorcycles & bikes.

Outdoor mask mandate enforced by municipal staff.

Chiang Mai, Thailand infrastructure, public art & COVID-19: 9-30 Jan 2022

We spent nearly 3 weeks in Chiang Mai. In general I found the city a bit restrictive because there are very few parks and sidewalks are crowded. Here are the highlights from the parks we did spend some time in:

To cross the street in the city you have to be aggressive i.e. walk out into the traffic and hope they stop. Luckily they do have buttons to push that stop the traffic on demand (theoretically, they get a red light but not all drivers acknowledge it). You (sometimes) get a warning on how many seconds you have to wait, then a yellow light, and then you’d better move it for the 11 seconds or so you get to cross.

Bike infrastructure is not common, but it does exist.

Chiang Mai University (CMU) no problem, just use the sidewalk 😆

There is a lot of beautiful public art around Chiang Mai.

Covid-19 spread is prevented wherever possible, while the country remains open for business including tourism. Our family received 1 free vaccine dose and paid for 1 privately while in Chiang Mai. There is an outdoor as well as indoor mask mandate.

A few other highlights around town:

We want to complete our gap year without contracting or spreading Covid-19. I am writing this in March, 2022. Perhaps our feelings on this will change as the western world seems to want to put COVID behind us, but for now, this is still our goal. We want to stay well, keep our travel logistics uncomplicated, and respect the people of the countries we visit.

We have taken a number of steps to meet this goal:

We wear N95 (or similar) masks indoors (in public). In Thailand masks are required everywhere, so we have taken to wearing “bluies” (medical masks) outside sometimes. If it is crowded we wear our respirator masks outside too.
We have chosen countries to visit based on Covid-19 case numbers, curve trajectories, vaccine coverage and what public health measures countries have in place. For example, we like the indoor mask mandates. At the beginning of the trip we appreciated the vaccine passports, but those seem less important now that we see that vaccinated people can still transmit the virus.
We keep a stock of rapid tests and use them when anyone has a symptom or for peace of mind.
We rented an EV for the first 3 months of our trip to avoid using public transit (and because this is economical with a party of 5.) In Thailand we have traveled from town to town via private shuttle for the same reasons.
We started our trip with 2 doses of vaccine for those of us ages 12 and up, and zero doses for the youngest 2. Long story (!), but we are now all boosted and the under 12s have received their first Pfizer doses. 🇨🇦🇫🇷🇹🇭💉
We eat at outdoor restaurants or in our living spaces. If a restaurant is busy, we skip it.
We avoid crowds in general, especially unmasked, but there are exceptions! We had a fantastic day at Disneyland. There were way more people there than we anticipated.
We don’t socialize very often in person. If we chat with people we try to be masked and/or outdoors. This is not ideal of course, but we have encountered very few other families, so it’s not too tough.