Crisis averted

 Well, thanks to everyone for indulging in my last post. It was quite a stressful time, and it's not entirely over, but I did get some help from my dad that should tide me over till next month. Hopefully, by then, I'll be working at a regular job. However, if I'm being honest, I'm not sure that that will solve the problem. I recently got an offer to teach online. Everything so far online has been a slightly lower pay in-person teaching, making me want to avoid online education. This is recent offer was less than half the salary that I usually make teaching。 My response to that was to say that if they don't expect anything other than me chatting with the kid for an hour, then, by all means, I can do it. Still, if they want real lessons presented online as you would do in an actual class, then no, I'm not going to take less than half。 A lot of work。 Just strange to think about this idea that you should make less for online teaching. An hour of my time is an hour of my time regardless of where I do it. There's only some slight difference in the fact that I don't have to go anywhere, which is a little more convenient. Still, it's not worth taking a 20% pay cut, and it's certainly not worth taking a 60% pay cut, so I'm not really sure why people think they ought to get it. They aren't Payless online 4 this service.

I've heard that the parents don't believe that the online classes are as good as in-person classes, and by golly there right. They're not, which is why I don't want to do online courses. I never endorsed them. They ask for online courses. During the pandemic, that's all you can manage. That's all we can do. I understand, but that's why they need to realize that the in-person classes aren't an option, so it's the exact cost. It's the same cost. they know the teachers are desperate 4 work, so they're want to try and get a discount because they feel like we have to take it, but I got to be honest, if they're looking for teachers for this kid, then I'm not that desperate because that means there are others out there 

 All right, so that's the update on the situation. I have another update on my travel vlog, which I'm hoping to put together at some point. Still, honestly, I can't really put it. I can't really do a travel Vlog until I have some money that can't come from the travel vlog, so I need to start regular work. Still, I have about 6 years worth of travel around Asia to put videos together, and that's what I've been doing. Now they're just retrospective videos. They're basically slideshows of my time in China, but they are good practice videos. About five years of life in China, if I have been making them at the time, I would have made a lot more, but honestly, that just wasn't an option.

When I first showed up in China, it was not. I did not have a working phone. My computer was a netbook that was Far Below the standard needed to edit videos. It really just was not a feasible option at the time. Phone cameras were not as good. Phone batteries not as good. At least the ones I can afford. So there wasn't really an option of doing this whole travel blogging thing at the time. Of course, in retrospect, you try and imagine: I could have done this; I could have done that, but the truth is I don't have the money to make it work. I have been slowly accumulating everything that I need over the years to do it. I now have a computer that can do it. It's a pretty decent computer. As long as it lasts, it'll be able to edit videos. I have a good phone now, so I can really start. Maybe I could have started earlier this year. Perhaps I could have started last year. But honestly, I don't think we're to a point where traveling is a good idea in the pandemic. It's not that I'm concerned about my own safety. I feel like I'll probably be fine; I just don't think it's the responsible thing to do. I look at the travel bloggers on YouTube I was watching before the pandemic started. I thought they did a pretty good job. I enjoyed watching them at the time, but when I saw their behavior during the pandemic, their behavior was unbelievable. Traveling internationally because that's what's best for me," at a time when it just was not necessary. Taking the chance of spreading the disease across the planet just so that you can do your travel blog is an unbelievable attitude to have. I just couldn't process how anybody could be so self-centered. Astounding to me, and I pretty much stopped following most travel blogs when that happened. I get it's their bread and butter, but that's what sacrifice means. You have to accept the personal sacrifice you have to make when there's a disease like this. Yes, many countries are encouraging people to come because they were desperate for tourist dollars. Still, you have to see how irresponsible it is to travel when this thing is going on. Anyone paying attention could've understood that they should settle down in one place, knowing that they're not going to do the same thing they've been doing for the next couple of years. Yet, so many of them didn't. They just got waivers, and they did the things they had to do and then got out there and kept traveling around the world, presumably some of them spreading this disease right and left. I don't want to be that person.

 Having said all that, the point of this post is that I'm trying to move towards a place where I can do the travel vlog when it's feasible responsible good idea. That's not yet, but I think traveling around Vietnam will be the first thing. I'm hoping that that will be something that I can do while teaching at a regular job and earning a salary. My time in China has taught me that being an ESL teacher leaves you with a lot of spare time. Public School schools tend to be closed on holidays. When I worked at the high school in Chenzhou, I had 3-day weekends. Which allowed me to explore and travel. even when I didn't make a big salary, I could explore Chenzhou and see many things around that area. But one thing at a time right now. I just need to find regular work even if I'm just teaching at a few night classes as I was doing b4. I really want to get back to that so that I don't have to freak out about money constantly, as I'm currently doing. 

The End of the Road?

 It's 8:30 at night and 34 degrees, though it feels much hotter. The humidity is through the roof. I should get used to it. I grew up in Georgia. I guess I am used to it, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it. Days are nearly unbearable. I'm almost glad that I ran out of money and so can't leave my apartment. I ran out of money about a week ago. Still, I guess I should rewind to the beginning of the story. On May 1st, May Day, International Labor Day, We had some time off work, and many people traveled. Some people travel internationally. Apparently, two Taiwanese businessmen flew to Danang. One of them was carrying one of the new covid strains, apparently. It quickly spread around the country, and Vietnam was in the grips of a covid wave that was much worse than what we had last year. For a few weeks, the country was under a soft lockdown. schools closed. cafes and restaurants stayed open. It seems as if they didn't expect the virus to spread all that fast, but it did by the end of May. Rather than easing the lockdown and returning to normal as everyone had expected, the government increased restrictions. cafes and restaurants could only offer take-out. All Bars were closed. everything was closed. Even public parks were roped off. which lasted for the majority of June. a few days ago, the lockdown was eased, and we returned to a soft lockdown. Unfortunately, I'm a teacher, and schools have not been open since the very beginning of all this. Since I'm not a regular employee of any school, I have not received a paycheck in 2 months. I will not receive one next month because I haven't been working, and there's no indication of when the lockdown will be over. all the publicly available data shows that the infection rate has not dropped. In fact, a couple of days ago, it went through the roof. Saturday was the highest number of new infections in a single day since this began. I would not be surprised if we actually return to a harsher lockdown, but I'm not sure that that's even doing any good. The new strains are so highly contagious that they seem to be spreading even with nothing open. I say this because we spent almost 2 months in some form of lockdown. There has been very little human interaction, and it's not slowing the virus down at all. It seems to be speeding up. I don't know what's going to happen with the lockdown. Still, I know I'm backed into a corner now with my personal finances since I expected the lockdown would only last a few weeks, like the first two. I didn't make much in the way of arrangements. I didn't find an online job. I don't know if I could've. I have not been pursuing that job in China for all the reasons I previously opted not to pursue. The primary of those reasons is that it will take me months to get there and requires money. I can't just wave a wand and be in China. There's still a 3-week quarantine I have to pay for. There's also at least a couple of months just to wait on the paperwork. I'm literally down to $15 after I pay rent this month. There's no paycheck coming at the beginning of next month. It's only a few days away now. This is stressful. I really don't know what the solution is except to ask for money from my father. He's already sent me some money multiple times for the past year and a half, and I don't really want to ask again. Still, I can't really see any other options. more than one relative, including him, has already mentioned that I ought to come back to the United States. Still, I can't imagine what they're thinking will happen. if I don't have enough money to go to China for a job that pays way more than I would ever make in the US What makes them think I have the money to go back to the US? I have no place to live in the U.S. I have no transportation in the US. We all know the US does not have any sort of public transportation system or cheap way to get around of any type. you have to go out and buy a car for several thousand dollars, and then you have to put in maintenance and gas and insurance. Where is this money coming from in their imaginings? do they think that I'm sitting on funds, and I just didn't tell anybody about it? it doesn't make any sense, but my fear in asking for help is that I'm going to get the response, "well, you know so-and-so is hiring up the street," which isn't even the point. Though it certainly will pay less money than I would make in China, the cost of living is through the roof in the US. I don't have any plans to go back to the United States, and I hope I never have to. it's just too costly to live there, and the reason it's costly is that that's the way the public wants it. Obviously, I could write a lot more on this issue, which deserves a discussion. but for now, the point is that the situation in the United States is not set to change. It's a place that pays low salaries and is outrageously expensive to live in. I don't understand how other people make it. I don't want to go back to trying this impossible task of making $7 an hour and paying $1,500 a month for a studio apartment. Well, I guess that's it. just the situation here right now. I had not planned to write about that tonight. I was hoping to and started off thinking I would write in more of a story format. I can't think of anything else. this is the most worried I've been since the pandemic started. I think because I don't see how this ends well, I guess I'm holding out hope. I'm not asking for help because I need to know the date I'll return to work to calculate how much it will take to get me through to the next paycheck. Maybe it will make sense to ask for help. right now, I have no idea how much to ask. that in itself is keeping me from progressing.

Party in Chenzhou

I've been thinking recently about drinking. I don't mean I'm considering it; I mean I've been thinking about how much I have consumed in the past and how much I'm currently drinking. In the past year, and I mean the pandemic here, I cut back drinking quite a bit for obvious reasons. I didn't go out so much. Because of my unique situation, I wasn't even close to friends or family who I might hang out. When the year started, I did do a good bit of drinking; I think everyone did, but as the months were on, it became less fun, and I became less interested in doing more of it. I just as soon continue forward with this pattern of only drinking on special occasions. That seems like the best policy to me. But this has got me thinking about how much I drank the first year I was in China. Now I'm not one to throw around the world alcoholic, but that year was pretty well soaked in alcohol, if I'm honest. And I don't think I'm the only one who feels that every Foreigner I knew in Chenzhou did precisely the same thing. I think there's a couple of reasons for this, only one of which applies to me: most foreigners who come to Asia to teach English are doing it their first year out of college. They don't have a career yet to abandon. They want to see the world, so it's actually a great thing to do at that point in their life. For that reason, many people end up doing this the first year out of college, so people are still doing a college level of drinking. Still, the other reason I think is the stress of a new culture; it's a little challenging to adjust to a new culture. It's made a lot easier by drinking because drinking socially anyway is a great way to meet people. You end up with a group that tends to go out and drink pretty constantly. And honestly, I don't think this is actually a bad thing. I wouldn't want to spend my whole life doing it but to have one year where you really cut loose and just party all year it's probably something everyone should do just once just one year by the end of that year you'll be finished with it and ready to move on to another part of life but that one year will be pretty fun

on the bus

Today I'm going to reveal to you a not-so-private interest of mine: Transit. All transportation is interesting to me, and it's something I pay attention to and focus on when I travel. but today, I'm going to talk about mass transportation systems. I'll talk about the Hanoi transit system. It's the system I've been using for the past year. Interestingly, Vietnam shares several things in common with the United States. one of those things is that there is a mass transportation system, but it's not heavily used. In Vietnam, the most prominent transportation option is motorcycles. People use their motorbikes everywhere in Vietnam, much like in the United States, where people will hop in their cars to cross the street. Of course, the effect motorbikes have on the development of a city and the behavior of its citizens is hugely different from the effect a car has.

For one thing: the mopeds and scooters that are most popular here don't travel much faster than bicycles. They're better for medium distances but not suitable for very long distances, so the city is still compact. The motorbikes are just an easy way to get around the city. This developed in a pretty traditional manner, whereas cars have changed the United States in a much different way. There is less suburbanization here than there is in the United States. As far as mass transportation in Vietnam goes: it's not great, but it's probably better than most cities in the US. But it's not on par with most places this large. It's a city of about 8 million people. There are two big cities here. Ho Chi Minh city is even bigger than Hanoi, and there are a couple of others that are also a substantial size. But most of the country doesn't really have mass transit systems.

Regional bus systems seem to be serviceable, and there's a national rail system. Still, for the most part, mass transit is not the most prominent option here. Next year the Metro system for Hanoi is supposed to open. I think HO Chi Minh city is on about the same schedule. That stands to change the transportation patterns here in Hanoi substantially; if it's a sound, usable system, there will be a lot of people using it to get around. However, I'm not sure it will substantially decrease the number of bikes on the road. What it might do is increase the number of rideshare apps and usages. It seems to me that people are more likely to call a bike to get to their nearest metro station than to pay to park their motorcycle there all day.

I hate everything

Sorry, but this post is going to be a bit negative. My neck hurts. I feel like it's a form of carpal tunnel from sitting in front of the computer cuz that's all I've been doing. I wonder if it's just from looking down at the computer, but really what it's making me think of is how pain affects your mood. Oh, there's no reason really for me to be in a bad mood. Nothing terrible has happened, but this pain is just making me hate everything. I don't, really, and I'm aware that this coming from pain is not changing the emotion. I'm just so angry about everything because this pain is just ever-present. It's not the worst pain I've ever felt by far. It's not. It's just that it won't go away.

Muscles at the base of my neck are just hurting, and I know it's from sitting in front of the computer. Maybe I should take a minute and talk about where the pain is coming from. God, I don't know. Oh yeah yeah: I think it was such a simple thing, and it's caused such a problem I had the screen adjusted so that I could sit up straight in my chair and look at the computer at an angle that was not painful, and I was using it for weeks, and it was fine, and then I started having to do online classes during the lockdown, and because of that, I have changed the angle because the camera in a laptop computer is built-in, not angled to a face that would be in front of the screen it's so you have to change the angle of the screen to get the camera to point at you okay so when you do this the screen points down at you. To look at the screen later, you slump in your chair because you don't think to readjust it. You put your head at a weird angle and kind of curl your spine in strange ways. You don't realize you're doing it. Still, once you sit there for hours because there are no real jobs anymore, everybody's just sitting at home, and you don't even go out during the lockdown. So you're in front of this computer all day doing this weird slumping and spine curling, and pretty soon, your neck and shoulders are in just this excruciating pain. Now I've got to sit away from the computer for a while so that it can heal up. I guess that's the thing, and that has, in turn, caused me to just be so angry, and I'm trying to meditate and do all these things to stop succumbing to this anger, but the pain just makes you.

As you can see, I've got a cooling thing for the laptop because I'm on it so much. Trying to plan, do my online classes, and do other things without succeeding. It angles the keyboards, which is a little better. It keeps me from putting too much pressure on something. So it's doing a little bit better. You have to angle the screen back, but you really need to angle the screen up towards your face. Of course, I'm using what's supposed to be kitchen furniture for an office desk. My tiny studio apartment here in Hanoi does not actually have an office or a desk. That's the setup that has caused me to have such pain, but I think it was the angle of the screen because I was just fine for months using this before the lockdown. Just in the past week, this pain has just been getting worse and worse, so I've got to find some way to adjust it. I may just have to spend less time on the computer. I mean, the lockdown ended this week, so I can actually get outside to exercise during the day. 

A Return To China?

My current dilemma is whether to stay here in Vietnam or go back to China. To be fair, that has been my dilemma since... well, for a while now. 

I've been living in China for the past 5 years until the start of the pandemic. I left for Cambodia thinking that the pandemic wasn't even a pandemic. Then, supposing that the disease would be contained and the whole thing would be wrapped up in maybe 6 weeks, I came to SE Asia to ride the whole thing out. I've never been so wrong about anything before, and I've been wrong quite a bit. By the end of March, I found myself in southern Vietnam waiting for the go-ahead to come back into China, but that was about the time that China closed its borders to the rest of the world. So I was stuck. I hate to use the word stuck, but I couldn't leave, so I was stuck in Vietnam for the next 6 months. I've enjoyed my time here, and I love Vietnam. Still, I am in a situation where I can't go back to where I was living, where I left pretty much everything I own, so I'm going to stick with stuck. 

In any case, around September, I had a bike accident here in Hanoi. I was laid up recuperating (the accident wasn't bad, but it took a couple of weeks to get back on my feet). China announced that those with residence permits could re-enter the country as long as they got paperwork from their employers. Being in a suboptimal state and since my employer didn't seem interested in sending me the paperwork, I let that opportunity pass, hoping I could return later. 

That's how things have remained for the past few months, but I'm in talks with another school in China that may want to rehire me so that I can go back into the country. Now I'm faced with the dilemma of whether to go back or stay here. 

On the one hand, as I said, everything I own is is still in China. Most of my friends are still in China. It would take a while to build up a social network here. On the other hand, there are 3 weeks of quarantine when you go back into China. Furthermore, there's a reason that the virus is still quite active in China compared to Western Nations. China has done an excellent job of keeping the virus under control, but that doesn't mean it's gone. Vietnam has done a fantastic job throughout the entire year of keeping the virus under control. When there are a dozen new cases, it makes the news here. We just finished a lockdown of about 3 weeks, although it was a soft lockdown. 3 weeks and it was only a few hundred cases. Of course, Vietnam's a smaller country than China, but it's not a tiny country. There are nearly 100 million people here, and when there are a dozen new cases of covid, it is taken seriously. The whole country has to go on high alert.

Before deciding that that must be destroying the economy, you should consider that we went on a severe 3-week lockdown last March at the very beginning of the virus. The country closed its borders, everyone locked down, everyone had to stay inside for 3 weeks. Every town and every city looked like a ghost town. A few times, you got to peek out your door. The streets were empty. It was really spooky. Still, the result is after those three weeks is that there was no covid here everyone got to go out. The country has been operating at full steam right up until just a few weeks ago. 

Everything just opened back up. Schools are back in session.

Restaurants and cafes accept patrons again. The country is up and running. So yes, it's an economic hit to be closed for a few weeks, or severely reduced operations, during the latest lockdown. Restaurants were allowed to be open, though no on-site seating. It was all take away, so yeah, that's an economic hit. Still, the payoff is that now everything is back up and running, there are no new covid cases. We got, as a reward, full operations the entire rest of the year. It was precisely the right choice. There are just no doubts that reduced operations for the whole year would have been a disaster for the economy, as most of the world now knows. 

So as for whether I will return to China in the long term: I certainly hope that I will. But immediately, I think I'm going to keep where I'm at because we're still in the middle of all this. The virus has not passed. The vaccines have not been distributed to much of the world's population. I don't think it's a good idea for people to be traveling right now if they have any choice. I think it's still a no-brainer for people to stay put. To remain in place for the foreseeable future, at least for the rest of this year. When vaccination rates get up high enough that the virus is no longer spreading, we can start thinking about when to open up and when to travel if that's what we want to do. Still, right now, the responsible thing is to just stay where you're at if at all possible. You have to be able to make sensible personal decisions about the best thing for everyone right now. To say "it's allowed, so I'll go do it" is backward thinking. Even in the best-case scenario, what's allowed is what the government and the authorities are saying is possible, not what everyone ought to be doing. Secondly, many countries and many rules around the world are allowing people to travel because there are economic pressures on them. They can't say "Stay your ass at home" because there are industries that rely on travel there's pressure to let people travel even though that may not be the best thing for stopping the spread of the disease. If this were a perfect world, I would agree that you should be able to look at what the government says is okay and say, "All right. That's okay for me to do." But you should know that we don't live in a perfect world, and governments are not always able to say what's in the best interest of the citizens. Sometimes they have to bow to industries. I get why industries are desperate to try and get some people in, but that's what is spreading to the disease. All this is just common sense.

One or two years out of 100, you have to hunker down and just make do with what you've got where you're at and forego your yearly vacation. I'm not just talking about westerners. I see western travelers here and think, "did you go through a quarantine just for a vacation? what is wrong with you?" The same thing happened here during Tet, which is the New Year /spring festival for Vietnam. People were traveling across the country while we were in this lockdown, so they're looking at rules that say you're not allowed to go to a cafe or a restaurant. However, they were still traveling cross country to visit relatives. 

Anyway, for my part, I think I'm going to stay put. 

Okay, so this is the first entry in my revamped travelogue after many times trying to post regularly and then not. So now is the Tet holiday here in Vietnam. Tet holiday's basically the new year.

Plus we're starting a whole new chapter in the covid mess.

This does not mean that the thing is over, though I think we may have passed the big hurdle. Remaining for the ensuing year are all these new variants that may or may not be prevented by the vaccine. we don't know how much those are going to spread here in Vietnam.

Anyway, on to what's going on in my life. I am currently awaiting a response from a job in China which was offered to me several weeks before the new year started and it's a good salary. enough to make me think that it would be the right answer to go back to China. I lived there a few years back: Yueyang, China. Hunan province.  I left on decent terms.

So I decided to go back and start this job back up again it is a substantial pay increase. you know I hate to say anything is good about the coronavirus and I actually get tired of hearing about silver linings, but I have to say: one of the things in China that's happened is that there are no foreign teachers to compete for jobs and there is the same number of jobs teaching positions as there were before so salaries have gone up substantially. if I'm being completely honest, if I were there I feel like I could probably get a good bit more than what she's currently offering, but she's offering enough to draw me back for now anyway because this pay increase is substantial the most exciting thing about going back is that Yuri and I  (a friend of mine from China) have always wanted to start a business recruiting people to come to China from the United States to teach. After all, there are always schools wanting people. given the high unemployment that's going to be in the United States, this could be a very lucrative business as long as relations don't get any worse than they are right now between the United States and China. the problem is I have to go over there and see how bad it actually is. I don't think China has become a bad place for Americans to live and it would actually still be a really good experience for Americans looking for work to spend some time getting to know China. of course, if world war 3 breaks out I'll have to eat those words but as long as it's just you know a high-level political disagreement between the two countries I don't see any problem with Americans coming to China to work.

what's going on in my life right now

Here is something annoying: we've got two more days of Tet holiday remaining and now there's a new outbreak of the virus. So Everyone who's been out of work for the past two weeks now gets two more weeks of unplanned, unpaid vacation time.

I live on an island in Truc Bach Lake and there are quite a few people out on the lake today in the swan boats it's quite warm here for the new year although it is overcast so it may look colder than it is in the picture. I'm in a t-shirt and shorts. 

This entire winter hasn't been warm, but I would say most of it has. The temperature dropped last month but February has been filled with warm days >20 degrees.

This post has been a 'stream of consciousness' entry. I'm still experimenting with exactly what sort of format I want to post in.

a notice of changes to come

If you have ever read any of my previous posts please consider this a new blog.  I like the name, and I don't think anyone has read it before, so I decided to keep posting on this blog but the content will likely change in the future. One big change is that I'm going to start looking at this as a travelogue.

I'm trying to start this blog as I'm trying to start a YouTube channel so I'll likely want to reference between the two as I move along developing both. Hopefully this will allow me to give more explanation for people who are interested and not bore the people who are not as dedicated.

I'll generally be writing these posts on the fly so I hope you guys will excuse any typos or grammatical errors that are sure to pop up from time to time, though I will make an effort to make corrections before posting. 

Thanks, and I hope to have interesting things to post about my life in Asia in the future!

My time in Sihanouk

Alright, guys, anyone who follows me already knows that I've been in a bit of an unusual situation for the past few months, and you probably all already know what's going on, but just in case you don't, here's the update:

In January of this year, I was living in Chenzhou, southern Hunan province, China. Towards the end of the month, we began to hear about a new virus that had been discovered in Hubei province, the next province to the north of us. People were getting nervous and most people were staying at home. Most Chinese people, anyway. Foreigners were still perfectly happy to go out into the world and enjoy the Spring Festival, which had already begun.

I'm an English teacher, or was, at an after school program (they call them training schools) in Chenzhou and the kids were already out of school for the holiday when word of the new virus came around. At first, I doubted it would even push back the start of the new semester. As time passed, however, it was announced that the start of school would be pushed back at least a couple of weeks. As more time passed, they began to monitor people coming in and out of my apartment complex and I began to weigh the value of staying in China during all of this.

At that point, it seemed like the virus would easily be contained within China. It didn't even seem like it would spread much outside of Hubei, but precautions were being taken and everyone was going into lockdown, which seemed like overkill to me. I hadn't taken a vacation that year, and therefore had a bit of money saved up. My sister was planning to visit in the summer, so I wanted to make sure I'd have enough to have a nice time on her visit. The farther the start of school was pushed back, though, the less it seemed like that was something that was actually going to happen. I thought at the time that I would be working all summer because of this virus. Exactly the opposite happened.

As the lockdown got more severe (at one point, the community sent someone to guard the entrance to the complex, ensuring that people weren't able to leave their apartments more than once every two days), I wondered if it wouldn't be prudent to ride out this virus (what are we talking here, six weeks, at most?) somewhere else. After all, I hadn't taken a vacation in the spring festival, and it didn't look like I was going to take one this summer. Why not spend a few weeks on a beach in Southeast Asia instead of Chenzhou? If I was being paranoid and this whole situation wasn't as bad as I thought, I could come back in a few weeks and the worst thing that would have happened is a few weeks on a beautiful beach. If the lockdown actually got worse, I'd still be enjoying life on a beautiful beach.

Finally, on Valentine's day of 2020, I set off for the airport, not even sure I'd be able to get that far (most transportation facilities were already at minimum), and started my mini-vacation while I waited on things to get back to normal. It's almost July and I'm still waiting.

I didn't really choose Cambodia so much as the situation chose it for me.  By the time I left China, almost every country had banned any flights from China. Except for Cambodia. The president or premier or whoever is in charge there had decided that he wanted to show solidarity with China by not banning any flights to China. Cambodia's leader also refused to evacuate Cambodia students studying in Wuhan and welcomed a cruise ship full of diseased passengers into Sihanouk to show how they were not afraid of this virus. Sihanouk is the name of the beach town on the Cambodian coast that I had booked my flight to. It was practically the only option on a place to go and the cruise ship thing hadn't happened when I booked my flight. I also didn't hear about it before I left Sihanouk, so I wasn't worried about it while I was there. 

I spent two weeks at a small 'resort' at one of the southern beaches in the city, enjoying the food there and not much else. The entire city of Sihanouk was under construction. I'm certain there was a city there before, but virtually every other building in town was under construction. It was truly being built anew. When I went just two years ago, Sihanouk was just a small beach town, perfect for backpackers. There were a couple of islands off the coast, and a few beaches outside of town, but there wasn't much to the place at all. And that's how people liked it. It was small and low key. Two years ago, I went there with friends and we stayed at one of those beaches outside of the town, called Otres Beach. Well, we stayed in Otres Village, a cute little area of bars and accommodations across the highway from the actual beach.

I headed back to that same place when I fled the coronavirus. But the area we'd stayed in had changed substantially. The village hardly had any tourists in it, of course, but most of the businesses had already gone under, owing to the construction. Even in this small area outside the main city, new construction had taken over. Right next to the village, there was a new mega-casino/resort under construction. And all around it were new apartments, which looked like they were intended to house construction workers for the entire city, which would have been a substantial number of construction workers considering how many new hotels were going up in the downtown area. Of course, the village was just the tip of the iceberg. The appeal of the beach area itself was that it was lined with little restaurants and bars, shops and hostels. It was a great place to spend the day, sipping on a frozen cocktail or a beer, as you like. You could enjoy the ocean breeze and people-watch until lunch, then order your lunch from the bar, never moving from your lounge chair. Then grab a joint from the head shop behind the bar after lunch and enjoy it on the beach. 

That little strip of heaven was my whole reason for coming to Otres in the first place. Every bit of it had been demolished. There wasn't a single one of the shacks remaining when I returned. there wasn't anything on the beach at all, not even a park bench. The locals were still enjoying it. Plenty of families had brought their kids to the beach in the areas where there weren't large, earth-moving equipment or construction materials stacked up. But everything that backpackers had come for was gone.

Of course, the longer I was there, the more I got to explore and I began to see that this was true across the entire town. High rise casinos were going up on every corner in the city center. And virtually every street was ripped up and being replaced, not to mention new sewer systems. It was a truly miserable place to have a vacation. I stayed in my room almost every day. Only leaving on one day of the two weeks I was there to go into town for a bit of being a tourist, and on another couple of days to meet a friend. One of my high school students from my first year teaching in Chenzhou (who has since graduated) was trying to return to Australia, where he now attends college, and couldn't go directly there due to Covid-19 restrictions. Like me, he found out that he could come to Cambodia and spend a couple of weeks before he was allowed to move on to other places. So we ended up there at the same time and went out for lunch one day and dinner another.

So, what had caused this construction boom? I'd love to tell you that the banking community simply saw the wisdom in pouring money into a community that has been working hard to compete with the tourism big boys all over southeast Asia, but that simply isn't the case. The truth is, Sihanouk would probably never have been able to compete without a little help. You see, Southeast Asia is covered in gorgeous beaches and beautiful scenery. And Sihanouk, being Cambodia's only real beach resort, doesn't even come close to the others in anything that attracts tourists. It's not the most beautiful beach. Not the most beautiful scenery. Not the easiest to get to. And not the most luxurious. In other words, it was always going to play second fiddle to the many beach resorts in The Philipines, Thailand, Indonesia... even Vietnam has more and better-developed beach towns than poor little Sihanouk.

So the solution to drawing in tourist to this sleepy little beach town was obvious. The same thing every other place that has nothing else to offer turns to. What do you do when you've got servicable, but hard-to reach beaches? Rail  stop in the middle of the desert? Coastal New Jersey between New York and Philadelphia? It seem like every 'almost there' tourist destination eventually comes to the same conclusion: casinos. This time they're being bankrolled by China. Chinese construction companies and workers are rebuilding Sihanouk by the ground up. 

So staying in Sihanouk right now is pretty miserable and uninteresting. And, like any tourist, I was generally pretty put off by all of this. I was cursing the terrible casino corporations that had come in and bulldozed my favorite spot to watch the sun set and smoke a joint. How dare they. They'd ruined everything that people who liked Sihanouk came for and replaced it with the most boring, banal casinos. Casinos that could easily be found anywhere else. At least, I'm sure that's what they will be after they finish construction. The whole town was ruined. Even the beaches, which were only mediocre for this region to begin with, has mostly washed out to sea or been covered in construction material and trash.

Luckily, two weeks staying in the area was enough for me to cool down a bit and forgive this little town for ruining my vacation. It should really go without saying that anyone who travels to Sihanouk during all of this construction will have a miserable experience. All of the things I said are true and will remain so until the bulk of this construction boom is over. Of course, any successful, growing town will have ongoing construction, but not to this degree. At some point the major road and sewer projects will be over. Some of these mega-casinos will be finished and, at some point, the town will be back in a functioning state. It's worth noting that they probably picked the best time possible to rebuild the entire town. Since there was never going to be any travel during 2020, and possibly 2021, now was the perfect time to rebuild a tourist town, if that's what they wanted to do.

And what about their choice? To switch from a backpackers' beach town to a glitzy casino destination would certainly change who the town is marketing itself to, but that's not necessarily bad for the town. Of course it looks shitty now. It's under construction. But, I had to tell myself, take notice of what's causing the most problems during the construction: new, concrete roads all over town and a modern sewer system. Sure, these things are being installed to handle the influx of expected tourists, but it's also going to improve life in Sihanouk for the residents. Better roads and sewers are never a bad thing. And those casinos that are replacing the backpackers for the Maybach crowd? They'll be bringing jobs into the area. And probably better paying jobs than what's currently there. 

Yes, there will still be problems. Many small business owners are going to go under before the construction boom is over. Many more will go out of business because their target market simply isn't there anymore. But many more will likely replace those with higher-end versions. The Maybach crowd will still need restaurants, bars and shops to spend money at. If this venture of bringing high end customers to Sihanouk is successful, they'll need supporting businesses from food suppliers to tennis instructors, and everything in between. It's not possible that there won't be more jobs after the change than before. And those construction jobs that 'go away' once the project is finished? Not possible. Despite the enormous amount of construction going on right now, I was witnessing just the skeletal frame on which the new Sihanouk will be hung. Sewers, roads, and major casinos are not the end of a tourist town like what they want to build in Sihanouk. They're just the start. If the project is successful, meaning: if they are able to market it to the wealthy elites that are always looking for the latest destination, that will in turn generate a demand amongst the slighly-less-elites, who will look for accommodations and facilities catering to their demographic. They're presence will generate demand from their lessers, and so on and so forth. It's the same reason Calvin Klein products used to be available only in high-end designer shops, but now can be found at any Macy's. So construction projects in Sihanouk are from over, and there may be more construction in the town's future than there is right now.

That's not to say that the town will return to drawing backpackers again in the future. That's unlikely. But I think there's a confusion amonst travellers about how these sorts of things work. Many of us have it in our heads that there's a hierarchy at work. That there's a great and powerful organization of high-end hotels and resorts that build their facilities wherever they want and push out the weaker, less profitable backpacking and mid-range establishments. Like a great and powerful nation bullying its less powerful neighbors. But that's the wrong analogy. In fact, we don't really even need an analogy because we all know exactly what this process is: gentrification. Yes, the term isn't entirely correct here because most of the small businesses that catered to the backpacking crowd are also owned by locals, and sometimes the larger businesses that are catering to the wealthy are renting their spaces. But the general concept of the highly profitable businesses pushing out those less able to pay rents, even as the presence of the businesses that cater to the wealthy drives up the rent and accelerates the process.

I'm going to wrap up this entry here because I have no idea where I was going this. Has any of you know 2020 has been a very disruptive year. I believe I began to write this post thinking the virus would pass and that I would want to use the time I spent in Southeast Asia to talk about other issues but it turns out the virus itself became the story of 2020 and probably 2021 so I'm going to conclude this post and try to start posting next week with more relevant information thanks for reading this car far more brief in the future.