I’m setting down an account of my journey through this virus era. I’m piecing it together as I go through photos, a very few journal entries I made, and my wife, Jill, and my recollections. This story began in the May 7, 2021 post.
The next few days on Boracay are kind of a blur. I have a bunch of pictures of cats, sunsets, and beach scenes. I vaguely recall talking to my father and mother on my father’s birthday. I think we talked about the virus spreading in China briefly. A sense of nervousness about it was setting in because cases were popping up in various cities across China. The population was spreading it with the Chinese New Year travels. People were fleeing Wuhan (where it was first detected). Jill and I were due to return to Shenzhen on the 25th of January and we were questioning the safety of going back already. I still didn’t think it was too serious but Jill was starting to think differently.
We still had a trip to Bali planned for our holiday. Jill was nervous that if we returned to China for a week, Indonesia may not let us fly there. Jill had brought her computer to Boracay. She was working on a paper for her graduate program. If she didn’t have the computer we would have returned to Shenzhen. Instead, we decided that we could just return to Manila and rent another apartment. Flights from Manila to Bali were cheap, especially one-way flights. All we had to do was forgo our booked Manila to Shenzhen flight and the Shenzhen to Bali flight. We were going to hide in Manila for a week then fly directly to Bali.
No problem, there was no virus in Manila. There was no virus in the Philippines at all. There was no virus in Indonesia, we still had three weeks of holiday left, this would all blow over by then.
Here are some more pictures of our final days on Boracay.
Loving it! Great writing and super cool pictures. Nice to travel back in time and through your eyes and words.