Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Sunday started like any other day under a Restricted Movement Order in a barely-familiar foreign country. There was breakfast and screen time and generally low expectations. Then we heard about Peru. The news reported that Americans (and others) in Peru were effectively stranded. There were no commercial flights available for them to depart and due to “optics,” according to the stories, the US government did not want to send in a military plane to evacuate them. Then we heard about Singapore. Several sources informed us that Singapore had revised its COVID measures and would prohibit even transiting (connecting) between flights for foreigners. Our main exit strategy had been eliminated. We had decided on Friday (March 20) that we would give ourselves a break for deliberating on our plans until Monday (March 23) but here we were on Sunday back at it. It's eerie to read the posts from Friday and Saturday in light of what's transpired since. What if Malaysia extends the RMO...

00.36 - Elise has found me sitting at the kitchen table eating ice cream from the tub. I haven't slept yet, mostly because yesterday ended with an epic fight with my son and I'm confronting my shortcomings as a parent. Also, living in pseudo-lockdown is hard. A friend has sent us a link to a news story reporting that the State Department is about to set a worldwide Level 4 warning, recommending all US Citizens return to the States or prepare to "shelter in place indefinitely." Awesome. 03.30 - After hours of talking at the kitchen table, we're finally laying on a bed in a dark room. The pace of conversation is slowing. Soon we'll give up and fall asleep. 05.30 - Cate appears bedside, having had a nightmare. After a attempting to sleep with three in the bed, Elise gives up and moves to the living room. For those of you keeping score, that was about 3 hours of sleep in the early evening and about two in the early morning. Yay! 09.00 - I get out of bed and ...

The purpose of writing this post is personal and selfish. I just want to record the details of a day that felt like a big deal before, during and after. The Prime Minister of Malaysia held a press conference last night at 10pm and announced a series of measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. We already knew Singapore was closing its borders in a significant way. Now Malaysia announced that nonessential activities (not just travel) would be restricted starting 26 hours later. Among other things this means Legoland is closing for at least 14 days, which is a major change in our expectations for our time here! As far as we could understand immediately, the only things open were going to be grocery stores and maybe banks. My first action was to rent a car. I had a fear that the taxi services (we use Grab) would be suspended and we'd be really stuck. Then we started a shopping list. It felt like preparing for a hurricane, which is exactly how some of our Floridian tribe-ma...

Now is as good a time as ever to get back to the basics. By now, as you may have heard, there's a global pandemic endangering the lives of people with compromised respiratory systems (like my 99.5 year old grandfather and our nearly-six year old nephew) and the economies of, well, basically everywhere. To date, our experience has been very different than most of our peers in America. When we arrived in Singapore in mid-February the country was already mobilized to contain the risks, mainly through personal hygiene but also social distancing. In Cambodia and Vietnam, where many people wear masks on a daily basis because of pollution, our guides told us that the biggest change was that tourism was way down, mostly because the Chinese were barred from traveling. So over the last two months, this has been an everyday concern for us as we have traveled between and within countries in Asia. Our kids have gotten used to washing their hands many, many times a day and occasionally ...

The influence of Chinese culture has grown as we've moved north through Vietnam, as we were told it would. Upon arrival, we were told it was an auspicious day: The eighth day of the lunar calendar, the first day of the month of March and a Sunday. As we drove in from the airport, we saw cars - even those traveling on the highway - festooned with flowers. And I mean hundreds of flowers in elaborate patterns! When we went for a walk around the nearby lake (a novelty in the middle of this crowded part of a crowded city), everywhere we saw people dressed as if for prom, or a wedding but really just for the eighth/first; I haven't yet found out why but the dressed up people were almost all wearing black and white. I'm sorry I took no pictures of this but here are some shots from our walk. We passed this about three-quarters of our way through the one mile loop around the lake. Henry was very eager to reach it. Lily's "12 on 6" face was inspired by ...

Okay. Take a deep breath. (Unless you assume the face mask on the person next to you is to protect you from them instead of them from you.) It's February 28th and the news of a flulike disease has been spreading faster than the disease itself for more than a month now. I want to write about this at length, in part to document my feelings at this particular moment in time but also to communicate those feelings to spectators who express their concern and curiosity to us on a regular basis. First, please understand that my viewpoint is cynical. Since the beginning of time, news media in any form has had a singular motive: sell. Journalist friends and friends of journalism: I do not speak ill of thee. But if you go to the New York Times website, there has been a flashing red box for weeks announcing breaking news on the subject. Sometimes there is something new to report but mostly there is just a new derivative of the same limited information. But sell, sell, sell means headlines ...

The sign says "Please do not leave your children unattended." We're smiling because, technically speaking, we complied with this rule. Read on for more. On Tuesday (2/25), we were on a bus at 6:30am to the Ho Chi Minh City airport for a short flight to Danang for the next segment of our itinerary. We were glad to be done walking on the semi-existent sidewalks of HCMC.  Without customs to navigate, our arrival in a second Vietnamese airport lacked all the drama of the first. We easily met our guide, boarded a bus and drove about 40 minutes to our hotel in the beach community of Hoi An. Along the way our guide offered interesting commentary on all sorts of tours and activities available to us during our stay. After checking into our hotel, we rode taxis to the old town. Most of old town Hoi An is closed to cars so we had a few blocks to walk from the taxi stand to a restaurant. After eating, which included some local specialities, we began a short walking t...