What's Up Al ? 遊記隨筆 生活點滴

Making a quick escape from the choking atmosphere of home - mindless grabs of toilet rolls and rice, impossibility of finding and buying face masks as well as the very real threat of contracting yet-unknown organisms from Nature ! A chilly morning flight took us away from all these miseries and landed us in a landmark condominium in Naklua, north of Pattaya where we only saw masks far and few between, an inviting pool and long beach walks awaited us and at last, we could gently ease our tense and nervous muscles. Surprise, surprise, our landlord was another Russian, Ilia and he was mega-helpful in finding us a rice cooker and settled us in real good. We walked in the welcoming fresh air and sunny weather to Terminal 21 for a hearty Pad-Thai and shopped enough for a few days so we could just sit back, read, watch some Talent and enjoy our Ballantine's ! We saw many street signs as well as notices and even a video in the supermarket, pledging support for the fight against the now infamous virus (Wuhan Add Oil 武漢 加油 !). We spent a day at the famous Sanctuary Of Truth, a majestic wooden temple by the sea (with fashionable construction helmet a must-wear), just some 30 minutes' walk away; oddly enough, on the way there in the middle of Naklua village, we passed through an orthodox Russian church (!) with its beautiful domes; else we just enjoyed our beach walks and the beautiful and large pool and did lots of exercises. 
At the same time, as we followed the news around the world, there was an un-settling feeling slowly creeping through at the back of our mind - infected cases around the world began to increase multi-folds and governments not heeding to good isolation practices and still allowed football matches, large scale rallies on the International Women's Day, Mardi Gras in New Orleans to take place and these countries eventually being swamped with a tidal wave of patients whilst the situations in China and Hong Kong stablised. There was disbelief in the air as we scanned the news everyday and we felt incredulous as we saw events un-raveling in the world like watching a train crashing in slow motion ! After a good old debate between ourselves, we decided to stick with our plan to go home and would not prolong our stay - turned out to be the wise move to make as we witnessed our world slowly turned on its head with much head scratching as we scrutinised and digested the daily reported data and information. We were lost for words and head spinning at the un-thinkable potential fallout as we boarded the flight home ... Anyway, enjoy a few photos from our trip below.