Thailand – Cambodia 2020

It’s been three years since my mother asked me to take her to Asia. She had never been to the continent (neither had I for that matter), and she felt I owed her a trip since it had been a while since I took her to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. When asked where in Asia she wanted to go, she was as elusive as always. “Ahh, I don’t know. I don’t want to go to someplace that looks like New York City or Paris. Hmmm, maybe Japan?” Yes I scratched my head at that one.

I thought it odd that my mother wanted to go to Asia. She is such a picky eater. What could she possibly eat? And in Japan? And why Japan? So I pressed on. “Well what exactly do you want to do? To see?” The response? “Oh, nothing, it’s just that I haven’t been anywhere in Asia”.

So not having much of a guideline with which to become a travel agent with I decided to craft a trip that I would enjoy modified to include her interests – shopping and cooking. Along the way, I strung along my sister M’sa, and here we are now, three years later, off to Thailand and Cambodia.

But what timing?!

January 2020 and the news is full of reports of a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), first identified in Wuhan, China, that is rapidly spreading and making a lot of people very sick with respiratory illness including pneumonia and respiratory failure. When I first heard of it in my infectious disease circles just as we entered the New Year, I opined how fortuitous it was that I did not book our tickets on Chinese airlines which had been cheaper but would have included layovers in China. At the time, there was no human-to-human transmission, but I decided to play it safe. Stockpiled hand wipes, bleach wipes, and got a few surgical masks, just to be extra.

Then about a week later, it was reported that not only had human-to-human transmission occurred (including among healthcare workers in protective gear taking care of the severely ill stricken by this virus) but there had been a few deaths. Oh no! I told my sister jokingly that we were going to have to steer clear of Chinese tourists.

But no joke. A couple days later it was reported in the international news that a Chinese woman had been intercepted on arrival to Thailand sick with the novel coronavirus. Great! So now, I asked my nurses at work for N95 respirator masks which offer better protection than surgical masks.

So where are we now? There has been an exponential growth in the number of people infected with the novel coronavirus in China, more deaths there, reports of infected people not only in Thailand, but also USA, Japan, Australia, France, and latest Canada. In addition, this past week, China took the drastic steps of first quarantining the city of Wuhan, then a couple days later several other cities, and now cancelling Chinese New Year celebrations slated for this weekend.

Click here for a real-time tracker of global cases of 2019-nCoV.

I began to ask myself this week if it would be prudent to cancel the trip. But luckily my mom and my sister were not freaking out and my dad in Ghana was not offering any protest. Thank goodness. Rationally, we should be fine. Of course, heightened awareness of our environment and personal hygiene. My luggage has never been so full of hand wipes. So here goes nothing. If all else fails, travel insurance with medical evacuation to the rescue. Just saying!