© Words and Photographs by Jack Picone
During September 2021, I spent fourteen days doing a COVID-19 mandatory quarantine stint in a Bangkok hotel. Of course, worse things can happen to you. That said, I suffer no great phobias - except one - claustrophobia.
I recall the grim reality that this was happening as the hotel room door was closed with me implanted inside.
Each day that followed one before seemed to become longer in duration. A few days into the fourteen-day stretch, the walls seemed to be closing in on me. The experience became 'challenging.' It was of little solace that several of my friends texted me and said, "they would kill' to be forced to stay in a Hotel room for fourteen days. Thank you, "friends."
What followed was a cocktail of anxiety, anger [over the absurdness of how overly long the quarantine time was and knowing in other counties you were permitted to do home quarantine], surrealness, and pivoting positivity and negativity. An enduring feeling was one of feeling utterly 'trapped.' Another curious feeling was being totally dependent on the hotel and medical staff in full hazmat attire who were on the other side of the door. I equated my dependency on them to deliver food and conduct COVID-19 tests to and on me respectively as a form of enforced infantilism.
It occurred to me that doing mandatory COVID-19 quarantine in a hotel room must be as close as many of us will ever get to being in jail.
On November 1, 2021, Thailand began allowing vaccinated international travellers from one of the 63 approved countries to enter without having to do lengthy quarantine. However, they still needed to book a room in a government-approved hotel for one night while they awaited the results of their Covid-19 test. Too easy!
December 21, 2021, The Thai government announced that it would stop allowing quarantine-free visits to the country due to the global spread of omicron, the highly infectious COVID-19 variant. Doing quarantine is back.
At the time of writing, Thailand has suspended applications for the Test and Go (quarantine-free) travel program from December 22 to January 4, 2022. International travellers must now quarantine for 7 to 10 days, depending on vaccination status and country of origin.
Circling back to my conversation concerning doing hotel COVID-19 quarantine. Do I have any positive advice to offer? Nothing striking, sadly. That said, firstly, seven to ten days is a more psychologically palatable time than fourteen days; secondly, how confronting it is or not will depend on you. As previously mentioned by my friends, some people would kill to be relieved of their independence and the decision making and incarcerated in a hotel room. To them, it will be liberating.
If you are not that person, [as I am not], I found throwing myself into work, watching films I'd wanted to watch forever but never did, writing to friends and family I had meant to but hadn't and reading, reading, reading all seemed to mitigate the unmitigable.
