Hubert Salas

For the last two weeks we were in Vietnam. The first week in the crazy busy Ho Chi Minh City and the second in Da Nang near Hoi An. Ho Chi Minh is a cool city with nice restaurants, great shopping and a lot of hidden French colonial buildings. While being in Vietnam, the outbreak of Corona got worse and worse worldwide, so a lot of country’s were closing their boarders. In Da Nang we saw that Vietnam was expanding their actions against Corona by closing almost all tourist attractions. With only two confirmed cases when we were there, Da Nang and our hotel (Hyatt Regency) felt very safe for our family. Hyatt, with a capacity of 1500 guests, only had a occupancy rate of 15% so we had enough space around us 😄. In total there were only 45 cases in Vietnam with a population of 100 million people.

On March 17th the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs asked all Dutch to return home, so we called the Dutch ambassy in Vietnam. When they told us that we could be quarantained in military barracks if they would find a Corona case at Hyatt, we knew what to do 🙈. She casually said that the good news was, that the tourists got three meals a day and there was running water most of the time with occasionally some WIFI and electricity 😳 OMG 😁!!

Now what... going back to Holland was not our wish with 2050 cases and a fast increase of cases because of the slow reaction of the Dutch government 🐢. We were actually very very surprised at the weak measures they took in
the beginning and how fast Corona was spreading in Holland/Europe. Also, some people can be soooo ignorant 😩. Wow! Stay at home!

After some brainstorming we chose Singapore as our next destination. Why? The hospitals are great, they are acclaimed worldwide for their strict measures they take to fight the spread of Corona (only 430 cases), we can stay 3 months if necessary without a visa and we have friends living there. One challenge, we would be issued a 14-days stay-home notice. We have to show proof of our residence booking at the customs of Singapore and if you break the stay-home rule you will be convicted to a fine of 6400 euro or to imprisonment or both 😅. At booking.com we saw a occupancy rate of 99% in Singapore 😱 There were only 4 options with a balcony, so we chose the largest haha! 96 m2 for 14 days with two Jack Russell’s 🤣.

Because the embassy told us we had to keep in mind that they could always decide not to let us in the country, we were a little nervous at arrival. I chose the line with a female customs officer and let Hubs do the magic 😜 We’re in!!

During our taxi ride to the apartment, we saw that life goes on in Singapore. We truly hope that we can enjoy Singapore after the two weeks, carefully offcourse... And let’s hope and pray that everyone on our flight was in good health.

So now we are two weeks in quarantaine. Plenty of time to finally finish up the photo uploads of our adventures in Thailand 🥰. Vietnam will follow soon, together with some short video’s. We just received the news that Singapore is closing it’s boarder tomorrow, so we where just in time 🤗. We will stay here for one month and then we’ll see...

Dear friends and family from all over the world, please stay safe we think of you ❤️.Read more