Rewind: How We Ended Up In A Vietnamese Government Quarantine Camp | S3 E1

This is a special episode, maybe mini-season, of Seven Million Bikes direct from quarantine in Saigon. This was recorded on a phone recorder and I don't have a laptop for edits so it's a live interview with my wife, Adrie Mackay.

Adrie and I left Vietnam on March 9th for what was meant to be three weddings in three weeks on three continents; going to New Zealand, then the USA then back to Vietnam for the final wedding. 

Weighing up the risks of the coronavirus we decided to start out trip, but almost immediately those plans changed as things developed rapidly in the world. And continued to change daily, then hourly, then almost by the minute as we tried to get back to Vietnam as soon as we could before the borders closed and we were stranded in New Zealand. In hindsight we should have listened to those red flags and stayed in Vietnam.

Adrie tells the story of how we got back into Vietnam, barely, and why we are in quarantine after the most anxiety inducing and stressful period of our lives together. 

We feel ridiculously lucky that we made it into Vietnam at literally the 11th hour before the border effectively shut at midnight to foreigners.

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Adrie and the presenter of Seven Million Bikes, Niall have been married for nearly 7 years, living in Vietnam for 4 of those, calling this country home. They have a beautiful French Bulldog called Biscuit who is waiting for them to get out of quarantine at her best friends house. 
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Theme music composed by Lewis Wright.
Main Cover Art designed by Niall Mackay and Le Nguyen.
Episode art designed by Niall Mackay.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:37

Thanks for listening to Discover Vietnam. I really, really appreciate it that you've chosen to listen to this podcast. We started in two thousand and nineteen. I did it just as a hobby for some fun, and uh now six years later we're still going strong with over three hundred and fifty episodes. We're in the top five per cent of podcasts worldwide and the longest running English language podcast in Vietnam. So thank you again so much for tuning in to this episode. Because we have so many amazing episodes in the back catalogue that are just sitting there and they only get a couple of listens a week, which is still amazing. But I want to bring them to you so we don't lose any of those amazing conversations to time. So every week we're gonna bring you a podcast episode. So we're gonna bring you an old episode from the back catalogue, completely unchanged for you to enjoy. So it's gonna be quite fun because the further back you go, the quality of the audio will be worse and worse. But I hope you enjoy it, and you'll even hear some old episodes with biscuits snoring in the background as well, which I know some of our fans love as well. So enjoy this podcast. Don't forget, follow, subscribe, share the episode as well. And you can still join our Patreon. You can become a bopsawdale. So go to patreon.com forward slash a Vietnam Podcast and join Discover Vietnam and become a bopsawdale. Enjoy the episode. Cheers. Thanks for listening to Discover Vietnam. As you probably know by now, my name is Neil McKay and I'm your host. I started this podcast in 2019 just as a hobby, and from there I was able to become a full-time podcast production agency called 7 Million Bikes Podcasts. So this podcast, Discover Vietnam, is sponsored by me, my own company. If you are interested in starting your own show, then please go to sevenmillionbikes.com or send me a message. Um I'd love to set up a free call with you to discuss how we can help you create the best podcast possible.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Alright, that's my blurb, that's my ad. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. Cheers.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Welcome to another episode of Seven Million Bikes, a Saigon podcast. My name's Neil Mackay, I'm your host as always, and this is an extra special episode. Uh you for regular listeners you've noticed that there's not been an episode in a while. Um, been really busy, doing lots of comedy nights, among other things, and then obviously, as everyone knows, then the coronavirus struck, and it's kind of put a stop to a lot of things right now, not just in Vietnam and around the world. So this is an extra special episode because and it might turn into a special season, we'll see how we go. But this episode is being recorded from quarantine. Um, so my wife right now are currently in quarantine. We have been for eight days now, we have six days left. Um, we have no complaints about that. We expected to be here, the the food's awesome, we get fed three times a day, we're isolated in our room, we stay away from each other, and we're all healthy. We've had a test so far, we're waiting to find out if that's negative, which fingers crossed it will be. But I thought for this episode, um, I'm gonna introduce and I'm gonna interview um my wife. So here I have Adri with me, and she's going to uh tell us basically a bit of the story, and I'll I'm sure I'll chip in as well of how we ended up in quarantine because it was quite dramatic living through it, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_05 4:02

Hello. Uh yeah, it was pretty anxiety inducing, to say the least.

SPEAKER_03 4:10

Yeah, so so what we're gonna gonna gonna share was is um not really a little bit about what it's like in quarantine, probably will actually, but mostly we're gonna just share the kind of like what happened the ten days or so before we got into quarantine was maybe the most stressful of our life, um, partly because of the changing situation that that was happening every single day around the world and in Vietnam. Um that lend that ended up landing us in quarantine. So let's go back, right? So tell Adri what what was our ill-fated plan originally?

SPEAKER_05 4:45

Okay, so if we go back uh before this whole pandemic started, um our original planned short story version was we had three weddings in three different countries, actually on three different continents in three weeks, three Saturdays in a row. So we've known about two of the three weddings for nearly up to close to a year now, and our plan was to go to New Zealand for two weeks, um, attend wedding number one, your cousin's wedding. Um, my cousin-in-law, I guess. Uh fly on Monday the 23rd to the US, spend a couple days in LA, go to Texas, attend my cousin's wedding on the 28th, which coincidentally is today. Um, and then after a week in El Paso, we are planning to fly back to Saigon to attend wedding number three, our friends, um, which was going to be on April 4th. And those were our grand planned plans, and unfortunately, they did not go to plan.

SPEAKER_03 5:51

So, so we'll go back, so we were planning to leave on March 9th, March 10th. March 9th. March 9th, right? So on Monday night. Um, uh, and though, you know, so we we've posted our story on Reddit, and we've had lots of support on there, um, but we've also had some criticism um from people off of Reddit as well saying why did we go, basically calling us idiotic, saying that we were selfish and stupid for going. Um, and so if you're listening to this and you're thinking, why the hell did they go? We'll just provide a little bit of a context as to what was happening around the 9th and 10th of March, um, just to kind of explain why we still got on that on that trip. So, do you want to explain a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_05 6:35

Yeah, I mean, I guess the first thing I would say is if we had our flights originally booked for the 10th or the 11th even of March, like we absolutely probably wouldn't have gone. Um obviously, days and weeks leading up to our departure, I had um been following the news really closely, just as everyone else had. Um schools here had clearly been closed and Vietnam was taking it quite seriously. But I don't know in hindsight if if the way the seriousness that Vietnam was um uh assessing the pandemic, or at that time it wasn't a pandemic, um, gave us maybe a false sense of security to travel because we felt like we were coming from a relatively unaffected place, transiting through Australia, which at the time on March 9th had very few cases, and our final destination at the time was New Zealand, which only had five cases as well. And so, I mean, as as most people would maybe agree with, um, a lot of the government response to a pandemic for to the to sorry to the outbreak affects how it's dealt with in the country. And from our personal perspective, it seemed like the three countries that we would be traveling within um were relatively um attacking the the outbreak in a smart way, I guess the governments were. Um I think when we left, we we were pretty much fifth maybe when we left we were 60-40 going to continue on to the US, and pretty much when we touched down in New Zealand, maybe within a day or two, it was that percentage of going to the US was rapidly shrinking, and then within maybe three days after arriving in New Zealand, it was pretty much 100% we were going to cancel the second leg of our journey. So that was very clear pretty early on, I think.

SPEAKER_03 8:26

And we were given warnings before we left that the borders could be closing. We were warned by some close family that that was a possibility. Um and we saw there there were red flags, there was a few things that we were like, are we doing the right thing by going? Um like kind of Adri mentioned, we'd had this trip planned like a year in the making. It was uh we hadn't been back to the US for three years to see Adri's family, so that was obviously a big thing. We actually lived in New Zealand and that's kind of our home country, so we were excited to go back and see friends there and see my cousin get married. Um so around that time, people were still travelling, you know what I mean. Like for the wedding in New Zealand, there was people still flying in after us, nothing was shut down. Um, and but the but as Adri said, things changed pretty rapidly and then just changed every single day after that. So that was kind of the situation at the time. Um now this is where the drama started before we even left. So, do you want to talk about uh my drama just trying to get out of the country?

SPEAKER_05 10:19

Yeah, I mean we had a few red flags that in hindsight the universe was probably telling us don't go, don't go, don't go. Um unfortunately we decided to go. Um but before we even left, um we actually had quite a long layover in Sydney, Australia. And when we booked our tickets a couple months back, um I knew at the time that we probably needed to get a visa because our layover was longer than eight hours. But I'd kind of forgotten about it because we were simply transiting through the country. Until a few days before, like literally two days before, I was like, oh no, we haven't gotten a visa. So I quickly went online and just checked. And I knew in from previous experience, me personally, I've gotten visas for Australia that have come through uh pretty quickly, like almost instantaneously. So um I followed the the guidelines on the immigration website. It basically pointed me to a transit visa, which ended up being a really uh complicated um application process to say the least. I freaked out a bit, sent it to Neil, asked him to fill it out as well. We both submitted the application and it came back saying 8 to 14 days processing time. And we're like, uh, what have we done? Um and it's Australia, you're not getting in without a visa. So we thought, well, we might as well just apply for the electronic um visa, which would be basically for like a holiday or a tourist visa, essentially. I applied, um, and sure enough, instantaneously it came back approved. This is on Saturday. Um, Neil applied, and because he has a different passport to me, or because you have a different passport to me, um, it wasn't instantaneous. And, you know, holding our breaths from Saturday night, Sunday into Monday when he was finally able to call the immigration office in Australia, and they said that actually it's a public holiday in Australia, and most of the offices around this uh around the country are closed.

SPEAKER_03 12:24

So of all the days when I needed my visa to be processed as fast as possible, I called up immigration and she's like, uh, it's a public holiday in four out of six states in Australia, so it's probably not gonna get done today.

SPEAKER_05 12:37

And our flight was that night, so yeah, so it was highly unlikely that Neil's visa was gonna be approved.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

Um at the same time, a dog needed surgery that day.

SPEAKER_05 12:48

Oh, yeah, okay. Okay, we're talking about that now.

SPEAKER_03 12:51

Well, I'm just saying that was like the added stress, the added pressure was like a dog also needed to go and have surgery and have like a a wart removed, so it was just like so stressful trying to figure all that out.

SPEAKER_05 13:01

I got hit by a motorbike on Friday. I could barely walk. That was fun. The Friday before we left.

SPEAKER_03 13:07

Oh geez, talk about it. I forgot all about that. That was so long ago. You can talk about that, and we will go on.

SPEAKER_05 13:14

We were doing uh errands around the city on Friday getting ready to go. Because I work on the weekends, and um we were walking uh it's not we're walking, driving down Daytam, and I was sitting on the back of Neil's bike, and one of those drivers that you just curse at when you see them driving past you came too close and clipped the my foot, and um I thought my toe was broken or half of my foot was broken. Turns out it was just soft tissue damage, but that threw a total spanner in the work, so you had to go to the emergency room basically at Columbia Medical.

SPEAKER_03 13:49

I forgot all about that.

SPEAKER_05 13:50

I got to ride a wheelchair for the first time.

SPEAKER_03 13:53

Yeah, guy driving down the street like an absolute maniac, no helmet, of course, tiny little narrow street, part of Dayton, uh on the wrong side of the road, and then clips Adri. And I I saw it happen, Adri didn't because she was looking the other way I was driving, and I turned around and I thought I was gonna see her leg just ripped up and down the leg, so I was thankful to turn around and see it hadn't been, but he'd managed to kind of almost rip her toe off in the process. So that was just the Friday before we left. Saturday was the visa drama, then our dog needed surgery. So sorry, so then we go to the airport.

SPEAKER_05 14:26

Yeah, so on Monday, um we basically were like, well, let's just Monday was really stressful because we could not figure out a way around the visa issue apart from booking two completely new flights, um, which obviously would have been quite costly, and then also because we were aware of the you know epidemic and the border restrictions, not border restrictions so much at that point, but we knew that we didn't want to transit well, we couldn't transit anywhere in Asia, like just anywhere in Asia. So looking at the flights was quite restrictive. We are somehow still trying to get through Australia because we really wanted to limit where we are traveling um at that time. And so anyway, we went to the airport, we tried to check in. I checked in because I was like, well, we might as well go anyway. If one of us is gonna have to re-book tickets, one is better than two. And uh they wouldn't let Neil check in because he didn't have a visa and which we expected. Which we expected, yeah, because you absolutely need one if you're um transiting Australia more than eight hours. Take note if we ever have a long playover in the distant future after the pandemic is over.

SPEAKER_03 15:37

We thought they might have like a magic number that they could call and somehow get an instantaneous visa, but um it did not. So uh go on.

SPEAKER_05 15:47

Yeah, so uh luckily we had an onward ticket from Sydney to Wellington, and I gave the woman at the check-in counter my e-ticket so she could sh so she could see that I was continuing on and not staying in um Australia. And she checked me in, she gave me my boarding pass, and then my um bag tag came back and she said, Your bag is checked all the way through to Wellington. And I was like, Oh, so I don't actually need to go pick up my bags and recheck them in and go through customs, and she said, No, you don't have to, it's checked, so it's fine. I was like, Oh, okay. So light bulb went off in my head, and I realized Neil could still get on the flight, but we just needed to get him out of Sydney in under eight hours because he didn't have a flight, sorry, uh a visa. So we ran quickly, sat down, had no phone credit, had to use the spotty airport Wi-Fi, and then it was just frantically flight searching for an affordable, realistically affordable, less than what we had previously expected to pay, like $800 or something for a cheaper flight, basically just to get him out so he wouldn't need that visa. And sure enough, we were able to find one um that transited through Auckland instead, so Sydney to Auckland, Auckland, Wellington. Um, called up Air New Zealand, had a little bit of time on the phone, and we're able to rebook him on that flight.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

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SPEAKER_03 18:16

We haven't even left the country yet, and we were already having so much drama. Uh there's not one point of this was relaxing, and as I mentioned before, a dog who people who follow us on Facebook or see any pictures, or you know that Biscuit has appeared on previous episodes when she's normally snoring in the background, she's just like everything to us. So the fact that we had to leave her with her amazing dog sitter, Danielle, who we were very comfortable leaving her with, that was just the added pressure as well. So, but we finally managed to get it uh get it to work. I got out of the country, we got on the flight. Uh turns out that my flight, because I had a shorter transit than A3, I got to uh Wellington four hours before.

SPEAKER_05 18:56

I was still sitting at the terminal, the gate at Sydney Airport when Neil was already having a beer with our friends in New Zealand.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Plane fever.

SPEAKER_05 19:06

I was so annoyed.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

So we we got to Wellington fine. So we stayed with our friends, Nora and Cartwright, who are unbelievable. Um and then from then on, that would so that would be the night of the 10th, or the night of the 9th?

SPEAKER_04 19:23

Uh we arrived in New Zealand on the 10th. Yeah, yeah, the evening of the 10th.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

And then um, so as I said, we're moving, we're all going there for my my cousin's wedding, so she's obviously Scottish like me. Her now husband is a Kiwi and they live in Australia, so people are flying over from Australia, people flying over from Scotland, people coming from the US, all coming to New Zealand um for their wedding on the uh 17th. So what happens? Was it 17th?

SPEAKER_05 19:51

21st.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

21st? Oh yeah, sorry, 21st, yeah. Dates don't mean anything to me anymore on the 21st. So uh what happened then? How did things start unraveling once we arrived in New Zealand?

SPEAKER_05 20:04

Um, well I've been like hyper, maybe over hyper active actively reading the news for the last few months, and um that didn't change when we got to New Zealand, um, in large part because things were escalating around the world massively on the 10th, 11th, 12th. I think the 10th, possibly in the US, which it would have come back, it would have come through quite I think it must have come through on the 11th in New Zealand because of the time difference, but I think the 10th was the day when like March Madness shut down, sports around the world, uh around the country were being cancelled in the US, like it was really escalating your in the US. Obviously, Europe had already started to escalate. Um not as much maybe in the UK, but like for for me from looking at it from a faraway perspective, like shit was getting real. I think the 10th or the 11th was the day that it was now it was um declared a pandemic around the world, which was like ah crap. And then quickly thereafter, like Tom Hanks was like the first celebrity to be um tested positive for COVID, and he was in Australia at the time, and I was like, well, that's really close. I didn't even realize it was much of an issue in Australia. And then yeah, sure enough, I mean our first couple days were a little bit blissful because we were still quite isolated in New Zealand, it still felt safe and normal and comfortable, like things hadn't gotten there.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

But in terms of people in New Zealand as well at the time, like it really wasn't like the difference between when we got to New Zealand and when we left. Now, obviously, now the country's as we speak, now the country's in lockdown. When we were there on the 11th and 12th, which geez, it's not like how long ago was that? It's like two weeks two weeks ago. Life in New Zealand was completely normal. No one was really talking much about social distancing.

SPEAKER_05 21:53

People didn't know the reaction, like obviously COVID was kind of a new topic of conversation in New Zealand when we were there, and when we told people what we'd been through in Vietnam in terms of like schools had been shut for two months, or well, six weeks rather, um, and and just how it had already affected a lot of people's livelihood in Vietnam and businesses and and children um and teachers, people were had no idea. They were just completely like surprised that we'd been dealing with COVID for two months already since the end of Tet. And um, but that that quickly, very, very quickly changed. Like, probably in the first couple days we were there, it was still kind of like a joke the way it is most places around the world before it really hits, like, oh Corona, ha ha. Like, still kind of funny, and then that literally every single day that kind of changed.

SPEAKER_03 22:48

Yeah, I mean, I think that I I've said this a few times, just when coronavirus kind of first started here and they started shutting the schools. I mean, I was making jokes about it being overreaction. I remember asking a whole audience of 20-30 people, and does everyone think it's an overreaction? Everyone's like, Yeah, yeah, it's an overreaction. I'm making jokes about it now. I absolutely regret that. Don't regret it, but uh, I was obviously I now don't think it was an overreaction. But so I think the point is that you're making we've been living with this, we'd gone through that period of denial of like this isn't that serious in Vietnam, and we've come through now, like, right, okay, this is something to be taken seriously with. But I think in definitely in New York Zealand and Australia and we'll talk a bit more about even a couple of weeks later, they'll still weren't taking it too serious. Um we kind of started to feel really, really awkward in New Zealand because um and again Adrian was the one doing most of the reading Facebook groups, news up to date with everything, that things started to get really awkward for us, right?

SPEAKER_05 23:47

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to, but um because we've been dealing with it maybe longer than some other people had in Australia, New Zealand, it seemed like and we we are to the point where we've taken it very seriously, um even like the way we traveled was different to people who traveled on, say, from like Sydney to Wellington, the the difference in passengers from Vietnam to Sydney were like really different. But um yeah, I mean I think the the kind of nonchalance blase-ness of it in New Zealand, which I can completely understand because I mean the sixth case occurred when we were there on like the s the 15th of March was the sixth confirmed case. So like people didn't think it was a thing really, and then obviously that quickly escalated. But yeah, I think because we'd been exposed to the news and the I mean it'd been quite close and we'd just been in it for so long, the nonchalant attitude of a lot of people that we came in contact with was a little bit unnerving and um yeah, kind of uncomfortable sometimes when people were just like I don't think we were social distancing distancing at that point, but I was very hyper-aware of like cleaning my hands, sanitizing, not sharing drinks, not touching other people's stuff, and people in New Zealand weren't doing that yet.

SPEAKER_03 25:15

Still sharing food and stuff like that a week later. Well, so and this is this is how quickly it escalated, right? So my sister flew in from Australia for the wedding, she was a bridesmaid on the 16th, Friday the 16th.

SPEAKER_05 25:29

You're doing the first date, no. No, Friday the 13th.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

Friday the 13th. She flew in on Friday the 13th, um uh and I won't say what she does, but she's quite high up in Australia in the in the health community, so she she's very aware of what's going on. She sits in high-level meetings, there was no travel restrictions at that point. She'd still flown over for the wedding, she was looking forward to it. She was aware, you know, that there were there were things went right in the world and that there was a looming problem. But at that point, Friday the 13th, she was still flying over from Australia, fully intending to be in New Zealand until after the wedding, which was going to be on the 21st. Um, this is how quickly it escalated. On the 14th, they had the hens party on the Saturday, and my sister got a phone call that night saying that she had to come back to Australia the next day. So she spent about 48 hours in New Zealand before she was told she had to come back again because she's high up in the health community, they needed her back. Um, but that's how short, that's how quickly it escalated that she was comfortable getting on a plane on the Friday, and by the Sunday, she was then having to fly back to Australia. On that same Sunday, we had relatives flew in from the USA just before the restrictions came into play. So then New Zealand put in restrictions that anyone that came in after the 14th had to self-isolate for 14 days. The 15th. After the 15th, and then a couple of days after that, then the Prime Minister of New Zealand recommended I think anyone that would come in after the 8th of March should self-isolate, but it wasn't enforced. I'm getting a doubtful look right now.

SPEAKER_05 27:04

Uh I'm I'm not entirely sure about that.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

But so the point is, if things were changing quickly. So my sister went back. Um, we had another bridesmaid flew in. She came in on the Saturday of the 14th. And again, because the situation was starting to change so rapidly, she decided to fly back on the 16th. So she spent, I think, less than 48 hours in New Zealand.

SPEAKER_05 27:23

She'd come all the way from the UK.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

She'd come all the way from Scotland and flew all the way back to Scotland. Um, and I think it was that second week where things in New Zealand really started to ramp up. Um by this point, Adri was pretty much like not sleeping almost.

SPEAKER_05 27:41

Um I I was sleeping, but it was really difficult. I would say that um like the only respite I got from following the news and thinking about like what should we do next? Are we doing the right thing? Should we stay? Should we go? Like, should we do this, that, and the other thing? Um, yeah, the only respite I got was like when I put my phone down and forced myself to try to go to sleep. But even that, like I would wake up in the middle of the night, check my phone, because we were dealing with so many different time zones. Obviously, we were in New Zealand, which is I think six hours ahead of Vietnam, um, and then obviously the US is like like 14 like 18 hours behind or something. But but um it just meant and it just meant that at any point of the day new news was coming out. So, like because we were six hours ahead in Wellington, the morning was quite quiet for us. But then as Vietnam started to wake up and and policy started to change and meetings started to happen, and things at work started to happen, and um you know, rumors started to swirl, we'd get like a whole bunch of messages starting from maybe like noon in New Zealand, and that would carry on like through the evening. Um, and so yeah, so I would wake up in the morning, it would be like, oh, let me read all the news that has happened overnight, and then midnight, midday, all the stuff would come through from Vietnam, and then obviously I was trying to keep track of the US. We, as I mentioned before, like we pretty much knew very quickly that we weren't gonna go to the US, so I was trying to keep that information a little bit at bay because um I was just so overwhelmed with the amount of information that I was trying to process and trying to decide what to do with. Um I mean, rightly or wrongly, like we had emotions from both sides and family ties on both sides, and like we just had so much stuff to kind of mentally assess, like if we were doing the right thing or not. Um, and it was yeah, so I would say like it was honestly that week in New Zealand was apart from maybe like the first and second day we were there, maybe three days, um, it was like the most anxiety-inducing mentally, physically, maybe not physically, but mentally mentally exhausting and emotionally wrenching days I've had in a very, very, very long time. Like dis distant memory. Um, and and it got to the point where it was actually like physically exhausting. The day before we left New Zealand on the 19th. Um, I mean, both you and I started to have like our okay, we're gonna save that for whatever.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Too far ahead. Skipping our head there. Well, I mean, yeah, at that point as well, I I would wake up after AJ, she'd be on her phone, and literally every morning I was waking up to like, oh my god, wait till you hear this. Like, I would wake up to bad news every day because Adri had been reading it all. Um, I mean, and it that was even like we had the they had the bat the hens party, we had the bachelor party on the 14th. Woke up in the morning of the 15th, I was with all the guys. Uh contact Adri, she's like, You need to contact your sister. I was like, oh my god, what now? Obviously, my sister had to go home. So that was just pretty much the norm. Was like every morning just waking up to like a new reality or a new new rules were coming into place. So that that was the so the 16th, it's Monday the 16th, that's when we changed our flight, right?

SPEAKER_05 31:05

Yeah, I mean like to be honest, I think we would have changed it sooner, but things were just we had the we were separated on the Saturday, you had to go to your thing super super early on Saturday, so all day, and then of course the the dude's stagdo rules were like cannot communicate with females, so barely was communicating all of Saturday. Um Sunday obviously we woke up to the news that um Neil's sister had to leave, so we were kind of dealing with that all day and just making sure she was able to like connect with family for at least a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Um yeah, because I mean it was just meant to be a relaxing time, right? And then suddenly I'm having a like drive across Wellington, which is like a half an hour drive to get from where I was, to then take my uncle to meet my sister and then go and have like a last-minute lunch and try and catch up. Then I haven't seen my sister in what like two years since the marketing cat. I haven't seen my sister in like two years, so I got to see her for maybe a grand total of less than an hour.

SPEAKER_05 32:00

More than that. We we hung out on Friday.

SPEAKER_03 32:03

Yeah, but anyway, not for not for long.

SPEAKER_05 32:06

So, um yeah, so then on Monday was the first kind of like free day that we had to really like try to think clearly, process all the information, decide what what we are gonna do and how we were gonna do it. So that's when we we decided to go to a travel agent to just get like an outside perspective opinion, which maybe I don't know was necessarily the right thing to do because they were completely oblivious to like what was happening in Vietnam. Um but it was just too much for like the two of us to deal with. So we knew first and foremost we'd already uh cancelled our flights from New Zealand to the US. We actually we tried to change them to on that existing airline to change it, reroute it back to Vietnam. Um, and we had maintained the date of the 23rd because that was the day we were gonna go to the US, and we thought, well, New Zealand is still quite safe, Vietnam is still quite safe, things are escalating around the world, but it seems to be okay in these three countries. Um, so we'll change our flights to go back after the wedding. Um that United is the airline we're on, doesn't really fly in Asia. We weren't able to do that, so we decided to go to the travel agent to see what they could pull up on their systems in terms of basically transiting only through the places we knew were safe to get into Vietnam. Obviously, a lot of Asian places had been, Asian countries and um transit places had been kind of already omitted. Um so ultimately we decided on a flight that transited. I was really hoping to transit only through Australia, but we ended up getting on Singapore Airlines, which transited through Australia and Singapore. Um and we booked that on the Monday.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

And that's right, and that at that point the rules, so those rules about what like obviously you couldn't come from Italy, Korea, um, I don't know about Korea, but Italy, Iran, we couldn't transit through Korea, Japan. Yeah, so that but so that when we booked those flights going through Singapore, and that was on the Monday, so just to highlight how rapidly things were changing, and that was fine on the Monday. And we booked that for the next so the wedding was on the Saturday, we're like, we'll do the wedding, which we planned for a year, and then we'll get out of here on Monday morning, we'll get back to Vietnam. And on that at that point, that was fine.

SPEAKER_05 34:21

It was, but I do remember explicitly asking the woman at the agency. Um, I said, if we if the airline cancels the flights on us, um, will they put us on another flight? The answer is yes. Um, what are the change fees and restrictions to the airfare that we're booking? Because we know that this everything is changing rapidly. So even though we booked for the 23rd, we knew at that point that there was a possibility that we wouldn't be flying on that date on that flight. Whether it was going to be after or before, we weren't sure, but like I was well aware of the fact that like we were kind of just booking a ticket as a placeholder, so we had a ticket out of the country. At least we're on a flight out of the country, and we knew that that was subject to change because everything was changing so quickly. Um and had we not had a wedding to attend, a family member's wedding to attend, we probably would have gotten out of there pretty quickly, I imagine.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

So then that brings us to the Tuesday. Um, I remember Tuesday night, we caught up with some friends, and by this point it was starting to be taken more seriously. Uh well Tuesday was St. Paddy's Day, and St. Paddy's Day goes off in Wellington, like that's a big deal. Um as everywhere is. But even so on the Monday though, even though maybe other St. Patrick's Day celebrations around the world were being cancelled, this is how far removed New Zealand was. In Wellington on Monday, everything was still go. All our friends were going out, everyone was making plans to meet up, and literally by Tuesday, like people were like, Yeah, no, I'm not going out anymore. Like, people were meant to be meeting, we'll text and say, No, well not everyone's staying home now. Like, this is just again the the speed of which everything changed. So we did go and meet with some friends, and and we did do an elbow bump, I remember, instead of a hug. I hadn't seen one of our friends in four years and gave them an elbow bump. So we're starting to become more aware. Um we were we were all getting quite worried at that point. We were like I said, but I still regret. We but I mean yeah, looking back in hindsight, I wish we'd just gotten out of there, but um we did go out, which I regret now as well. But thankfully, well, don't think we have we spread the disease, it doesn't look like um but that that was starting to become a concern as well, especially reading more and more about how people could be asymptomatic and then spread the disease. So that was starting to become more of a concern. I remember we went to an Irish bar, of course, and met our friend that we were staying with. And I remember going to the bathroom and just every time I went to the bathroom, just like religiously washing my hands and then just watching all these guys just come in, do the business and leave, and just being like, oh no, like this is just not a good situation. Like, people aren't getting it here. Like, if we're not social distancing at the very least, bloody wash your hands properly. Um so that was a Tuesday night.

SPEAKER_05 37:10

I think social distancing at that point in time was still really, really new there.

SPEAKER_03 37:13

Yeah, I don't even think that was.

SPEAKER_05 37:15

It was literally like that day, or maybe the day before, that it was kind of like people were starting to be like, oh okay, yeah, we should keep our distance from each other. And I mean I can't really remember now because everything has changed, my brain has turned to mush, but um I don't think we really knew the whole asymptomatic thing, or it wasn't as wide widely known until Yeah, because it was always like have you got a fever?

SPEAKER_03 37:39

Have you got a fever? Yeah, because you have chills.

SPEAKER_05 37:42

So much was like unless you have symptoms, blah blah blah. I think that asymptomatic thing has come out relatively recently in the last few weeks. Because I don't know, it just More so anyway. More so, but also like because it's been spread around Europe and there's a lot more like Western countries and English speaking news about the actual symptoms and how it happens and the spread of the disease and stuff. Um I yeah, I just don't think it was as wide known then because yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:11

Well, even today, it's 28th of March right now, I'm just reading Boris Johnson's got coronavirus. They're not testing people who's come into contact with, as is in the Guardian newspaper, and their reason is because they don't have symptoms yet. And I'm like, wait, hold on a minute. We're learning more and more that and especially in Vietnam, most of the new cases you're reading aren't people with symptoms, they're asymptomatic.

SPEAKER_05 38:32

So I think sorry, just I've no idea why they would not be testing people that Boris Johnson has come into contact with because being having symptoms is not like Well the again I think maybe that's still quite a new thing though, like new ish thing in the Western world, because I think before it was like this is the incubation period, but I think all the like they were saying like probably at some point you will show symptoms, whether it's two days or twelve days. But now I think what they're saying is people are getting it with either no symptoms at all, ever, or very, very, very few symptoms, and that's the scary thing, and I don't think that was as wide known um two and a half weeks ago when we were necessarily deciding to travel or not. Which obviously, as it started to come out probably when we were in New Zealand, it was terrifying to think, yeah, you could you could be just a carrier and be completely acidic.

SPEAKER_03 39:25

Yeah, I remember terrified. It was like we could just have been spreading this around everywhere. So that was Tuesday 17th, uh, and then this is where things really started to ramp up and take a massive dramatic turn. So I wake up Wednesday morning.

SPEAKER_05 39:38

No, I told you on Tuesday night.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 39:43

Uh I remember Neil was playing uh FIFA or something with our with our friend, and I was locked in the room frantically reading the news, of course, uh, like quite late on Tuesday evening. And then I came in the room and I was like, Neil, I have to tell you this now. And then he was like, Right, okay, I guess I'm going to bed. Um, and I said we have to wake up. So we were supposed to go on a wine tour with our friends and family, well, our with our family, the wedding party, um, on the Wednesday. We'd really been looking forward to that. And I said, We cannot go on the wine tour. They're picking us up at like 8, 9 in the morning, and I said we can't go tomorrow. We have to get out of here now. Um, so I looked at flights. Um, I thought we could maybe try to go on a flight on Wednesday this the 18th in the afternoon. Um, but yes, we woke up the next. So I told them that I was like, well, there's nothing we can do now. It's like beyond midnight or something. So we woke up the next morning and we went basically went straight to the travel agent and spent three or four hours.

SPEAKER_03 40:46

So I remember we woke up and then I had to tell the wedding party we weren't coming. And again, I just don't think people realized this. I think got the feeling that people didn't really understand why we were like leaving. So what was on Wednesday morning, uh at that point our flight was on the Monday after the wedding. But at this point, then Adri had kind of with made the informed decision and you know obviously told me and I agreed. She's like, we need to get out of here now. So at this point, we're like, okay, we'll just kind of miss the wedding. We're gonna eat the cost of the flight if we have to. Like, this is too dangerous now because because what was happening was the news from Vietnam was changing like every day. So now at this point, they eliminated Asian countries, you couldn't transit through Asian countries.

SPEAKER_05 41:25

Which we had been travelling through Singapore.

SPEAKER_03 41:27

So which we're at that point we were going through Singapore, so that eliminated a lot of options to get back. We could only go through Australia, and even then it was just every day was tightening and tightening and tightening the conditions that you could get back to Vietnam. So for anyone that doesn't know us, we've lived here for four years, we have valid work permits, um, our life is in Vietnam.

SPEAKER_05 41:45

So at that point we were still allowed back into Vietnam, but the re But it was a little bit uncertain though, because by the time we were gonna fly, I mean, I think probably that day, that week anyway, I know that like um there were just rumors and stuff, and people who had so the thing that was scariest for us at that time was seeing the rumors on Facebook or like the people maybe not necessarily rumors, actual people's experiences. I was following a lot of groups and comments on Facebook, which yeah, you can say like fake news or whatever, and don't trust anything you see on Facebook. But actually the people that were having real experiences coming into Vietnam from different places were probably the most helpful and illuminating for us in terms of decision making because Neil and I are clearly on different passports, uh, me being from the US and him being from the UK. And so I was actually really scared that his British passport wouldn't allow him to come into the country because we had heard rumors and seen comments about some people with UK passports who had not been to the UK or been to Europe were being denied entry simply on the account of the fact that they had a passport from an affected country. And that was quite terrifying. Obviously, as the cases in the US kept going up, I thought that my passport could be in that situation as well. Um, and so we really had no idea what we were gonna deal with coming into trying to come into immigration, and then um it started to get worse. Like, are we even gonna be allowed on the plane? Are they gonna allow us to like check us in? To make matters worse, um, I don't have a TRC at the moment, I have just a work visa, and then Neil has a TRC. So we also didn't know if our work visa TRC situation was gonna be looked at differently or the same, or like what if we got there and they allowed one of us on and not the other one? Or what if we got here and they allowed one of us to go home and one of us into quarantine? So we had so many different factors we were dealing with.

SPEAKER_03 43:39

Um TRC is a temporary resident card, which I feel like everyone knows what that is now, maybe not. Well yeah, I seven million bikes has listeners all over the world who don't know what TLC is. Um which I'm not really sure what what's the difference between a TRC and a work permit to you. I have a card in my passport that says I'm a temporary resident, Adrian.

SPEAKER_05 44:01

Well, I had a TRC, but it expired, and then the renewal was just the visa. So I I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 44:10

So we woke up Wednesday morning, went to the flight centre in Wellington at 9am. Uh same girl we spoke to, Emlyn, which have to she's never gonna hear this, but Emlyn was amazing, and sadly we've now found out she's lost her job as part of many people around the world losing her job because we sent an email to say thank you for all the help. Just yes, a couple of days ago, and I got an email back saying that she no longer works there. But she they do want to hire her back, it said, in a couple of months once this blows over, so hopefully she'll get her job back as well. Um, but so Emlyn was amazing. There was Rosie at the flight centre, they were amazing. Um, they gave us some options, and we had to go away to go for a walk because we were just our head was like so just foggy with so much information. Adrian's read so much. Uh all the all the travel agents follow this website that we were also following called IATA Flight Centre. Travel centre. IATA travelcenter.com I think. But the thing was that so that's meant to be kind of like the gold standard of information that gets updated for every country in the world as to their restrictions or whatnot for getting in. But this was where it was getting really muddy because the information that was on this website, which was apparently the gold standard, was the different information from what was coming out of new uh out of Vietnam, what we We're reading on Facebook as like the reality because we were reading like people's real stories about getting through immigration and their stories didn't match up with the rules and blah blah blah. So it's real, real but I mean by this point things were getting pretty horrible for us. Um so we we took us from 9 a.m. to 12 pm to finally rebook our flights. We just cancelled the ones that we had on Monday that were gonna go through Singapore. We get credit for them, but that money could be lost, you don't know. So that's just sitting there. We have flight credits all over the world right now. Um we rebooked our flights for the Friday, so we couldn't get on that flight that afternoon on the Wednesday.

SPEAKER_05 46:03

The other thing is um that the there's like two or three airlines that fly direct from Australia to Vietnam without transiting either through Singapore or Hong Kong or whatever. Um it's Vietnam Airlines and I think Jet Star, like Qantas Jet Star, whatever. So, and and most of those, I don't know if this is always or just at this time, but most of those flights only fly like every other day. And of course, they fly on the same day. So Wednesday, when we got there, we weren't able to get on either a Vietnam Airlines or a Jet Star flight. So we had to wait until the Friday because there were no flights that were flying on the Thursday. So despite like wanting to leave then there and now, um, we had to the only thing we could book that wasn't transiting through a potential other like problem country was on the Friday.

SPEAKER_03 46:56

And that was oh yeah, and that was 24 hours before the wedding. So obviously that the wedding kind of became unfortunately less of a priority, and the biggest priority became became coming back home. But still, though it's pretty gutting to um the money to be honest, like we're not rich, but the money so was probably the least factor in it, but it was still like pretty crap to have spent so much money. We you know, like any wedding, I've got a suit made, Adrian's got a beautiful dress, we'd uh been out to get like ties and stuff like this. You know, we we're ready for a wedding, and weddings aren't cheap, right? Um, and also again, forgetting about the money. We'd been planning for this for a year to see my cousin get married. Our families, well, my family's there, who are now Adri's family, she knows them all well. It's gonna be in this beautiful place in New Zealand. Um and so the fact that we got so close to the wedding, but just had to say we couldn't go was obviously really upsetting as well. So that was a wedding's day. Um Wednesday afternoon, we kind of oh, we ended up meeting up with the family after they'd done the wine tour, and and again they just didn't seem to get it. We're like, alright, we're going back to Vietnam, and they're like, Okay, like they just didn't really seem to understand. Nobody understood the seriousness of the situation. So, as I said, some family members had just flown in on the 14th from the USA. Um there was full plans going ahead for the wedding. There was no talk of that then about like New Zealand is now in lockdown, but there was no talk then of lockdown. There was no talk of like now, I think all weddings are cancelled in New Zealand, right?

SPEAKER_05 48:29

They have to be. Yeah, I think I think at that point they were starting to cancel and advise against um events of 500 or more. Yeah, 500 or there were only about 60 people going to the wedding, and I don't think it might have been like either just before or just after, or right around the same time where they started to say like events no bigger than 50 people. So the wedding was never really that in danger of like officially being told it couldn't occur. Um and yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:02

So that was so then what did we do on the Thursday? Alright, so Thursday we started packing, I guess, because I don't remember. When do we do Thursday?

SPEAKER_05 49:12

Oh, okay, yeah. So Thursday. Oh, okay. So if we just backtrack a little bit, so part of the reason as well that we like decided we needed to immediately get back was because when they announced that you couldn't transit through an Asian country, they also said if you do transit through an Asian country as a uh visa holder, a work visa holder or a resident or a citizen or whatever, you must go into mandatory 14-day government quarantine. So I thought if there's any chance that we won't get put into quarantine, let's go and try to try to make like get because obviously, like we were planning to self-isolate regardless when we came home. But if we thought if we could self-isolate in our apartment with our dog for two weeks, that is way more preferable to being in um a dorm room without our dog for two weeks, like 20 kilometers up the road from our apartment. So that was part of the like impetus to like get out of there as soon as we could. Um so then when we booked the flight for Friday, um Thursday, we were like, okay, so here's what's gonna happen. We're gonna get, and obviously, I'm still reading the news, things are still changing, there's still all these different accounts of what's happening and where people are going, and blah blah blah. To this point, Australia, New Zealand, still nowhere on Vietnam's radar in terms of like a quarantine or anything like that. Um, which is why we are planning to just self-isolate. Um but Thursday, we were like, okay, realistically, the things that are gonna happen, we and so we are talking through what could possibly happen. One, best case scenario, we fly, no problems, they welcome us back, we go home, we self-isolate for two weeks. Next scenario, we fly, we get there, they put us into government quarantine. Next scenario, we get to the airport, they the the um they don't let us on the plane for whatever reason because the rules have changed and they've been posted on my IATA website. Next scenario, we fly to Australia, but somehow in transit, borders shut, and we get stuck in Australia. Next scenario, uh we cancel our flight and we just stay here.

SPEAKER_03 51:30

Here being New Zealand.

SPEAKER_05 51:31

Here being New Zealand until this all blows over, um which was a realistic possibility because things were changing so quickly and we didn't know. So Thursday we were just talking through all these uh possible scenarios and what we would do if we got put in any one of the situations.

SPEAKER_03 51:49

I was gonna say the worst worst worst case scenario was that somehow we got turned away at the border, and because we have different passports, we would be sent back to our home countries, which I've not lived in the Adri K for 15 years or longer. My family's there. Adri's not lived in the US for like nine years now?

SPEAKER_05 52:08

Nine years.

SPEAKER_03 52:09

So like and obviously we're married and we don't want to be apart. So that was like literally, we've gone through going through every one of these scenarios. Like, what if we get sent back to our home countries, then the borders shut down and we're separated for four, five, six months. Like that that was the that was the the worst of the worst case scenarios. But so do you remember Well we woke up on Thursday morning at our cousin's house. I just remember so Wednesday night we hung out with family, we stayed with them, and we woke up Thursday morning, and again, this one's in every morning we woke up and something had changed. So we woke up Thursday morning and suddenly the new rules were that to get back into Vietnam you needed a negative COVID test. And we were just like, What? Like, oh you got to be kidding me on. So this was the new rules that had just been posted. So I called up the Vietnamese embassy in Wellington. I spoke to the guy there. They were super um quick to respond, like picked up the phone right away. But I said to him, like, I'm traveling.

SPEAKER_05 53:13

Super uninformed.

SPEAKER_03 53:13

Well, they were super uninformed. I told them they were flying on a I was on a UK, he said, what passport? You on and said UK went, no no, you can't get in. I was like, What do you mean? That's not the rules, don't say I can't get in because I'm on a UK passport. He's like, No, no, you can't get in. I'm like, no, no, I've not been to the UK in years. Okay, call. And then I said, My wife's on a US passport. No, no, she can't get in either. I was like, Alright, this is not the rules that I'm reading. Can you double check? He's like, Okay, call me back in 15 minutes. That's how good they were. Call back in 15 minutes, ask for Tom directly. He came back, sorry, sorry, I got that wrong. Yeah, you can get in, but you need a COVID test. And I'm like, okay. So then we get dropped off at the travel doctor in Wellington, where we went four years ago to get all of our vaccinations when we started travelling. Still had our records on file, got to see a doctor right away. Now you cannot get a COVID test in Australia or New Zealand, and I don't know about the rest of the world, most of the Western world. Most of the Western world, right? Unless you have symptoms, they will not give you a COVID test. So we went to the doctor, she gave us an examination, obviously, tested our temperature, looked in her throats, everything, and she gave us a clean bill of healthing, like almost verbatim, that these patients are or this patient is asymptomatic, therefore, um I cannot give him a COVID test, but he seems healthy basically. She signed it, we made sure she stamped it because anyone listening who lives in Vietnam knows Vietnam loves the stamp, so we made sure that it had an official stamp on it. That was as that was the best thing we could get. So again, this is just everything's changing. We wake up Thursday morning, suddenly we need a COVID test, suddenly we need to take two hours to go and get this more expenditure.

SPEAKER_05 54:46

The other thing is, if we did get a COVID test and we waited for the two days to get our results, we wouldn't have come back, like we couldn't get back. Yeah, like we just wouldn't have been able to come back. Like we knew that things were changing so quickly. If we were like, oh, we'll just get the COVID test if we could uh wait for two days and then we'll fly on Sunday, like we literally wouldn't have been allowed back in the country because by that point they'd closed the borders to all foreigners. So we couldn't take the risk of not trying to get on our flight on the Friday.

SPEAKER_03 55:16

And the other thing was they said that you need a COVID test that had been approved by the relevant authorities, but no one could tell you what that meant, like approved by the relevant authorities. So we then took a letter of clear bill of health to we actually walked because Wellington, anyone who knows Wellington is so small. We took a 15-minute walk and got to the uh the Vietnamese embassy in Wellington, just walked right in, rang the doorbell, and we're like, Can you translate this for us? Can you stamp this? Can you do something? And again, super helpful, but couldn't actually help. But they were like, No, there's nothing we can do. So, so that was Thursday by this point now, early afternoon. Our flights at 6am. Um, we couldn't really do much more at this point. It's like, alright, we're just gonna have to just get on the flight. So we went for a walk. Anyone knows Wellington, it's just the most stunning place on earth on a good day. We took a beautiful walk in the hills, we enjoyed the scenery, we managed to breathe, but I mean again, just the whole time, just anxious, anxiety the whole time. We know what's coming. Yeah, Aries wants to say something. Um well, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 56:19

I mean, I think we were just at a loss for what to do. But I knew, well, one, one of the things I had really wanted to do and prioritize on our trip away from Vietnam before this all massively changed was just take advantage of the ability to walk out and go for a hike, go in nature, like fresh air, hills, greenery, etc. Um, and so I thought, well, let's just this is our last opportunity. We might be stuck in a room for two weeks when we get back, and also Vietnam's not, you know, there's well, Ho Chi Minh City, there's not that many places to walk anyway. So we went for a walk. Um, and we were like, we'll go for a walk and then we'll go to the grocery store because we want to pick up some like last-minute New Zealand treats and things we missed and to to bring back. Um and uh yeah, so as we were going to the grocery store, I had a stroke of genius, not really, but I was like, oh, I should message because I knew we knew someone in quarantine here. Been following her story uh stories on Instagram. She'd been in quarantine for a couple of days. So I thought, oh I'll message her and say, like, if you knew you were gonna be sent to quarantine, what would you bring? Because we were gonna go to the grocery store, and I thought, well, if we might go to quarantine, at least let's be prepared.

SPEAKER_03 57:33

And literally, I was about to send that message, or maybe I did press send when well so I I'd been in communication with my work with the HR director, and um I maybe don't get his title wrong, but for for want of a better word, he's the immigration manager, so he deals with all visas, everything to do with all the expats that work at our company. And uh so he um was messaging with like a group chat and they were kind of giving advice on what to do to get back in, but they were they were kind of reiterating the fact that you need this COVID test, and we're like, but we cannot get the COVID test, like we just can't. So they were doing the best they could, it was frantic on their end, and again waiting on time difference. So like Vietnam didn't wake up till about like one. Well, like people weren't coming to work until about one or two in the afternoon in in New Zealand time, so we're having to wait all morning to for people to wake up here to communicate. So we're chatting and chatting, and then he drops a bombshell that he's just been told that um at midnight that night the borders were closing to everyone but Vietnamese nationals.

SPEAKER_05 58:41

So that like midnight on the 20th, and we were flying on the 20th.

SPEAKER_03 58:46

No, no, it was midnight. Well, like the stroke of midnight on the so like the morning, yeah. It was a bit confusing because you know with midnight and you can get confused that like as the clock struck midnight on the morning of the 20th or the night of the 19th, the border would close to everyone but Vietnamese nationals and citizens. And so that like our world just at that point after everything we'd been through, our world then just turned upside down even more because we are like, what does that mean? And he's like, the borders aren't gonna reopen for at least 30 days, and we're like, What? So that like so we're gonna be here in New Zealand for 30 days at least, and that that that was the situation at about four o'clock on the Thursday, three, four o'clock at least.

SPEAKER_05 59:29

Yeah, maybe three o'clock because we were about to go, yeah, it was like late afternoon. And to be fair, like I mean, if we're gonna get stuck anywhere in the world, New Zealand would be the place because we're both residents there and we have friends there and it's comfortable and safe, and and we know Wellington, and it's one of our favorite places in the world. But being told that you can't come home was just like a punch in the chest or the stomach. It was it was horrible. It was just absolutely horrible. So our grocery store trip was pretty crap.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:02

Oh, we just we only bought like two things and left. We were preparing to buy stuff for quarantine because we were fully expecting to be quarantined, so we're like, right, let's get some protein bars, let's get some snacks, let's, you know, get because we followed. So the person we were talking to was uh Frances, who's uh the blogger. You might have checked out her blog. So the adventure begins. Go check it out if you haven't. She's awesome. She's actually me and her have recorded an episode before the pandemic, before we left, and she's gonna be the first episode of the f the next season of 7 Million Bikes. So we won't be talking about this, but maybe we'll do a follow-up interview to find out her experience. But so we've been talking to her, we'd started getting supplies, and then all of a sudden it was like you're staying in New Zealand, and that that that was we thought that was the door was closed at that point, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:00:48

Yeah, we were just waiting for an imminent uh government release, but then obviously having experience with like the school closure, government releases, and all of the different releases, like when you hear kind of rumors of what's gonna happen. Actually, sometimes it can take a bit longer. So we just kind of were waiting for it, waiting for it, waiting for it, waiting for it, and it just never was coming through. So we thought, well, obviously, those scenarios that I played out before were still all possible, still all relevant. Um, some at this point more than others. To make matters more interesting, uh, I'd been checking all of our documentation and getting all of our boarding passes and proof that we'd been in New Zealand just in case they asked us immigration, blah blah blah. And I looked at the printout from Flight Center from where we'd gotten our tickets books. And they'd completely forgotten my I have a double-barreled last name and they'd forgotten the Mackay part of my last name on my official ticket. So we called Flight Center up and they said, basically, long story short, after calling them back and blah blah blah, they said you have two options. We can cancel your ticket altogether, uh basically, like you're not going, or we can we're gonna have to rebook you a ticket, because they had to call Qantas to change it, and they were on hold for like three hours. Thank god we didn't have to do that. But they were like, we can't change the name, we have to either cancel your ticket and rebook you a new one at Flight Center's expense, or just basically cancel your ticket. So something that we never would have even considered, basically, like canceling our ticket altogether, was now on the table because we're like, Well, what if we're stuck here? Should we just cancel it? Should we not even have money back? Should we not even go? Should we even bother? And I was like, this never would have even been a consideration if Flight Center had put my name into the system correctly. Um, so that was a whole nother consideration we had. Luckily, at the end of the day, literally at like 7 pm, they were calling us back and they're like, We're closed already, what are you doing tomorrow? And I was like, just keep the ticket, book the ticket, we're going.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:47

But this but this just to try and explain this is how stressful the situation was. It was it had gone from day by day to hour by hour. At this point, it was minute by minute. It was literally like our friends had come home from work, we explained the situation to them. The two of us are a mess. Adrian was having like a panic attack. We were both pretty much in tears because we thought we were gonna have to stay for 30 days. We don't have jobs in New Zealand, we can work there, but we don't have jobs, we don't have a home. We've got people we can stay with, but you know, we didn't want to be a building on people. But so at this point, we're explaining to our friends, Nora and Carrai, we've told them a million times, they were just unbelievable. They're like, Look, if you need to, you can stay, you've got a home here, it's fine, don't stress, just do what you need to do. And so we are just weighing up everything, and then like Adrian said, then we've got flight center emailing and calling, being like, uh, yeah, we're closing what are we doing with this ticket? And I'm like speaking to her on the phone, be like, just just give me five more minutes, five more minutes, then I'm gonna put the phone down, and then me and Adria are like, What are we doing? Are we cancelling this flight? Are we getting on it?

SPEAKER_05 1:03:46

Like, yeah, one one other thing that was added to the I don't think we've mentioned this yet. So, backtrack to the scenarios that I said before. One of the scenarios was we get on the flight to Australia. We had a long layover in Australia, so we knew that like a lot could change in that time. If they weren't gonna let us on the plane in Australia to Vietnam, we'd have to turn around and come back to New Zealand, which at that point was still a possibility, even though Australia uh sorry, even though New Zealand had already closed its borders, because we're residents, we could actually still come back to New Zealand. Thank God that was a possible option. However, by this point they'd already implemented the 14-day mandatory self-isolation for anyone traveling from overseas. So we had to weigh up the realistic possibility of getting on a flight to Australia, possibly turning back around to come into New Zealand, and then going into self-isolation in a country where we don't have an a residence. Like we are residents, but we don't have a resident residence. So um that was scary because at this point, like where we had been staying, we knew like they have a nice lovely house, but they only have one bathroom, not enough for four people when two people need to be in isolation. So we were gonna have to find another place to stay. And at this point, like you don't want to ask someone, like, oh, we might have to self-isolate in case we've picked something up traveling to Australia. Can we stay in your house? So that was like something we had to consider. Like, do we even get on the plane at the risk that we are sent back and then we have to self-isolate in New Zealand?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:25

Because I mean, and Nora and Cartwright were amazing, they were just super honest. They were like, if you get sent back and you have to self-isolate, you can't stay here because they have jobs, and then we'd be putting them at risk and things like that. So, again, thankfully, a friend Yvonne, who we just we'd met a few days before to catch up. She again, her and her husband Andrew, just unbelievable. Like from the beginning, they were like, if you need somewhere to stay, like you can come here. So, again, I had to message them and be like, This is the scenario, if we get sent back, can we come and stay with you for 14 days and self-isolate? And again, people were just so unbelievable. Um, she was like, Yep, we got a big house, that's fine, don't worry, do what you need to do. Go so we that was a like a bit of a peace of mind that you know if we were sent back to New Zealand we had somewhere to go, but it's still not a nice feeling to know that you are um basically being a burden on someone, right? So, so this was minimum I minute. We're now getting up to I think about seven o'clock on the Thursday. There's still no announcement from the Vietnamese government that the borders were shutting it at midnight that night. So I think we we just kind of went, right, let's just go to the airport. So but then we made the decision, right? Let's go to the airport tomorrow morning, 4am, 3am, because the flight was at 6. We'll ask them what we need to do. If they say you it's the borders are closed, are they gonna close more than right fine? We turn back, we're gonna be in New Zealand for at least 30 days, we'll deal with it, right? We've got somewhere we can stay, we'll just have to figure it out. The next scenario is we get on the flight from Wellington to Sydney, then the borders close once we arrive in Sydney, and then suddenly we have to go back to New Zealand. So, all those scenarios then come back into play. So we get to the airport, everyone had the same idea to get there early, I think. We are every there's a whole bunch of people there before any staff were there. The staff come out looking terrified that they have to come out to like you know deal with this. Again, they're probably all gonna lose their job, so absolute like sympathy for what they have to deal with. I'm sure they're like, I've gotta deal with this shit, and then I'm gonna get lose my job the next day. Um but. Uh they really were clueless. Like that was the most disappointing thing. Like we knew more than the airport staff and like I get that they're probably grumpy or whatever because they're losing their jobs. But when we asked the woman like what's happening, she was like, I don't know. Do you know what's happening?

SPEAKER_05 1:07:39

Oh I mean the worst thing was just that because we are obviously not Vietnamese and we told her that our final destination was Vietnam, it was immediate judgment on her face, and she was like, Well, that's what you get if you choose to travel right now. And we had to say, like, look, like we're trying to get home, like our home is in Vietnam. Like, obviously, we didn't tell her our life story, but it she immediately changed, her expression changed as soon as she knew that we were not just like trying to go on a backpacking trip to Vietnam at this point in time. But I mean, yeah, it wasn't it wasn't fun and it was confronting, and obviously just traveling at that point in time because things had changed so quickly, was just not um not comfortable at all.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:21

And so this is this is this now is when the the there was a stark difference between the Australian and New Zealand attitude and the rest of the world. So airport in New Zealand that morning, nobody wearing masks, nobody looked like anything different was happening at all. The world seemed normal. So we managed to check in. Um there was a few red flags. First of all, they weren't checking any passport anyone in who didn't have an Australian passport. Now hold on, someone's at the door here in quarantine. We're just gonna take a break for a quick second. It's probably a temperature check. Alright, and we're back, they were just delivering some water. Um, we'll talk more later on about how amazing the staff and everyone here at quarantine, but right now we'll focus on the story. So oh, the first red flag was they were only checking in Australian passports, so that was a worry. Then when we asked could they check our bag all the way to Saigon, they said no, they could only check it to Sydney. So that was again a worry because we were worried that we're gonna get stranded in Sydney. Um but we got on the plane and that was really really worrying because nobody took our temperature, nobody asked us to fill in any health declaration form, nobody asked us about anything, nobody said anything about visas, they literally just bolded us on the flight as if nothing was different. Then we got to Sydney, same thing, no uh health checks, no declaration forms, no temperature checks.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:40

Even the announcements on the airplane, like for the people that were landing in Sydney, were like so normal, relaxed. They were like, according to the Australian government, if you're landing in Australia, you need to self-isolate for 14 days. Have a great time in Sydney. It was like it was just so conflicting, and it just didn't sound serious, like which you can kind of understand if you just got off the plane. Why I mean, yeah, they handed out information, I think, but the announcements on the airplane were just like life is not laughable.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:12

So we got to Sydney. Uh the first thing we did was we bought gloves. We found a chemist, we bought gloves. We already had masks that we brought with us. So we were in Sydney Airport, we were about the only people with masks and gloves on, and I took a selfie or a picture and sent it to I can't remember, a couple of family members, a couple of friends, and one of them noticed, they were like, Why are you the only people in masks and gloves? Like, and they could see in the background that everyone no one else was. And by this point, we were super paranoid, we were super worried that we had the disease, that we were asymptomatic, we were super worried that we were spreading it.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:44

Could pick it up anywhere, or we could pick it up.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:47

We were absolutely terrified to the pit of our stomach that we could have the disease and then spread it. Like it was horrible, horrible feeling, or that we could pick it up anywhere because it seemed like a lot of the cases were coming from airports. So, what we ended up doing was uh, and to Adri's credit, we basically just found like a little corner where we could plug our phones in. There was a couple of seats, we sanitized it ourselves, we washed it down. We didn't see any cleaners anywhere washing anything in the airport, so we sanitized it ourselves, put our gloves on, and we just stayed there. We had an eight-hour layover again, and we just stayed in this little corner that we'd self-quarantined ourselves or whatever you want to say, like cleaned it all down. Um, we went for a couple of walks, we didn't go near anyone. Um, and so eventually, after however long six hours, we were able to then check in. The check-in opened for our next flight, and again, thankfully, we could check in. There was a lovely girl there from Jet Star. I got talking to her. Um, I said, How are you doing? She's like, Yeah, no, I've I've lost my job. I'm like, Oh my god, she's like, Yeah, no, I'm gonna be let off for three months, no pay. So absolutely lovely with me, but again, this is the reality of the situation. You're like, geez, these people are losing their jobs, you know what I mean. So, but she got us checked in. I I explained our situation to her again. Not that she was clueless, but she went through, she read the restrictions online that were available at that time. She's like, Yeah, yeah, you got a work visa, yep, yep, you got this, you got that, yeah, yeah. You guys, you should be okay, don't worry, you should be okay. So at this point, we started to kind of breathe a little bit, right? We're like, right, we're booked on the flight to Saigon. And there was like a tiny percent of me was like thinking that maybe we would get home because we had this health certificate form, because we had a work visa. I was like, Maybe they'll let us go home and we'll just self-isolate at home. You got my hook. I know, but it was only like a little bit better. So we got on the flight. Oh, and at this point as well, I took another selfie at the check-in gate for the flight to Saigon, it was like a different world. Every single person in the background had a mask on, most people had gloves on, like everyone, you could just see the difference between the people flying to Vietnam versus the people who were just going about the life in Australia. So we got on the flight, we sanitized our chair, our screen, a table, which apparently you should probably do that anyway on every flight. But but we we cleaned everything down before we touched anything. We kept our masks on, we kept our gloves on for pretty much the duration of the flight. As you can hear in the background, there's a plane going overhead, so there are still planes landing or taken off. I'm not sure which one it is. Flying. Flying, still planes flying. But anyway, so we got back to Saigon. Now, it still gets more dramatic.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:21

It's really the longest episode ever.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:22

Uh doesn't matter. Let's go. You tell what happened next.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:26

Okay, so yeah, despite uh so we thought Friday was gonna be like super super stressful, and apart from like trying to be hyper vigilant about cleanliness and sanitization sanit is that the word sanitization um and and not spreading and not picking up anything. It was relatively smooth sailing, like there were no issues, and we got into Vietnam and the plane landed, and it was the longest line ever, apart from that. So there was like the health declaration um that you had to fill out. We couldn't fill that out until we got to Sydney because you need to put your flight number, yeah, sorry, your seat number in. So we filled that up before we got on the plane, and then we landed, we had you know our little QR code up. We were ready to go through the health declaration line. It was quite long. Um, we didn't see any other foreigners on like in sight. We're in the very back of the airplane, so um, yeah, I mean to us it just seemed like it was mostly Vietnamese citizens and residents returning home.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:24

Um I think mostly students, right? Like Vietnamese students retelling.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:28

Yeah, younger people. Um so we got in the line, we waited, we waited, we waited. We finally got up to the front, and as soon as they saw our passports, they didn't even look at our QR codes or our our health declaration. They um just basically like sent us away um somewhere we didn't really know where, they just said over there. Turns out over there is kind of if you've ever gotten a visa on arrival at the Vietnamese, uh sorry, at the um Tansanya Airport, that's basically where over there was. So we get there and the rest of the foreigners that clearly must have been on our flight were sitting there as well. There was probably between like 10 and 12 other Western people um or non-Vietnamese people or non-residents, I guess. Some people were of Vietnamese descent. Um, and there wasn't really a lot of like we didn't really know what was going on in typical fashion, I suppose, uh, with the language barrier and a lot of people kind of just like walking around and stuff. So they took our passports, they took our like health declarations. Uh sorry, our not our health declaration at this point, it was just the I gave them the letter that we had gotten in um in Wellington, our health uh check. So we gave them that along with our passports, along with their boarding passes, and they kind of just went away.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:40

And I was gonna add, just to picture at this point, it is literally looks like something out of a movie. There's people in blue suits everywhere, goggles, masks, gloves. Um, I mean, the only people who are not dressed like that were the passengers off the plane. There was panicked people everywhere, there's screening set up, like it it was literally like a movie, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:16:02

I wouldn't say there was much panic.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:04

I saw a few Westerners that looked pretty bad.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:06

Well, maybe just like I think for the Vietnamese people, as long as they filled out the health declaration, it was pretty much like not that different because from our flight coming from Australia, those people were pretty much health declaration was fine, and they got waived through to the immigration line, no problem. There were a few people sitting about. It wasn't as crazy as maybe some of the stuff that happened the previous week when they were health checking and testing everyone that came in, and there were people waiting in the airport and stuff. It wasn't like that for us. Um we landed about 9:30 and then p.m. on Friday night. Um and then so we had by this point when we landed, I checked the news, of course, to see what had happened. One, we'd been in the air because our flight was like eight hours, and the media had released the the um announcement that at midnight, so from the 20th to the 21st, starting on the midnight the 21st, um, everyone entering the country would go into mandatory quarantine. Um and then midnight the 22nd, I believe, is when they were shutting the border to foreigners. So there's still like one more day for foreigners to arrive, and those people on Saturday would go directly to quarantine. So we thought, and then there was also the announcement that like the um university dorms in Tuduk had been vacated and were being cleaned and getting prepared for all the recent arrivals. So those are the news updates that we'd missed. Uh, and then when we were waiting, uh it was a little bit at least at first it was kind of relaxed, it was just like letting the people do what they needed to do, but then I started to overhear other people's conversations and phone calls, and there was one, you know, older man that said, They're not letting me in, I have to go back. There was another man that was getting quite um flustered and panicked and and raising his voice and saying, you know, I have nowhere to go in Australia, this is where I live, no one to take care of me. And then a couple other Westerners that were in the same boat, not a lot of progress. They're basically trying to put us all back on the plane to Australia.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:58

Yeah, I mean, so we at first we were kind of like relieved to be back in Saigon, like, right, we've made it. I mean, we could see the the customs and the boulders to while it was so close. But then again, we moved into the next phase of all these eventualities that we thought about, then they all came into play. Like, what's gonna happen? Are they gonna send us on a plane back? Then we'll go back to Australia, then how do we get back? Can we get back to New Zealand at this point? Are they gonna send us back to our home countries? Like, what I mean at that point I was ready to just camp in the airport and be like, I'm just I'll just live in the airport until this is all over.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:27

Like to the Vietnamese um people's credit, like the different people that were kind of helping, um, because there were some people that spoke English that were dealing with us, and I don't think they had any authority. They had like Saigon tourist kind of badges on.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:39

No, they weren't Saigon ground services, or ground services, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:43

Okay, but they weren't like the immigration officials, they weren't like the military, they weren't, they didn't have a lot of authority. I think they were just helping translate for us and taking our passports and dealing with the relevant authorities. And to their credit, I think that they were they were kind of um assessing each case on an individual basis, at least it seems that way. But we our basically our situation, they told us um, you have you have two options. One to go, they were like, We're trying to figure out where you can go to get a COVID certificate. So they were like, Maybe you can go to Thailand, maybe you can go to Singapore, and we're like, and I just said to the lady, I was like, you know, if you send us to Thailand, we are not getting back in this country. And she was she kind of like did this like micro nod, like she knew that was the case. Then she was like, Well, where are you guys permanent residents of Australia? Can you go back to Australia? And we're like, No, our life is here, our dog is here, our apartment is here, our work is here, we live here, we cannot go anywhere. Oh, and I said to her, if you send us back to Australia, we will be homeless.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:42

And we were like begging by this one, we were linear in tears. We were like, we lived here for four years, like this is our home, we just want to come back, like you know, you can't send us away.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:52

So and there were other people in the in the area that were in the same situation as us. They had TRCs or work visas, they lived here, um, they had nowhere else to go. Um, I'm not sure everyone's exact situation, but um what ended up happening was uh they again they went away, they talked to someone. Um, and I think ultimately this is my yeah, so this is my assessment of the situation. Um well one small blip was they came back with a stack of passports, they all had new Jet Star boarding passes in them, which was absolutely terrifying because it seemed like they were gonna round us up and put us back on the plane to Australia. There was one man there who had flown on um air Nippon all air, I don't know, the ANA Japanese airline. He was the only one that wasn't on our Jet Star flight, and and he was literally there like trying to show him back to his gate. Um but anyway, my assessment of the situation is that they were waiting until the clock struck midnight to process us on Saturday as a Saturday arrival under the new guidance. Because what they couldn't do, they couldn't admit us into the country on the 20th of March because none of us had an a negative COVID certificate. A few of us had medical declarations that said can't get a COVID certificate, clean bill of health, similar to what Neil and I had gotten in Wellington. There were a couple other people in the same situation, but a lot of people no one else had that. And I think that they couldn't process us on the Friday because they couldn't bend the rules. But if they waited until the Saturday, we could still go into mandatory quarantine as a Saturday international arrival. That's what I think the situation was because the people that arrived on Saturday didn't need a COVID certificate, they just were automatically sent into quarantine. So they rounded up all the foreigners pretty much. We kind of waited in the immigration line, and literally I checked my phone when they let us go through immigration, and it was 12 midnight on the dock. So they didn't process one single person from our plane until Saturday the 21st of March. And apparently from sorry, single foreigner from our plane. All the other Vietnamese people went through as normal.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:02

That's right. And apparently, uh, this is pure speculation, but from the other foreigners that we were with, there were I think some of those other foreigners we know now, and they are pretty well connected through their jobs or whatnot. And apparently there were some high-level discussions through their connections direct with those immigration people to be like, what are you gonna do with these group of foreigners? So I don't know how how part of the luck of us getting in was just because we happened to be with this group of well-connected people, or if that was just gonna happen regardless, because there was if they waited till midnight. But yeah, so by this point now, yeah, midnight on Friday night, turning Saturday morning, we got through immigration and then we got led to the week the waiting area. We picked up our bags and then we had to wait. They provided snacks. I mean, again, the Vietnamese government in general have been praised so highly, I think, in general, and I would continue that. Like they provided snacks, it was all orderly, they processed us, they basically waited for I think because we were all on the same flight, they waited for all of us and then processed us all together.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:08

I think it was just that we were all foreigners. Well, yeah, because there was the one other guy from the other flight. The flight that wasn't that he came from Japan or the US.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:17

We all got put onto uh a bus, and we by this point we kind of heard that we're going to to the national university dorms, and uh bus took is there, of course, in true uh Vietnam fashion, the bus driver got lost. We had it on the map, and we had to direct the bus driver to tell them how to get to where we were going.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:46

And then there's like I don't know, like 40 buildings.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:49

No, but before we even got here, he was going down like little side streets on this massive bus and getting like you had to like it was like at this point like three in the morning, and of course he's got his window down yelling. I don't I couldn't see who he was yelling to.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:00

There's a little woman who had her stall open.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:02

She had a stall open, he's yelling at her for directions, and we're trying to show him the phone, like take us here. So we managed to uh we managed to get here, and then yeah, once we got here, it's a big complex, and there was a bit of confusion over what building. So then you want to go. I mean, I know if you're still gonna break, we're gonna keep going.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:19

I think we should take a break. We wanna take a break?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:21

Maybe. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break. Alright. So we're gonna take a break. Uh, because we've been talking for a long time, it's a very dramatic story. We're emotionally exhausted just telling it. Um what we'll do, we'll I'll put this up as a single episode, and then we're gonna do we'll do another episode where we'll kind of explain more about the quarantine and what's happened since we got here. Uh I just want to add everything's fine. Um someone laughed when I said it's not a prison, we just can't leave. So it's fine here. We get fed, we get looked after, we just we can leave our rooms and we can go for a walk, which we'll do a couple of times a day.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:57

Why are you explaining?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:58

But in general, yeah, no. But I'm just letting people know in general everything's okay, we're fine, we're looked after, we just stay in our room, stay away from people. Right now we're on day 8 of 14, so we're on the downward spiral, downward slope, and we're doing that that makes it sound bad, but we're on the we're on the what's the way out? What's the the downward slope? I don't know, AJ's looking at me like I'm crazy. But anyway, so I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for listening. Sorry it's been so long since the last season. Um, if I can get the technology to work, I'll hopefully do a special. This will be a special quarantine season or lockdown season, and we'll talk to some other people in Saigon. Maybe not necessarily quarantine, but maybe people in lockdown find out how they are coping. Um, I hope everyone at home is coping well. Um it's just a crazy situation right now. For me and for Adre, the thing that I've taken the most from this is just people coming together. Um the fact that like the outpouring of help and love that we've been given from people from New Zealand offering to stay. We've had messages from people all over the world asking how we're doing, we've had like strangers offer to send us packages and things like that, people checking in on us that we haven't heard from in ages, and then seeing other people looking after other people as well, and um, that's something that we want to look to how we can give back once we get out of here as well. So I think if everyone just sticks together this time, it's gonna be tough, but as I said before, the sun is still shining, we'll be okay in the end. So, thank you for listening to a special episode of 7 Million Bikes. Uh, remember, you can if you're listening, you can follow us on Facebook, you can listen to your podcast anywhere. And if you want to send us a message and say hello, then you can do it on the Facebook page, just look up 7 million bikes. And thank you to Adri for being a guest on 7 million bikes.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:50

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:51

Alright, cheers.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:54

John and I have been planning our podcast, Connect and Power, for many, many months. And everything about it was challenging, especially editing and trying to figure out to script. I honestly felt defeated, frustrated, and ready to give up. And even challenged our partnership. After we started working with Neil with seven million bikes podcasts, I can't describe the relief. We don't feel like failures anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:18

The time Neil has taken to not only teach us, but his random text and phone call support has been incredible. He's more than a mentor, he's become a friend, a huge supporter, and you'd be stupid not to use him. You will become better because of his guidance, care, and love for his clients and sex. We're so grateful. Thank you.