If any readers ever take the time to check out my biographic information on Amazon, Goodreads, this blog, or any of my novels, they’d see I “split my time between Tampa, Florida and Bangkok, Thailand.”

That was more or less the case for most of the previous decade, but when COVID declared war on the world, international travel became a non-starter. No complaints about Tampa, especially with the Bucs, Bolts and Rays, and the Mayor and all City Council Members are Democrats to boot, but it doesn’t qualify as “splitting time.”.

At the start of this year I determined it was safe for my wife and I to make the trip to Thailand. Even in the midst of a surge, their rates of infection and deaths remain far lower than in Florida. The Sunshine State has more than three times the population of the Land of Smiles, yet Florida’ infection and death rates are more than three times that of Thailand. Perhaps the willingness of Thais to wear masks and socially distance  kept rates relatively low until vaccination could take effect. (Thailand’s vaccination rate is in the mid seventies, ten percentage points above the U.S.) There’s no Thai political movement against masks or vaccines. Employees who deal with the public are tested regularly, and temperatures are taken at just about any public place: transit, shopping, offices. This is a far cry from Florida, where crackpot right wing Governor DeSantis fights masks and vaccines and promotes worthless and fraudulent remedies in their place. There are no looney-tune COVID-denial movements as in America. 

We’ve been here three weeks, the first on Phuket and since then, Bangkok. In this post, I share some first impressions and thoughts about the land I haven’t visited in three years. I will be posting updates several times a week for the next four weeks, in which I’ll discuss Thailand, my writing, and the world at large.