Thailand started the second phase of easing quarantine restrictions today, two weeks after the first round of "softening". Frankly, I'm shocked.
Why? At the horrendous risk of disease people are exposing themselves to? šš¤£ Heck no. We've had less than a dozen new cases in the last week in a country of 65 million and the restrictions are frankly absurd. I'm shocked on two levels.
Firstly at the tremendous speed and ease with which people have accepted privacy violations and restriction of liberty in return for the illusion of safety and the panacea and mind-numbing fix of the mall. Like sugar junkies needing a donut. And secondly, I'm shocked at people's seeming desperation to break out of the confines of their homes and families to head for the plastic life of the mall and all it offers. Are their lives at home really so awful?
You now need an app to enter malls and stores. You scan in, and you scan out. My cynical self says if they also somehow collect that QR code at the point of payment, they have the most superb marketing data collection system ever. My cynical self's evil twin snorts at the innocence and stupidity of that thought. "You seriously think they're collecting all this data just for selling you more stuff? š¤£
Were people cautious here on Day 1 of the malls opening? Heck no.
That's the queue of people waiting to enter Ikea alone early this afternoon, in Pattaya.
In the early weeks of Quarantine, people shared some wonderful memes and images and thoughts on social media. My favourite, and the most hopeful one, was from Arundhati Roy - one of my all time literature-eco-activist heroes:
My experience today? The hordes in vast numbers opted for the old broken, soul-earth-destroying, materialistic system, despite all the meme action during The Great Pause.
A small group of us, in our little corner of the world here in Mae Rim, Chiang Mai, Thailand, made different choices today.
No masks, no sanitizer and no signing up for apps. We went to our first community yoga class in 2 months and felt a different kind of connection.
It was delightful to see and hug old friends, and to sweat it out together in 100F heat.
Afterwards we shared a communal Satvic vegetarian lunch: chickpea curry, punjabi salad, rice, poppadoms and marsala chai.
Did my daughter, Miss-15-and-2-months-at-home ask to go to the mall? No. Didn't even mention it. She sang, played her guitar, baked cookies and drew. She signed up for her new hive account too 
I realized late this afternoon that I'm an eternal optimist - that I really HAD expected some more people to choose a different and new kind of normal, and to make very different choices. As I sat watching the sunset, I realized that my circle of friends is likely to get another seasonal pruning in the coming weeks. And I felt and saw at yoga today that the friends and people who get it are the people I'm choosing to spend more of my moments with, when I'm not happily at home creating, writing, working, singing or simply Being.
I'm intrigued, in hindsight, to see what a BLESSING The Great Pause has been, and I'm determined to hold on to the very best bits of it. Picking up my Hope and my Optimism and stuffing them into my backpack with a few other essentials (like Love & Faith & Courage): light, easy and walking towards that portal.
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