WE ARE HAVING A COVID BABY! My wife showed me a pregnancy test last week, at first I didn't believe her (In the past her and my oldest daughter have pranked me with old tests) and my daughter had recently been telling me she was going to get a pregnancy test from one of the girls at her work and prank my wife. So naturally, I was skeptical... Even after watching her take the second test, I was still dumbfounded... REALLY BABY NUMBER SIX😱
We went and got an ultrasound that afternoon and sure enough, she's 5 weeks pregnant.
My wife has been told her school will be shut down till at least August, so at least she has plenty of time to relax, then will probably be due for maternity leave not long after returning to work. 😀
Being a kindergarten teacher she is not having to teach from home, she still has daily check-ins with the school each morning, and some light planning but nothing serious. We are on the lucky end of the scale though her school is still paying the staff.
Although the school has repeatedly advised "any staff who can afford to go home, should do so" we have lived here for 8 years now, this is our home. Can you imagine rocking back up to Australia, with no jobs, and no place to call home with 5 kids in a time like this?
Sure we have had family offer their homes to us, but my mother has emphysema, and my wife's mum has only half a lung (literally half, not even one lung, half of one). So I think it would be safer to ride it out here. To be honest, Cambodia seems to be dealing with it better than Australia or America has been, so far anyway. Schools were shut down here well before there were any real plans in motion in either Australia or America.
In saying that, we have other friends in various other industries here, but as the majority of the work for ex-pats is tourism or school-based... everyone is starting to feel the pinch, and it's only just getting started. Soon rent will need to be paid and people will need to eat, and there won't be any jobs or financial assistance to assist them.
We got lucky also, after 5 or so years of owning bars, I decided to get out of the game in December. It was bittersweet, On the one hand, I was happy to move on, but I really felt that if we waited we could have sold for more than what we did. But I was done and just wanted out!
How wrong I was, If we hadn't sold when we did we would be paying rent on a business we cannot even open and stuck in a market where no one in their right mind would be buying... yet anyway. There will be plenty of bargains in the months to come. Shops who cannot afford to reopen, ex-pats who choose not to return to Cambodia. While devastating, I think it will be a good rebuilding period for Siem Reap as the market has become saturated with restaurants and bars over the years and hopefully, this will allow more locals to open businesses in the center of town.
However for now, since the Import/ export trade has been put on hold, Mangos are already down to 5c a kilo and farmers are still unable to sell their stock.
For us, ALL of our dairy products, along with Bacon 😠and other cured meats come from Thailand or are shipped internationally. We have tried to stock up, but with such a large family, supplies don't seem to last long and once the shop is out of Bacon and Milk, who knows how many months it will be before we will see it on the shelves again.
It might be time to learn how to make Bacon... Building a dehydrator and making some Biltong is definitely on my Lockdown List too!
I hope you guys are all staying safe and doing your part to help flatten the curve.