Phong Nha – 17th July

I slept in until 8am on Saturday 17th July, I didn’t bother with breakfast as I was too full from last night’s pizza at The Villas and instead I got on with reading the news as there was quite a lot going on here in Vietnam. There were reports of Saigon getting prepared for very sick Covid-19 patients as the 4th wave was getting worse, more here:
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20210716/ho-chi-minh-city-sets-up-1000bed-hospital-for-seriouslyill-covid19-patients/62106.html
A report about punishment, which shows they don’t mess about here if you disobey the rules:
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20210717/man-gets-18-months-in-jail-for-causing-covid19-spread-in-vietnam/62120.html
There was some good news for people in Danang waiting for vaccines to come:
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20210717/vietnams-da-nang-to-vaccinate-20000-people-against-covid19-a-day/62115.html
Generally the authorities were doing everything they could to prevent spread, they were tracking and tracing positive cases well so I had faith in the government here but maybe things were either going to get better or a lot worse, more info on the measures being taken in the South:
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20210717/vietnam-to-place-entire-southern-region-under-social-distancing-from-july-19/62121.html
From now on, in Vietnam, if we needed to move between provinces we would have to show a negative PCR test. A friend who had to leave Vietnam later this month had tried to do the right thing by booking his flight to Thailand for the 27th of this month but in the news Thailand was facing the worst cases they had reported so far and he had to do (and pay for) quarantine on arrival there.
It did make me wonder if I was going to get stuck here, if I should have tried to leave (without being fully vaccinated) when I was told to. At least where we are still had no cases so we felt pretty safe, so far, whereas in Dalyan, Turkey, they were now showing as having cases not far from where Captain Caveman’s place is.
I had an early lunch which I enjoyed making;  pasta with onion, garlic, mushroom and tomato based sauce – it tasted great and I didn’t have a bad stomach. In the afternoon I had some pomelo, a diet coke and my left over carrot cake from Sunday which I’d put in the freezer. I’d had a swim while the cake defrosted and made jasmine tea to go with it. In the afternoon I decided to start watching Sons of Sam on Netflix which was very intriguing. Captain Caveman was out of Son Doong and was on his way to his gala dinner at Chay Lap for the evening with plans for him to stay at the Glass House tonight and come back in the morning. I decided to make another pasta dish for dinner and this time I made it with garlic, onion, mushrooms, broccoli, a Laughing Cow lite cheese triangle and pasta water sauce – it tasted really good and again I wasn’t ill! I was meant to have an early night because we had big plans for tomorrow but instead I watched more Sons of Sam, I was hooked!