Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that the transition out of Covid19 here in Thailand would be MORE exhausting, demanding and debilitating than the previous 8 months of lockdown, hand-sanitizing, mask wearing and fear mongering.
13 days just went by where I have simply been too numb and mentally tired to blog on Hive.
Thailand has no Covid at all - and the mask wearing has become something done for show in government buildings. Locally no one wears masks or worries about Covid at all. Why? Cos the borders are CLOSED. October 2019 saw around 4 million tourists enter Thailand - affectionately called the Land of Smiles. October 2020? 1,495 people, most of whom were returning business owners or spouses of Thai nationals. We have had only 320 tourists in total, to only Phuket. With 14 days strict quarantine. Are they really tourists? Heck no! They're investors and buyers, looking for bargains: hotels, guest houses, cafes and business.
It's been unbelievably difficult to be a solo-mom entrepreneur of a physical business here. We have no social or financial support, pensions or unemployment payments (and yes, I am a serious tax payer here!). We've had almost no income for 9 months and are 8 months behind in rent over 2 buildings - our home and our business premises.
NO ONE expects western tourists anytime soon - not before mid 2021 at earliest. Thailand has made it clear that they're not enamored with the Me-Me-Me western mindset and is planning tourist bubbles for 2021 with only a handful of countries: some regions of China, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Finland. I have just learned that the Korean doctor I work with along the Thai-Burmese border is not planning to return to Thailand till 2022. Urgh. I still don't have access to my herbal growing areas along the Thai border due to rampant Covid infections in Burma.
So what to do??
My business, Pure Thai Natural Co Ltd took the only possible decision other than jumping off a cliff: we decided we HAD to adapt to the new markets - Asian markets. And so I joined a Thai language business networking club, since Asian people actually find many westerners offensive in their manner and prefer to do business amongst themselves. To put it rather bluntly, I am buying into and investing into a new business Family of Choice, Asian style.
My days and every spare baht have been committed to new product packaging design, new social media strategies and networking with Thai/Asian people and the few remaining foreign business owners with cash to spend.
Why the packaging redesign? My simple classic looking eco-friendly packaging simply doesn't appeal to Japanese, Chinese Korean or Singapore people. Too plain.
Not to mention the language issues. Having everything in English only on the pack simply is no longer an option, and so we have opted for a bilingual pack (Thai one side, English the other) with a QR code for Chinese speakers to access product information, in Chinese, on our website. My days are a blur of editing packaging drafts and working in multiple languages. It's really tough to go with someone else's design that everyone loves and raves about, except you. I think they call this Founders Syndrome.
I have been swimming every day between new cultural ideas, translations and the pragmatics of working in a relatively non-digital culture - it's easier to DRIVE 45 mins to my designer and explain things face to face than email corrections to her. Describing colour expectations to someone with different cultural ideas of what is beautiful? It's wearing.
In between times, I am attending networking meetings, playing in business club sporting events, trawling second hand stores for acceptable Asian business clothing that fits this 6 foot 2 inch woman.... and juggling the people banging on the door for money. Urgh.
Two evenings ago I presented my Gift Box project to the local Skal hotel and tourism professionals networking group here in Chiang Mai - those who haven't jumped ship and who are still relatively solvent. They gave me 5 mins to present my fair trade end-of-year-sustainable giving story to basically some very cashed up guests.
And I took a guest. Khun Irin, the smaller woman to my left.
Irin walked into Thailand from war-town Karen state in Burma as a child, and grew up in the Mae La Noi refugee camp. After 40 years and a life of hardship that makes most of us look like absolute sissies, she is now the proud owner of a kitchen business - manufacturing and producing imported kitchens into Asia. Irin's mother still lives in a small bamboo hut not far from where my herbs are growing in the foothills above the Mae Sariang valley. I received this photo of our herbs from the border regions (where I am still unable to travel) just this morning:
The 5 million Karen people living along the borders and within Karen state have been hit harder by Covid than we have. The lowly paid housemaid and construction jobs which the tourism industry feeds off are no longer to be found. The high mountains have no water in the dry season, so growing food is a huge challenge for them. They have many months ahead before the new season rains come in May 2021.
It is THIS that gets me out of bed and making tough decisions right now. If I can adapt and sell more product into Asia by making changes to my business, these people have a chance.
It was funny the other night with Irin. What she wanted more than anything was to have HER photo taken next to the sports car in the lobby of the hotel where the dinner function was held. But she was super shy, and so I offered to go first.
In a world pretty low on optimism, it was a fun & playful moment.
What I'm learning as I sit exhausted late at nights, is that much of what I'm experiencing and processing is so complex - culturally, emotionally, politically - that it's far beyond what one can write in a simple blog post. I'm also learning that technology is critical to Hive's success. My laptop battery died during the last 2 months, and so with very limited funds, I'm really only Hiving on my laptop, at home. And I'm simply not here enough. So TODAY I'm setting up @dapplr in my phone with all my keys and permissions, so I can be more active onchain during this intense transition time.
I was incredibly grateful to the ONLY Hive person who noticed I was silent & MIA from my usual Hive game and has reached out these last days to see if I was OK: @minismallholding.
Actually, I haven't been OK. In between all of the above and being a solo mom juggling to keep electricity connected and food on the table, my 84 year old mother who lives in a retirement community in Australia has twice in 10 days been rushed to hospital by ambulance with dangerously high blood pressure following a "heart failure episode". It's all a bit vague what's exactly wrong with her heart because despite the 2 emergencies and hospitalizations SHE IS YET TO SEE A CARDIOLOGIST, HAVE A SIMPLE BLOOD PROTEIN TEST OR HAVE A ECG. Grrrrr... The new 3rd world. wtf Australia??!! After being offered the money to travel to see her by a dear friend, I have had to take the painful decision to say no. It's simply not feasible to travel CNX-Bangkok-Doha-MEL (3 days travel each way! 3 months waiting list for flights!) and then pay exorbitant amounts for 2 weeks quarantine, and then do it all in reverse. 6-7 weeks away with no one to care for my child or run my business as it gets back up off its knees? I have been struggling with the decision to simply call my mother every day and accept that I'm unlikely to ever see my mother again, in the flesh, in this lifetime. She told me not to worry about coming to her funeral.
And so sometimes the days of overwhelmed aloneness and not being able to post pile up, and we learn who the real community people are on Hive. Thank you, Mini. x I'm calling this post-Covid period the Post Covid Olympics. 9.7 degree of difficulty and an astounding amount of pressure to perform. I look forward to setting up & starting to use Dapplr and chunking down this complex world into postable bite-sized pieces. More tomorrow.
Treasure The Moments, Reassess Your Priorities, Hug Your Mom.
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