I began life in the village—Amphoe Khukhan, Ban Laem Thong—just over a year ago, arriving May 16, 2020, after an 18-hour drive from Chiang Mai.

I did not intend to stay very long. Frankly, I was escaping. When I got to Thailand January 16, I had zero idea that the world was about to be turned on its head. Within two months, everything was fucked. My flight to Vietnam got cancelled, everything was Dominoes going forward.

After an excursion to Koh Samui to escape the reality, I came back to Chiang Mai simply knowing there is no escape—and neither anyplace in the world, as was becoming evident—so I might as well, at least, be in a place where I'd come to know some people. So I bided time and made the best of it in a cool apartment designed and built by a Swiss architect expat guy who owned the place.

Warunee Aumpronopmallee "Yui" was hunkered down. Thai news, like all news globally was...

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. — H.L. Mencken