Quarantine Experience in the Kingdom
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COVID-19 has been with us for almost a year now. It becomes a new normal to live a life with this deadly virus. Although we have recently got a great news about the vaccine, the virus is still expected to be around for much longer time.
If you have read the news related to COVID-19, you will see that the cases are still increasing everywhere especially in Europe and North America. What surprises me the most is that we hardly see any news about China anymore although the virus was first started there. China has done an amazing in stopping the spread. There are only 10 — 20 new cases daily at the moment despite the rise of second or even third waves in many countries.
Actually, it’s not only China but also many countries in Southeast Asia have been doing a good job in containing the virus. One of those countries is Cambodia, which has recently ranked in the 3rd place among the 166 studied nations across the world, and the 1st place in Asia for effective measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 and handle pandemic’s fallouts by The Bureau de Prospective Economique (BPE) of Senegal. Even with limited resources, the country can hold up for almost a year before having the community spread, which happened just recently on the 28th November 2020. I would like to take this opportunity to applaud for the health care teams, government and related authorities as well. Besides, in my opinion, Cambodian people take this virus very seriously and by nature are very scared of the virus. At the time of writing, Cambodia has only 331 cases with 304 cases were recovered and zero death.
Currently, Cambodia has a strict quarantine rule that applies to both Cambodian citizens and foreigners who wish to visit or transit in the country. Cambodia citizens are supposed to stay in quarantine for 14 days in a free of charged government facilities or self-paid hotels, while foreign citizens have only a choice of staying in the self-paid hotels. Foreign citizens are also required to have a Covid 19 medical certificate, health insurances and a deposit of 2000 USD to cover the expenses.
After landing at Phnom Penh International Airport, I was asked to show the medical form (yellow paper) given during the flight. I then went to custom where they checked my passport and kept it. After that, I went straight to baggage claim area to get my luggage. It was a quick process but then I need to queue for almost an hour to get my sample taken for Covid-19 test. After the test, I needed to fill the quarantine information sheet, which I was asked to choose whether I wanted to stay in the hotel or government facilities. I chose the hotel package despite the huge expense because I know I wouldn’t last even a day in those shared facilities. There were around a hundred people in my flight, and only 36 people would be staying in the hotel (only 3 Cambodians including me). We waited there in the queue for almost another hour for the bus to pick us up and bring us to the hotel.
This is my fourth day staying in the quarantine hotel. It’s actually worse than I have imagined. I can’t eat nor sleep well. I know I would feel even worse if I stayed in the government facilities where I needed to share a room with other 6–8 people and slept on the armchair. The most difficult thing would be to share the bathroom with probably 20–30 people (I don’t know for sure! maybe even more if the whole floor is sharing the same bathroom). On the other hand, the hotel charge is extremely high 95 USD a night, including food. It’s really overprice considering the service that has been provided. The hotel manager told me that it’s the package from the ministry that I need to pay for the food. I can order food from outside, but they will still supply the food and of course I will need to pay for the package. It’s impossible to take out the food cost out from the package. What make me feel bad the most is the food waste. I think the food I wasted in the last 4 days is much more than what I have ever wasted in the last 4 years combined. Additionally, there is no room service, but most importantly they don’t even take out the trash in front of the guests’ rooms with the reason that no staff want to take care of things that were used by the quarantine guests. It’s really good for one to be always cautious and preventive, but in this case I find people really overreact or probably misunderstand about this whole virus thing.
I hope the government or Ministry of Health can consider providing the middle range package for middle class people like me and majority of Cambodians, who wish to return home during this difficult time. Because no matter what you choose from the option above, you will end up with the extreme case. I think that MoH use the income from hotel package to cover the expense for free accommodation package, but it doesn’t need to be one or another. I believe that many more Cambodians would wish to pay something to cover their own expense during the quarantine instead of being a burden to the MoH in exchange for some comfort since it wasn’t a pleasant experience after all.
