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Coronavirus pandemic
This Week in AsiaHealth & Environment

Coronavirus quarantine in Thailand: great food and fast Wi-fi, sleeping with a stranger … and a shame about my underpants

  • Ever wondered what two weeks in a Thai government-run coronavirus quarantine facility might be like?
  • Then wonder no more, Thai-American freelance visual journalist Charles Dharapak experienced it so you don’t need to

Reading Time:3 minutes
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A Thai Ministry of Public health official takes a man’s temperature through a window at the barracks of the Royal Thai Air Force Flight Training School, serving as a state coronavirus quarantine facility for Thai citizens returning from overseas. Photo: Charles Dharapak
Charles Dharapak
I stood at the curb with a group of 75 newly returned Thai citizens from Indonesia. After three hours of tedious processing at Suvarnabhumi Airport, they still wouldn’t let us leave. Officials posed with us for photographs as if we were celebrities.
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“Don’t worry,” one officer said through his surgical mask. “Just be patient.”

We were grateful to be back in Thailand. Many had been stuck overseas, flights cancelled due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. We were finally going home. Or so we thought.

Unclear on what was happening, we boarded buses. I checked the news. Thailand’s government had just announced new restrictions on inbound flights to limit imported infections.

Newly arrived Thai passengers from Jakarta, Indonesia, gather their luggage and wait to be processed at the barracks of the Royal Thai Air Force Flight Training School. Photo: Charles Dharapak
Newly arrived Thai passengers from Jakarta, Indonesia, gather their luggage and wait to be processed at the barracks of the Royal Thai Air Force Flight Training School. Photo: Charles Dharapak
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“We need to reduce the number of people entering Thailand,” said government spokesman Taweesin Visanuyothin. “We must limit the number that need to be quarantined.”

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