Nomad life during COVID-19: exiting Bali and home quarantining in Taiwan

What a week! We are taking a break from our regular content to focus on a topic that is affecting everyone on the planet, including nomads. Nomads have the extra challenge of trying to figure out: where do you go when you live everywhere and nowhere? We fundamentally called the world our home and that home was closing its doors on us quickly.

In this first post of our coronavirus series, we will be discussing how we ended up in Taiwan and what it feels like to be in a mandatory home quarantine here in Taipei.

Before we get into it, we would like to express so much gratitude because one of the major lessons of this week is to not take anything for granted. We are grateful for healthcare workers putting the needs of others before theirs. To public service workers that keep us safe and workers running essentials businesses (such as grocery stores, pharmacy, delivery services) to make sure we can have access to what we need. For everyone practicing selflessness and staying home so that the greater population can stay safe. We are so grateful!

Planning our exit from Bali

We arrived in Bali on February 26th and had been really enjoying our time there. Things were calm and there was very little worry about the coronavirus amongst the locals and the foreign visitors. If you have been following our adventures, we had to cancel our plan to travel to Japan with my parents that was scheduled for April and we were then happy to extend our stay in Bali for another month (we spent a lot of time researching accommodation and intended to stay at this great 1 BD, 1 bath villa on Airbnb for less than $700 / month). Little did we know, this was only the beginning of the unraveling of our 2020 plans.

The next day, the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic and things escalated really quickly after that. To be honest, we didn’t feel the urgency to act fast until our practical and rational friends started making plans to leave Bali ASAP. I’m glad that they gave us that push because we couldn’t foresee all of the upcoming border closures that would happen in a matter of days. Although we loved living in Bali, we decided we didn’t want to stay in a developing country with a questionable healthcare system and unpredictable government. We went into research mode to figure out the best place for us to wait things out for an indefinite period of time. As much as we longed to be with family, it was not a great time to travel to California and France and it wouldn’t have been particularly helpful for us to be there without a home – this part was the hardest decision but we can’t wait to have more family time when we all get through this.

Time started to run out pretty quickly since each day came with multiple countries adding new travel restrictions to contain the spread of the virus and more countries completely closing their borders. By March 13th, we had identified a few potential options: Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. We took into consideration the stability of government, healthcare system, visa situation, cost, familiarity and where we knew people. Which by the way, is a very different criterion when choosing leisure travel destinations! 

We initially looked at Penang in Malaysia since we spent a month there during Christmas & New Year and felt confident in the healthcare system and the low cases that the country was experiencing at that time. Later that day, we heard that the country went ahead with a 16,000 people mosque gathering near its capital (as “Covid-19 was classified as “under control” by the Health Ministry”), which ultimately was linked to 190 new cases (its biggest single-day jump in coronavirus cases). That introduced enough uncertainty for us to scratch this option(this later led Malaysia to close its border and enter a lockdown).

On March 15th, we decided to go with Taiwan since Mrs. NN has family there and the country was doing extremely well at containing the virus. Earlier this year we had considered visiting at the end of April, so in a way this ended up back on our plans. We booked our one-way ticket from Bali and an Airbnb for a week (to limit our losses in case we could not make it in the country). Later that day, we heard that Taiwan recorded 8 new cases of the coronavirus and rumors started circulating that the country might put in place a mandatory home quarantine for everyone coming in. 

On March 17th, we packed our belongings, left our villa, and took a taxi to reach Denpasar International Airport (DPS). At check-in, we were required to book a flight out of Taiwan on the spot in order for the airline company to let us board the plane(we later canceled this ticket because we don’t know when would be a good date to depart). 

Landing in Taiwan with a mandatory 14-day home quarantine

Our flight to Taiwan was at 4:30 PM on Tuesday, March 17th and at 4 PM the country required all visitors to home quarantine, the day after they decided to close their borders to all foreign visitors and Bali closed their borders on Friday, March 20th. As you can see, this week was quite a sequence of stressful events! 

Upon arrival at the Taiwan International Airport (TPE), we realized that we had to go through a mandatory home quarantine which was announced while we were on the plane! Taiwan was taking this process very seriously and doing the home quarantining right (amongst many things). They tested our mobile numbers at immigration and got our physical address. We were told that we could not use public transport to leave the airport – uber, taxi or rental car only. 

Days in the life of a home quarantine

As I am writing this, we are on day 5 of our home quarantine and feel comfortable with it now that we have set our routine and have our basic necessities covered. We are not showing any symptoms so far which is really reassuring but we will keep monitoring our situation daily.

Here is a timeline of these first few days. 

On Day 1 (3/19/20), we managed to find ways to get both food and groceries delivered in front of our door (thanks to UberEats and FoodPanda). A field agent paid us a visit at our apartment in the afternoon. He checked on us in a calm and friendly manner (photo is of our Line communication below). Shortly after, the local police contacted us via Line, equally friendly. We take our social responsibility very seriously but we need to remind ourselves to still smile!

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On Day 2 (3/20/20), we had our first health check-in in the morning (through the Line mobile app) and later that day we were asked to get a local sim card so they could locate our position and check if we were leaving the apartment. We started hearing news of people in Taiwan hoarding food at grocery stores and we get a bit nervous because we aren’t well-stocked.

On Day 4 (3/22/20), a family member dropped off an amazing care package and a local sim card. We now have plenty of food and no longer feel worried about our provisions! Thank goodness for family and friends during this time. We received the first phone call from the CDC to make sure we were in quarantine and that we were still doing well. 

On Day 5 (3/23/20), we are settling into our routine and are using the extra time to check in with our family back in California and France, practice meditation, exercise and also reflect on such an unprecedented time while limiting the number of news updates. 

Bottom line

It has been quite a roller coaster of a week for everyone and we were no exception! We are now doing fine and are grateful to be in a place that has been doing well in containing the virus. We didn’t take our decision to travel this week lightly and recognize that it is a privilege for us to be able to stay in Taiwan or any country for that matter – something we took for granted as nomads. Our current visa gives us 3 months here(and Taiwan recently announced an automatic 30 day extension) which hopefully gives us enough time to monitor the situation back home and decide when it will be the best time for us to get back. Since our 2020 travel plans are now out the window, we are now taking things week by week and day by day(quite a change from booking 3 months in advance!). We will continue to update you as we figure out what’s next.

For now, we are continuing our home quarantine and if everything goes well, we should be safe to leave our apartment by April 1st. When we do, we will not take the freedom to be outside for granted and keep following the rules in place to keep everyone safe, which will remain our priority until we start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! I hope you and your families are staying well and strong in spirit during these uncertain times. 

What about you? Have you been through a strict self-quarantine where you could not leave your place the entire time? What is your day to day like? What is your current outlook on the days/weeks/months to come? If you are nomadic like us, where do you go when you live everywhere but nowhere?