I just took a look at the last time I made a post on this blog and I'm surprised it has been this long. I knew I'd missed a few, but it's laughable how much has changed since last I posted. This, of course, is exactly why not many people write blogs. The stresses of migrating around SE Asia and trying to plohavehrough the paperwork for the Chinese work visa has dominated my thoughts for the past six months and it really hasn't inspired me to turn my attention toward blog writing. At the very least, it has made it too difficult to start writing the blog as a new habit. I'm hoping the little coffee shop I've found around the corner from my new regularlye it easier to come in and blog on a regular basis.
But that's already getting ahead oonyself. I'm going to try to do a quick catch-up for what's been happening over the past six months. For anything before that, you'll have to refer to previous posts.
In January of this year, The Vietnamese government rescinded the policy that allowed foreigners to remain in the country during the COVID crisis. The policy had been quite generous, allowing foreigners who had entered the country after a certain date to remain in the country without renewing their visa for two years. The end of the policy, however, was announced with less than a week's notice, so I was caught off guard even though I knew the policy would be ending at some point. The policy was also ended before schools had reopened, so the school that had offered me a permanent job before the lockdown had not opened, so my only option on such short notice was to leave. At that point, most countries in the region had not reopened their borders. Further, the United States was at the apex of COVID transmission at that point, and airfares were prohibitively expensive.
So the only viable option seemed to be crossing the border into Cambodia, which had reopened for tourism. The details have been documented regularly since January in Untethered Livestreams, the YouTube channel this blog is meant to document. But to sum up quickly, I was able to leave Vietnam and spend two months in Cambodia (the maximum amount of time a tourist is allowed to remain in Cambodia). After that, I got a flight to Singapore and quickly made my way to Malaysia (Singapore is a bit too pricy for my budget). I spent the past few months in Malaysia working through the various paperwork requirements for a Chinese work visa. Eventually, I was ready to apply for the visa, but discovered that the Chinese Embassy and the consulates in Malaysia were still closed because of COVID-19, but the Embassy in Singapore was not. So I spent a few days in Singapore trying to apply for the visa only to discover that the general policy of Chinese Embassies and consulates is that a person may only apply for this type of visa in their home country.
